If Mrs. Islam, the moneylender with whom Nazneen and her husband become embroiled earlier, represents both the "bad," usurious face of business—and, in her name, the censorious and restrictive face of religion—then Nazneen's confrontation with her, during which she accuses the old woman of charging riba, or interest, marks the moment when Nazneen finally shakes off her bondage to community traditions and conservative religious practice. As Stephen Morton has put it, "Nazneen's challenge to Mrs Islam is the condition of possibility for both her economic sovereignty and for Nazneen to emerge as the heroic female individual of the neoliberal bildungsroman"

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 695