A novel can expose Islamophobia’s machinery while containing no Muslims at all.

Evidence

In enumerating all this injustice, The Unknown Terrorist sometimes teeters on the verge of stridency and even nihilism in its tone. What chance is there for a society so hopelessly compromised by superficial values and malevolent manipulation? Even so, as an account of the way a neoliberal culture of amoral, rampant individualism and inevitably unsated desires must create its own demonic Other in order to cohere, the novel brings together much that is indicative of the contemporary world and its response to challenges to its unjust, inequitable structures—responses that find an outlet in Islamophobia. With that in mind, we could say that despite containing (or perhaps because it contains) no actual terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists whatsoever, Flanagan’s novel offers a particularly clear picture of the role of decadence, intellectual malaise, sensationalism, instant gratification, and the political uses of fear in creating the conditions for anti-Muslim prejudice. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 376

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: does a novel depicting the MECHANISM of demonization without depicting the demonized Other paradoxically offer the clearest structural critique — and what does that imply for how writing about Islamophobia should treat its subjects?
• XREF: Directly relevant to contesting-vs-reinforcing question and to how a writer represents (or refuses to represent) the Muslim subject as evidence in an argument.