Omniscient interior access undermines paranoid readings of Muslim characters.

Evidence

Tim Gauthier suggests that this late revelation might encourage in the reader misgivings about Mo, a character with whom we have developed an intimate relationship courtesy of the omniscient third-person technique that is free to swoop down into the consciousnesses of the main characters in turn. In fact, we are never really in much doubt about Mo’s intentions, which are benevolent but perhaps complacent and colored by personal ambition. He is just about the most unlikely sleeper agent one could imagine, and unless one is to embrace the paranoid idea pedaled by some of the clearly discreditable characters that all Muslims are somehow brainwashed from birth and preprogrammed toward extremism, there is never any real possibility that the garden contains some coded Islamist message. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 282

Categorization

• XREF: Directly applicable to reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Home Boy — whether knowing a character’s interiority preempts Islamophobic misreading.
• DEFINE: Illustrates how narrative technique (omniscient third-person interiority) functions as an anti-paranoid strategy.