Countering Islamophobia requires interrogating the construct of Westernness itself.

Evidence

I have been at pains in this book to acknowledge this inherent potential, while also warning of the dangers of the kind of unconscious intellectual parochialism that can sometimes color engagements with this writing. In her account of the decisive influence of Protestant aesthetics in preparing the ground for Islamophobia, Jo Carruthers concludes: “because it is a specific construction of Englishness (that itself engenders Islamophobia) that has been passed on, the expulsion of Islamophobic sentiments is dependent upon an interrogation of Englishness.” My concluding point is similar: we will not properly begin to understand the coordinates of Islamophobia until we have critically considered those frameworks—political, cultural, and aesthetic—through which the sense of “Western-ness” is constructed. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 522

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the reader the book’s culminating thesis: Islamophobia cannot be uprooted without interrogating how ‘Westernness’ is aesthetically and culturally constructed.
• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s needed critical vocabulary for arguing that Hamid and Naqvi are evidence — the demand to interrogate Englishness/Westernness frames both novels. — connects to: Countering Islamophobia demands structural change, not just education and protest. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 765
• SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘Why compassion alone fails — interrogating Westernness as the precondition for contesting Islamophobia in Mohsin Hamid’s work.’