That said, it would seem, from both The Black Album and Kureishi's subsequent statements, that the author identifies a danger to freedom and art in the politics of Muslim cultural identity that did not exist in older models, which had a more encouraging view of self-expression. Thus, cultural identities tend less to be truly organic expressions of belonging or affiliation than marriages of convenience encouraged by the political ideologies of the time.

XREF: Connects to critiques of identity politics and the constructed nature of group affiliation in postcolonial and cultural studies.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 174