Muslim women’s liberation is coded as a Western achievement in such fiction

Evidence

Nash remarks that Nazneen “fulfils the function of the Muslim woman who is liberated from her native culture to achieve freedom and independence in the West[,] … [whereas] [h]er beautiful, rebellious sister Hasina is less fortunate for although she exercises the right to choice and elopes with her lover there is no room for feminist enfranchisement at home in Bangladesh. Her fate is to be conquered by Third World poverty and patriarchy” (Writing Muslim Identity, 37). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 690

Categorization

• XREF: This binary of liberated-in-West vs. trapped-at-home is exactly the gendered mirror of the ‘good Muslim’/‘bad Muslim’ split — relevant to how novels like Brick Lane handle South Asian women.