Novels encode political positions through moral contrasts between believing and unbelieving characters

Evidence

The real politics of the book lie in the distinction between believers—such as Najwa, Tamer, and the women at the mosque—and unbelievers—such as Omar, Anwar, and Lamya. The former are honest, open, spiritually questing, and religiously observant. The latter are feckless, insensitive, materialistic, and selfish. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 486

Categorization

• XREF: This is a transferable close-reading tool: chart a novel’s believer/unbeliever moral distribution to reveal its implicit politics — usable on Hamid and Naqvi.