Muslim characters' exclusion is mitigated by non-Muslim protagonists [causal]
These limitations have to do with the fact that the characters who experience discrimination and exclusion most directly or toward whom our emotional investment is directed tend not to be Muslim. Setting aside real-world inequalities, these novels tacitly assume that the reader will more readily identify with the quandaries of protagonists who share a known, familiar cultural orientation.
Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 355