#Culture

Podcast: Internalized Islamophobia In Fiction

Published

March 16, 2022

More and more Muslim authors are being published by mainstream publishers, which is a double-edged sword; on one hand, we have more diversity and #ownvoices stories, but on the other hand, we have… internalized Islamophobia in fiction, reinforcing the same negative stereotypes about conservative, religious Muslims that we already find in mass media.

The internalized Islamophobia found in Muslamic fiction is sometimes subtle, and sometimes decidedly not: references about “Wahhabis” and “haraam police” tend to be scattered throughout various novels, drawing a line between the “good Muslim” characters (usually liberal and not overtly practising) and the “bad Muslims” (any/all religiously conservative Muslims, whether they are characters in the novel or not).

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Zainab bint Younus and Hanain B. tackle the topic of internalized Islamophobia in fiction, picking through the nuances of writing on collective trauma, the sociopolitical ramifications of such writing, and Muslim writers’ and readers’ roles in challenging internalized Islamophobia while writing authentically.

Hanain B. a UK based Pakistani-Irish-British researcher in applied linguistics, and recently completed her PhD which looked at how a Muslim women’s Sisters’ Circle navigate socio-politics and Otherness. She’s interested in exploring social interaction, how spaces of comfort and care are created and navigated, and minority languages. She runs a small book-club that focuses on works written by PoC, and equally loves nature walks and fantasy books for some escapism.

Confronting Internalized Islamophobia

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Keep supporting MuslimMatters for the sake of Allah

Alhamdulillah, we're at over 850 supporters. Help us get to 900 supporters this month. All it takes is a small gift from a reader like you to keep us going, for just $2 / month.

Related Topics:#MuslimBooks culture Featured featuredculture Fiction Islam islamophobia literature Muslim muslimliterature ownvoices podcast

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Zainab bint Younus

Zainab bint Younus (AnonyMouse) is a Canadian Muslim woman who writes on Muslim women's issues, gender related injustice in the Muslim community, and Muslim women in Islamic history. She holds a diploma in Islamic Studies from Arees University, a diploma in History of Female Scholarship from Cambridge Islamic College, and has spent the last fifteen years involved in grassroots da'wah. She was also an original founder of MuslimMatters.org.

1 Comment

S. H. Miah

June 12, 2023 at 4:24 AM

I think self publishing is the way to go, and it’s the way I’ve gone. How can we truly have OwnVoices if we are filtering everything through the sieve of a publisher?

Publishers have generally bad contracts financially, and especially for Muslim authors there’s the risk of having to change things about the novel to fit the agenda of the publisher. And if these rewrites are tied to advance payments you can see why many Muslim authors fall into it.

Honestly, we either have to create our own publishing houses separate from the umbrella of the Big Four, or go down the self-publishing route.

Just my two thoughts, a very good podcast. We need more conversations on this topic to help turn the tide.

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