Shamsie shows, using her native Pakistan as an example, how we can understand the Islamic reaction to perceived offence as a primarily political phenomenon. She argues that "in order to understand what's going on, it is essential to understand the national politics and history of those countries whose citizens are involved in the protests", and that the harmonious pan-Islamic ummah is illusory. This is uncontroversial, yet it is only part of the explanation; it doesn't explain the reaction of Danish Muslims to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, nor the reaction of British Muslims to The Satanic Verses; to fully explain the whole gamut of Islamic reaction to offense you cannot ignore the religious aspect – the person marching through London with his placard, calling for the beheading of those who insult Islam, is not merely a political pawn but an extreme religious believer.

To be fair, I don't think Shamsie is attempting to exonerate religion, but by focussing on Pakistan (which is undoubtedly political) she makes the implicit suggestion that this can be extrapolated globally, which I don't think is valid. That said, there are many people who believe that Islamic protest is entirely based on religion, or that all Muslims are just as irrationally angry as the protestors they see on televised news reports, and Shamsie's essay helps counteract this misconception, which can't be a bad thing.