Postcolonialism’s secular roots create a blind spot for Islam

Evidence

Postcolonialism developed out of those emancipation movements in Europe and America that rode the wave of post-1968 political self-assertion, whereas world literature came out of comparative literature and philology. When it comes to postcolonialism, critics have suggested that its roots in secular criticism have led to a blind spot where religion, especially Islam, is concerned. There is some truth in this claim, inasmuch as nationalism and antinationalism have tended to provide the umbrella beneath which issues of race, class, gender, and hybridity then shelter. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 52

Postcolonialism developed out of those emancipation movements in Europe and America that rode the wave of post-1968 political self-assertion, whereas world literature came out of comparative literature and philology. When it comes to postcolonialism, critics have suggested that its roots in secular criticism have led to a blind spot where religion, especially Islam, is concerned. … However, some of these criticisms, such as that offered by Anouar Majid, begin from the false premise that postcolonialism is merely the theoretical wing of identity politics and that “the postcolonial” is the inevitably compromised brainchild of those “comprador intellectuals” first picked out by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Arif Dirlik. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 52

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the reader a causal mechanism for why postcolonial criticism can’t easily read Islamophobic novels: its founding secularism makes religion itself illegible within its analytic umbrella.
• XREF: Useful for why the reader’s own two novels (with their Islamic Pakistani protagonists) may exceed or frustrate a straightforward postcolonial reading frame.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 52