Liberal humanist fiction erases Muslim difference by staging conversion through canonical English verse

Evidence

Gauthier notes how Baxter’s awestruck response to “Dover Beach” means that his “ ‘difference’ is erased and he proves himself open to conversion; he shifts from being a troubling and unpredictable other to a civilizable entity” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 618

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is the contesting-vs-reinforcing mechanism: McEwan’s Saturday redeems the Muslim character only by stripping his difference — a template to test against Hamid and Naqvi’s protagonists.
• DEFINE: “Civilizable entity” is the operative critical term for how liberal humanism absorbs the threatening other.

Related

• Liberal-humanist endings depend on converting the threatening Other. (similarity 0.85)
• A liberal-humanist stance toward novels can itself smuggle in Islamophobic assumptions (similarity 0.81)
• Even distinguished literary novelists voice crude anti-Muslim prejudice (similarity 0.80)
• Novels encode their stance on Islamic identity through form as much as content. (similarity 0.79)
• A novel contesting Islamophobia can still quietly reinforce liberal-manichean binaries in its characterization. (similarity 0.79)
• The liberal novel reaches a boundary in accommodating Islamic political identity claims. (similarity 0.79)
• A Protestant-derived aesthetic of understated realism now underwrites ‘rational’ anti-Islamic prejudice. (similarity 0.79)
• Even benign literary-humanist gestures can align with Islamophobic civilizational rhetoric (similarity 0.79)
• A novel can rescue liberal humanism while denying voice to the Muslim other (similarity 0.79)
• Liberal thrillers displace Muslim marginalization onto white protagonists. (similarity 0.78)
• Liberal novelists cast literature itself as a core Western value threatened by Islam (similarity 0.78)
• A novel can expose stereotypes yet trap its own character within them (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Islamophobia in literature can reside in universalist reading practices rather than overt denunciation #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 229
• The claim that literature stands free of political taint is a liberal humanist fiction #corroborates (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 98
• A liberal-humanist stance toward novels can itself smuggle in Islamophobic assumptions #corroborates (0.70) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 239
• Liberal novels often center non-Muslim protagonists in Islamophobia stories #corroborates (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 355
• Novels that aim for evenhandedness can leave the good Muslim-bad Muslim binary intact #corroborates (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 294
• A novel can undermine its own polyphonic argument by monolithically portraying Muslims. #corroborates (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 179
• Medieval depictions of Islam as heresy served to justify violence and resist conversion #complicates (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 139