Nevertheless, I would argue that the very shortcomings of these books tell us something about the West's categories and prejudices when it comes to the Muslim Other. … As such, Updike's novel ends in a more uncertain, indeterminate way. We may not have learned much about Islamist extremism, but we have understood something about the other fairytales by which the West seeks to comfort itself.

XREF: Connects to broader postcolonial critique of Western representations of the Other — echoes Said's Orientalism.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 144