West-versus-Islam doubt binaries are projections of scholarly desire

Evidence

There are four interconnected groups of people who have come together to project the image of a vicious and menacing “Muslim enemy” and to generate fear and hatred. They include members of the neocon camp who have devoted themselves to ferreting out the “Islamic terrorist”; Zionists whose goal of policing criticism of Israel dovetails neatly with the logic of Islamophobia; the Christian Right, which has joined the ranks of the Islamophobic warriors; and a group of former Muslims (and Christians) from the Middle East and South Asia who have profited from Islam-bashing. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 537 (#expands, via linked claim)

The list of closed views begins with the notion that Islam lacks both diversity and internal differences and disagreements. In other words, all Muslims are basically the same, holding uniform worldviews and ideologies. In many ways, this perception drives much of the Islamophobia that one encounters in the West. If Islam is monolithic and unchanging, and if media coverage focuses on violence or terrorism carried out in the name of Islam by a small minority of Muslims, then it is easy to draw the conclusion that what one sees on the news is somehow endemic to Islam and all Muslims. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 53 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Native informants frame Western freedoms as universally liberating versus Islam’s oppressions — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 478; Intellectual honesty may turn Tushnet’s iconoclasm against fashionable explanatory shibboleths — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 667; Ramadan reads Camus to argue doubt animates the West but not Islam (+6 more)

Related

• Four interconnected groups jointly project the Muslim-enemy image (similarity 0.88)
• Islamophobic tropes become real violence through perceived enemy images (similarity 0.86)
• Perceiving Islam as monolithic and static drives most Islamophobia (similarity 0.83)
• Islamophobia is increasingly theorized as a form of racism rather than mere religious prejudice (similarity 0.83)
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries (similarity 0.82)
• Reifying Islam as a unified agent underwrote conspiracy theories of a pan-Indian jihad (similarity 0.82)
• The monolithic Islamic mind is a projection, not a reality (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia stems from nationalism’s ambiguities rather than fear of Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia’s core harm is essentializing all Muslims as enemies, not fear itself (similarity 0.81)
• Contested images of disliked groups persist in modern intellectual debate. (similarity 0.81)
• Western attitudes to Islam have shifted across history rather than forming a constant clash. (similarity 0.81)
• Western anti-Muslim hostility has been episodic and elite-driven, not a perpetual clash (similarity 0.81)
• The concept of Islam as a unified system supersedes actual Muslim experience (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia descends directly from Orientalism’s civilizational divide between Islam and the West (similarity 0.80)
• Islamophobia has become the dominant prejudice in Western societies (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Four interconnected groups jointly project the Muslim-enemy image #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 537
• The flip-side image of Muslim-as-friend is equally coercive and nuance-blind as enmity #expands (0.65)
• Perceiving Islam as monolithic and static drives most Islamophobia #complicates (0.55) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 53