As Amin says, “It is not the fundamentalist ideology with religious pretensions that is in the driver's seat and imposes its logic on the real holders of power, i.e., capital and its servants in the state. It is capital alone that makes all the decisions that suit it, and then mobilizes this ideology to its service.” It is up to us whether literature stands in thrall to this ideology or uses its interrogative power to challenge the ideology.

DEFINE: Clarifies the relationship between ideology and underlying economic power — ideology is a servant of capital, not the driving force. SEED: Potential essay on whether literature can genuinely push back against ideology or only ever serves power structures.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 59