The war-on-terror scapegoat need not be Muslim to fill the Muslim’s demonized space.

Evidence

Long before this, the Doll is already a marginal figure: certainly beyond the limits of respectability as a sex worker, although “providing a service” in the valorized terms of commodity culture. Falsely accused and pursued, she is ejected from society, becomes persona non grata—another homo sacer and victim of the war on terror. 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. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 375

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instrumental for the reader’s hinge work: the ‘Muslim-shaped space’ concept maps sharply onto how Naqvi’s Home Boy and Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist position their non-white protagonists in that same demonized slot.