It is not enough to rely on the inherent liberality of novel writers and readers or on the automatic response of so-called political correctness. It is necessary to dig down, recognize, and historicize the assumptions and categories that color our reception of novels by and about Muslims and to acknowledge how they can be a part of the creation and fetishization of difference.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of 'historicizing assumptions' — recognizing that reader categories and biases are historically constructed, not neutral or natural, and must be examined rather than assumed automatic.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 519