However, I would argue that the use of insistent negatives in the passage also says something about Casa's status as a figure that we are, in the end, not being invited to identify with. Indeed, it is here, in the black-and-white framing of motivation and thus in the manipulation of our sympathy for liberal ends, that some of the ambivalences in Aslam's worlding begin to appear. There is a strong investment here in the old humanist idea that exposure to literature and being widely read make one a better, more-rounded person. Marcus, Lara, and David—all hailing from the non-Muslim world—are to varying degrees perspicacious and well read: able to swap literary quotations and trade historical anecdotes in vast quantities. Casa, in contrast, is a creature finally to be pitied for his untutored lack of self-awareness.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 405