Novels contest Islamophobia by foregrounding characters’ internal divisions

Evidence

Arin Keeble suggests that The Submission rejects pure, authentic notions of identity and emphasizes internal divisions within characters as a way of undoing the reductive polarization of a clash-of-civilizations viewpoint (The 9/11 Novel: Trauma, Politics, and Identity [Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014], 168, 170). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 792

Categorization

• XREF: Directly the operative criterion for judging whether Hamid’s and Naqvi’s protagonists contest or quietly reinforce “clash of civilizations” frames — do their internal divisions undo polarization? — connects to: Muslim characters can break stereotype when faith is incidental to personality — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 537; Science fiction monsters shifted from representing communism to representing Islam; Fiction contests Islamophobia either by direct Islamic subjectivity or by oblique readerly defamiliarization. (+15 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 792

Broader Connections

• Literature resists Islamophobic universalism by structuring feeling and imagining alternative experiences #expands (0.70)
• Formal ambiguities can contest Islamophobia even in sympathetic texts #expands (0.65)
• Novels encode their stance on Islamic identity through form as much as content. #expands (0.60)
• Liberal novels often center non-Muslim protagonists in Islamophobia stories #complicates (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 355
• A novel can expose stereotypes yet trap its own character within them #qualifies (0.50)