A novel contests Islamophobia effectively only by criticizing the West ontologically, not just behaviorally.

Evidence

Likewise, a very noticeable absentee from the list of global flashpoints stirring anti-American sentiment is Palestine. A sense of injustice at the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is probably the single biggest driver of anti-Americanism, and yet it is absent from Changez’s litany. It would be unfair to suggest authorial pusillanimity over the matter. Nonetheless, the absence goes along with Changez’s controversial (but wholly subjective) response to the 9/11 attacks—“I smiled” (72)—to soften or make more personal his objections to the United States. … He prefers to talk more generally about “empire” in the abstract and euphemistically of those “tantrums” (168) through which America rocked the world after September 2001. The result is a story more palatable to an international but mainly Western, English-language readership: much more the kind of fair that can raise acceptable and limited criticisms of the West based on what it does rather than ontologically what it is, the kind that can unsettle the liberal reader but need not disturb his or her sleep. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 469

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s stated hinge work: offers a criterion — criticism of what the West does vs. what it is — to test whether Naqvi’s and especially Hamid’s novels contest or merely soften Islamophobia.
• QUESTION: Is the Palestine omission/personalizing of motive a specific weakness of Reluctant Fundamentalist, and how do other ‘terrorist-as-narrator’ novels handle geopolitical content?