The Hateful Rhetoric Against Muslims and the Authority-Making of Islamic Identity

This chapter discusses how the American myth of Muslims as violent people shapes social imaginary and, in turn, becomes ideological as reflected in scholarship and policies. The discursive narrative of ‘violent Muslims’ varies in its usage depending on a series of conditional constellation that supports its emergence and maintenance. I use the discursive narrative of ‘violent Muslims’ in two senses: (1) the American-dominant discourse of Muslims as violent to their enemy and (2) the portrayal of Muslim’s violence as inherent in Islam. In this chapter, I propose to locate the American ‘discursive authority’ of Muslims as violent people by (1) finding out how certain narratives, such as the perception of violent Muslims, become a prominent mythic discourse that produces self-authority; (2) situating such narratives as violent Muslims within their own contexts; (3) offering an alternative discursive authority in regard to Muslims that resists the Western-prominent narrative of Muslims as violent people; and (4) advocating a new authoritative narrative of non-violent Islam.