| Abstrakt: |
There are prominent stories in the media, as well as countless personal stories in the greater Muslim community, of white people whose response to Islamophobia, for varying reasons, has been not to reject Islam but to embrace it. The contradictory nature of this response reinforces the complexity of knowledge production and the critical subject in the post 9-11 world. The rejection of the media narratives both undermines the perceived power of Islamophobia, as well as highlighting the tendency of Islamophobic representations of Islam and Muslims to drive people towards Islam rather than away from it. Using a case series, this article seeks to explore the connection between Islamophobia as a media and societal narrative and the conversion stories of white converts post 9-11. The hypothesis of the article is that the violence of Islamophobic rhetoric is a form of knowledge production that regularly produces the opposite effect that it intends in white people, due to its tendency towards misinformation and misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims. As part of the discussion of the case series, the article seeks to illuminate connections between anti-racism and the stories of white converts to further clarify the nature of their path of conversion to Islam and the impact of Islamophobia on white converts self-understanding. The article also explores the consequence of anti-racist white converts producing pro-Islamic narratives following their rejection of Islamophobic tropes, memes, and disinformation as a form of knowledge production functioning as resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
