Liberals demanding Muslim reassurances seek validation of their own epistemic categories, not understanding

Evidence

In a brilliant reading of the final meeting between Mo and Claire—the latter increasingly disconcerted by Mo’s attitude and seeking specific reassurances as the price of her continued support—Uzma Jamil sees Mo as contesting the Orientalist and Islamophobic assumptions underpinning Claire’s concerns. Jamil observes how their conversation “revolves around two main questions. Who speaks for and about Islam and Muslims in the West? Who constructs the categories used to give meaning to the Muslim subject in the war on terror?” In their meeting, Claire is ostensibly seeking reassurances that Mo has not secretly smuggled into his design some kind of symbolic endorsement of Muslim supremacy. However, as Jamil points out, what she really seeks is a validation of the categories of knowledge she has taken on board from the wider discourse, in which Muslims—even the seemingly secular ones—must be constantly vetted in case they demonstrate signs of their propensity for treachery and violence. … In essence, we have a playing out of an old-style Orientalist interrogation scene, in which the privileged Westerner demands that the Other yield knowledge to her, the actual meaning of which will be made to fit her preconceptions. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 285

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallel to Hamid’s Changez and the American journalists’ expectations — the ‘good Muslim’ test.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘good Muslim/bad Muslim’ binary that the reader needs as critical vocabulary for Naqvi.
• SEED: Angle: the Orientalist interrogation scene as a recurring template underlying modern ‘prove you’re moderate’ demands in liberal media.