Hamid exposes the label ‘Islamic terrorist’ as one that refuses historical causality

Evidence

Changez mentions with unconvincing coyness his own incendiary media appearances in which he rails against the United States: “I was perhaps more forceful on this topic than I intended” (182); and such outbursts may possibly have brought him to the attention of the CIA. He is, in effect, consciously pandering to the image of the “fundamentalist” that will be eagerly beamed around the world as the required mediated Muslim “type”—a sort of off-the-shelf Islamic Rage Boy, complete with beard, slogans, and flag burning. As such, it might be claimed that Hamid here exposes the latent Islamophobia in the label Islamic terrorist, which refuses an engagement with historical causality for the easier explanation of irrational religious zeal. After all, as Changez picks out just a few of the myriad instances of U.S. interference in the affairs of other nations—“Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan, the Middle East, and now Afghanistan” (156)—he is simply reflecting the rhetoric of the majority of those who do undertake attacks against American targets, from Ramzi Yousef, the World Trade Center bomber in 1993, to Osama Bin Laden. Such figures tend overwhelmingly to justify themselves by referring to what they see as U.S. imperialism rather than by calling up specific religious justifications. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 465

Categorization

• XREF: Directly applicable to The Reluctant Fundamentalist in the reader’s library — Hamid/Changez as evidence for why the ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ label blanks out imperial causality.
• SEED: Changez’s self-conscious performance of the ‘fundamentalist’ image is a sharp hinge the reader can use to distinguish a novel contesting vs. one reinforcing Islamophobia.
• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which the ‘Islamic terrorist’ label functions: substituting irrational religious zeal for engagement with historical causality.