Ground Zero Mosque fiction inverts Islamophobia by casting Muslims as the censored artists.

Evidence

The central issue raised by the Ground Zero Mosque controversy and echoed in the novel concerns official and unofficial codings of the space. There is a tension between planned space and the personal stories about it in which people invest. With Ground Zero, the questions are: Whose stories should win out and be preserved? Who should have the right to shape space and its meaning? In this respect, The Submission offers us an intriguing inversion of the usual “Muslims oppose freedom of expression” strand of Islamophobia; here it is the Muslim protagonist’s own artistic vision that is to be censored in the interest of others’ sensitivities. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 277

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the spatial contest framework: official vs. unofficial codings of space, planned space vs. personal investment.
• SHARE: The specific inversion — a Muslim artist censored, reversing the usual free-speech panic — would interest anyone writing on Muslim representation.