The Muslim is negatively rendered visible only through the ‘true national’

Evidence

However, the success of the ritual casting out is guaranteed only when ordinary citizens can be made to implement it. The unusual thing about The Unknown Terrorist is that it is a white Australian non-Muslim rather than a Muslim who undergoes this process. The Doll is forced to inhabit the space in contemporary demonology occupied by the Muslim, but in the novel as a whole Muslims are almost entirely absent. In reality, as Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein point out, “[The] racial-cultural identity of the ‘true nationals’ remains invisible, but can be inferred (and is ensured) a contrario by the alleged quasi-hallucinatory visibility of the ‘false nationals’: the Jews, ‘wogs,’ immigrants, ‘Pakis,’ natives and blacks.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 375

Categorization

• DEFINE: Balibar’s a contrario visibility—the true national defined against the hyper-visible false national—is the exact critical mechanism for reading Hamid’s and Naqvi’s protagonists as imagined by observers.