Moreover, the denouement brings Nazneen and her friends closer to that mode of independent individualism noted by Christina Scharff in her study of young Western women who reject feminism as a label, preferring to identify with choice and personal autonomy as opposed to collectivist action among women. Interestingly, 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.

XREF: Connects to postcolonial feminist critiques of how Western feminism positions the 'other' woman, echoing Spivak and Mohanty.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 198