Indeed, in the novel doubt becomes heroic. It is the necessary grit in the oyster of dreams of transcendence, as the novel's epigraph from Gabriel García Márquez insists: "Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses" (italics in Terrorist). … Here we may return to Paul Berman in Terror and Liberalism, particularly to his critical interaction with Tariq Ramadan's argument about faith and doubt in his book Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity. Berman cites Ramadan's interest in the story—common to both Bible and Quran—of God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Berman cites Ramadan's view that the space for doubt within Western systems of thought is symbolically initiated in the dilemma prompted by God's order to Abraham, whereas the Quranic version instead emphasizes unquestioning compliance with God's will: "In western religious tradition," states Berman, "there is a space for scepticism and doubt. These two attitudes, scepticism and doubt, are elements of faith—the elements that prove the authenticity of belief in God.… The God of the Old Testament instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Abraham doubts the instruction and struggles to resist it, for a little while—and Abraham's doubt and struggle testify to the sincerity of his belief."

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 137