An imam’s critical reading lessons can save a would-be martyr.

Evidence

However, he is the one who inserts strategic questioning into the lessons he gives Ahmad, challenging literalist interpretations of the scriptures. He alerts his young charge to possible imperfections in the Quran, caused by human error and misunderstanding. The version of the Quran handed down to us is “in sore need of interpretation,” he states, “and interpretations, in the course of fourteen centuries, differ” (105). Ahmad responds with concern: he feels a chasm opening under him. As Rashid takes him through the points of potential dispute, he is, in fact, offering Ahmad an important lesson in critical reading, a skill that effectively brings Ahmad to the point where he can, in the final pages, reject the path of martyrdom prepared for him by others. … Doubt is shown to be a wellspring of positive action, whereas blind faith is depicted as leading only to death. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 141

Categorization

• XREF: Directly useful for the reader’s hinge work: this contest-vs-reinforce tension — Updike giving Muslim characters Protestant critical tools — parallels how Hamid and Naqvi deploy doubt against stereotype. Also connects to the reader’s own method of reading fiction as argument rather than illustration.
• SEED: Angle: how Muslim novelists (Hamid, Naqvi) subvert the ‘desiring reading’ of the terrorist by making doubt itself the moral engine — comparing who gets a ‘get out clause’ in each text.