Western feminist agency is defined against the assumed victimhood of Muslim women

Evidence

Scharff finds that these young women’s sense of agency—and thus their assertion that feminism is no longer relevant to them—is juxtaposed against and therefore established through the argument that Muslim women in particular do not have such agency, being victims of patriarchal cultures and therefore more in need of the feminism these women have outgrown. Seen in this light, Brick Lane describes a journey by which its protagonist moves from multiculturalism through feminism to a final economically individualist position wherein the oppressed Muslim woman shakes off the shackles of patriarchy, tradition, and communal solidarity to arrive at the Promised Land of market independence. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 198

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply names the rhetorical mechanism by which one group’s freedom is constituted through another’s presumed unfreedom — a transferable critical tool.
• QUESTION: Does either Hamid or Naqvi invert this move — granting Muslim characters agency by defining Western secular figures as the ones lacking it?