Of course, Updike is here projecting that desiring reading again, offering his characters critical tools most often associated with the Protestant tradition with which to critique the source of their own faith. For some readers, this projection might seem indicative of Updike's "failure" to understand "the Islamic mind." Yet, equally certainly, such a pure, representative "Islamic mind"—constrained and made spotless and doubtless—is hardly likely to be possessed by any human agent in this world. Its creation is another example of the desire to fix and "read" the Other in particular ways, based on essential difference. Ahmad's striving for an always impossible certainty is the real subject matter of the novel.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 141