Finally, the book’s liberal utopianism is evident in its epilogue. Not only is Mo now rich and internationally celebrated, with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Architecture, but we are told, “American Muslims were now, if not embraced, accepted. Trusted. Their rights unquestioned” (287). Just like that! With no explanation. Islamophobia is here mapped onto and equated with all those previous struggles against discrimination, from anti-Catholicism to civil rights, in a patriotic reiteration of America’s inherent capacity to integrate and forgive. Nothing is said about the struggles, bloodshed, and loss of life that always accompany this drawn-out and painful process. American Muslims have somehow effortlessly entered the sunny uplands of the future, conveyed there by some painless magical process we are not permitted to witness.

XREF: Connects to broader critiques of Whig history and the 'arc of justice' narrative, which flatten the violent struggles of civil rights and other liberation movements into a sanitized march toward progress.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 296