The good-versus-bad Muslim binary itself validates Western superiority

Evidence

Mo, the Muslim American architect whose family migrated from India, reflects at one point that he seems “bound to disturb every space he entered” (197). Yet his refusal to explain and interpret his design need not be read simply as egotistical misjudgment or a lack of flexibility. In a brilliant reading of the final meeting between Mo and Claire—the latter increasingly disconcerted by Mo’s attitude and seeking specific reassurances as the price of her continued support—Uzma Jamil sees Mo as contesting the Orientalist and Islamophobic assumptions underpinning Claire’s concerns. … In Islamophobic discourse, asserts Jamil, “Muslims are asked to soothe the fears of the west [sic] and to defuse their anxieties by reassuring them that they are ‘good Muslims’ or ‘moderate Muslims,’ not the violent, blowing-up-things kind of ‘bad Muslims.’ However, both ‘good Muslims’ and ‘bad Muslims’ confirm and validate the superior position of the west.” In other words, what Claire is seeking is the validation not simply of her views but also of the epistemological categories on which they are based, in which American innocence must be tacitly endorsed by the Muslim, who is required to “prove” good intentions that would otherwise remain in question. In essence, we have a playing out of an old-style Orientalist interrogation scene, in which the privileged Westerner demands that the Other yield knowledge to her, the actual meaning of which will be made to fit her preconceptions. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 285

Categorization

• DEFINE: Supplies the crucial critical vocabulary distinguishing contesting fiction: the ‘good/bad Muslim’ demand as an epistemological trap that refuses both alternatives.
• XREF: Directly applicable to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s Changez interview and the demand for disavowal, and to ‘moderate Muslim’ tropes in Naqvi.
• SEED: Angle for the reader’s argument: use the Jamil good/bad Muslim framing to test whether Mo’s silence in THE RELUCTANT counterpart scene is contestation or reinforcement.