A novel can undercut political solidarity by psychologizing Muslim commitment as personal compensation

Evidence

Of Nazneen’s sense of sympathy for the Muslim victims of violence in Chechnya and Palestine, we are told that “she mistook the sad weight of longing in her stomach for sorrow” (244). Skirmishes between the Tigers and racists culminate in a riot that swirls round the streets of East London, taking in the landmarks of earlier battles: Cable Street, where antifascists confronted Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the 1930s, and Altab Ali Park, renamed to commemorate a Bengali textile worker murdered by racists in 1978. Yet even this historical resonance is undercut because the riot is depicted as intracommunal, “brown-on-brown,” a product of gang culture and revenge. Karim remarks despairingly, “It’s not even about anything any more” (475). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 193

Categorization

• DEFINE: Morey’s key diagnostic move: narratorial psychologizing of a Muslim character’s politicization (‘mistook the sad weight of longing… for sorrow’) flattens politics into personal pathology — precisely the spectrum on which to place Hamid and Naqvi.
• XREF: Connects to how The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Home Boy handle Changez and Shakez’ political awakenings — whether politicization is read as grievance/pathology or as legitimate response.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the diagnostic psychologizing move’ — how omniscient narration can covertly contest or reinforce Islamophobia by explaining away Muslim political commitment as personal trauma.