Two points follow from this claim: the first is that we need to jettison any idea of a more “authentic” voice coming from Muslim writers working outside this frame; the second is that the challenge to avoid anthropological pitfalls is one of form as much as of content. … In the market for the Muslim, the so-called authenticity of a text is decided by publishers and editors, who shape the text in the publication process, as well as by reviewers and critics, who deem a text “authentic” or otherwise according to how well it satisfies these predetermined criteria. As Sarah Brouillette aptly writes, “For something to be experienced as authentic it must be marked as authentic, but when it is marked as authentic it is mediated … and hence lacks the authenticity of what is truly unspoiled, untouched by mediating cultural codes.”

XREF: Connects to ideas of authenticity as a socially constructed label, echoing work on mediation and commodification of cultural identity in literature.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 28