Jo Carruthers reinforces this point in her book England’s Secular Scripture, which traces the development of a Protestant-derived quintessential English aesthetic valuing simplicity and directness as set against more demonstrative or ritualistic traditions. Beginning with the iconoclasm of the Reformation and its rejection of Catholic pomp and ritual, theological doctrine became transposed into a moral and aesthetic register and wedded to the emergent English nation. … The canon of English literature forms what Carruthers calls a “secular scripture” in its hallowed preference for the transparent “style-less” style of realism and its emphasis on directness and moral seriousness. … In our present age, this script has become combative, aligning itself with expressions of prejudice against Islam as a publicly performed religion. … Thus, we see instances of what is argued to be “rational Islamophobia” from public figures, such as the journalist Polly Toynbee and the authors Fay Weldon and Jeanette Winterson, wherein claims are made for the reasonableness of anti-Islamic feeling on account of Islam’s own visible irrational qualities.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 93