Rendering Whiteness Palatable: The Acceptable Muslim in an Era of White Rage

Shelina Kassam

doi:10.24908/jcri.v7i2.13544

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the perspectives of the Acceptable Muslim (Kassam, 2018)in two Canadian case studies: (a) Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim journalist and activist who has been an active commentator on a variety of issues including those related to Muslims; and (b) the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007-2012), which was the first Canadian mainstream television series featuring Muslim characters. I suggest that these case studies illuminate the figure of the Acceptable Muslim (Kassam, 2018)who is represented as a “moderate,” modern, and assimilable Muslim, and who espouses a privatized faith with few public expressions of religious/cultural belonging. Centrally implicated in Canadian debates about multiculturalism, gender equality, citizenship, and secularism, Acceptable Muslims (re)confirm the racial boundaries of the nation-state, becoming icons of multiculturalism, reanimating the whiteness at the heart of the Canadian nation-state. The Acceptable Muslim sustains the narrative of the Canadian nation-state as liberal, secular, modern, and inclusive even as it relentlessly excludes, punishes, and eliminates the Muslim Other, enabling such policies to be legitimated as “race-neutral.” Acceptable Muslims stand as sentries at the (symbolic) borders of the nation, reanimating racialized boundaries of acceptability and signalling that those beyond these boundaries can be legitimately policed by the nation-state. My analysis provides insights into how Canada has re-configured the power and persistence of its white fantasy and, through the strategic use of the Acceptable Muslim, cloaks its deeply racialized coding in more palatable grammars of multiculturalism, gender equality, and secularism.

Highlights

The notion of Muslimness is deeply entrenched in post 9/11 national and international discourses, which situate the visibly Muslim Other as barbaric, dangerous, oppressed/oppressive, and uncivilized; a body that must be surveilled and, if necessary, expelled from civilized Western society
In an era of white rage, much angst has been focused on visible Muslims, who are perceived as threats to Western norms and against whom white rage is often directed
Acceptable Muslims, both Secular and Multiculturalist, share five attributes of acceptability: 1) they urge public condemnation of extremism; 2) they essentialize Muslims, albeit in different ways; 3) they reaffirm secular normativity; 4) they focus on genderequality; and 5) they engage with Canadian multiculturalism, either through endorsing or critiquing its norms

Summary

Introduction

The notion of Muslimness is deeply entrenched in post 9/11 national and international discourses, which situate the visibly Muslim Other as barbaric, dangerous, oppressed/oppressive (depending on gender), and uncivilized; a body that must be surveilled and, if necessary, expelled from civilized Western society. Against the backdrop of these contemporary contestations and in the midst of white rage, I trace the emergence of a less visible figure: the Acceptable Muslim (Kassam, 2018), who is depicted as modern and assimilable, one who espouses a privatized faith with few public expressions of religious or cultural belonging This figure, referred to elsewhere as the “moderate Muslim” (though the term is problematic), appears consistently in post 9/11 Western public discourses, and is juxtaposed against the Muslim Other who is depicted as a physical and symbolic threat to Western society and norms. Acceptable Muslims, both Secular and Multiculturalist, share five attributes of acceptability: 1) they urge public condemnation of extremism; 2) they essentialize Muslims, albeit in different ways; 3) they reaffirm secular normativity; 4) they focus on gender (in)equality; and 5) they engage with Canadian multiculturalism, either through endorsing or critiquing its norms While their perspectives have some distinctions—the distinction between Secular and Multiculturalist—these Acceptable Muslims perform similar ideological work in the context of a white settler nation-state such as Canada. These two attributes illuminate how, in this era of white rage, Acceptable Muslims reaffirm key elements of the Canadian national narrative, a mythology rooted in racial coding and whiteness

Gendered Orientalism and the Fantasy of White Space

The Ideological Implications of Acceptable Muslims