Updike resolves Terrorist’s plot through Protestant assumptions that validate the saving figure

Evidence

Jack’s job is to introduce doubt into Ahmad’s sealed faith. After climbing into the cab of the lorry containing the explosives, which Ahmad is driving to its destination, Jack launches into a fierce lesson in religious history, focusing on some of the “repulsive and ridiculous stuff” in the Torah but with equal applicability to the other Abrahamic faiths: “Plagues, massacres, straight from Yahweh to you. Tribes that weren’t lucky enough to be chosen—put them under the ban, show them no mercy. They hadn’t quite worked out Hell yet, that came with the Christians. Wise up—the priests try to control people through fear. Conjure up Hell—the oldest scare tactic in the world. Next to torture. Hell is torture, basically. You really can buy into all this? God as supreme torturer? God as the King of genocide?” (295, emphasis in original). Jack’s potentially self-sacrificing heroism validates his message, which has to do with taking responsibility for one’s actions instead of palming it off on a deity. It offers the classic Protestant dilemma between faith and free will and puts it at the heart of any beliefs worth having. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the reader’s aim: contrast this interventionist Jack in Updike with how Hamid and Naqvi handle doubt and the interlocutor relationship.
• QUESTION: Could be worth asking whether the self-sacrificing-rescuer structure replicates the very orientalist rescue fantasy critique that follows.