The liberal novel reaches a boundary in accommodating Islamic political identity claims.

Evidence

As far as literature and literary studies are concerned, much is made of an openness to culture as shared human heritage. Certain formal qualities in prose fiction are said to enshrine this openness. However, as we have seen, the novel’s dealings with Islamic political identity claims suggest there is actually a limit to this empathetic magnanimity: How does the supposedly capacious and liberal novel accommodate values that are antithetical to its own assumptions? This study suggests that although it is impossible to overcome inherent boundaries within the form and the outlook it encourages—which are in any case generically constitutive—it is possible to gesture to the existence of these tensions, albeit often obliquely and through a dramatized bracketing of the commonplaces by which literary criticism and reception seek to tame and domesticate difference. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 516

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the core thesis distinguishing novels that contest versus reinforce Islamophobia: the form has inherent limits, but can gesture at tensions through ‘dramatized bracketing’ of critical commonplaces.
• XREF: Directly gives the reader the analytical edge for Hamid and Naqvi: identifying where each novel brackets or reproduces the liberal novel’s assumptions about Muslim claims.