Against the contemptible weak thinking of religion, Amis ranges the playfully rational individual voices of writers, supposedly all espousing “the ideology of no ideology” (19), whatever that may be. This faux naïf pretence that literature stands clear of political taint is a very old liberal humanist canard. To see it appear again in this context—at a time when it was de rigeur to take sides in the war on terror—strikes an oddly anachronistic note.

XREF: Connects to broader debates about the politics of aesthetic autonomy and ideological critique of 'disinterested' art.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 98