Verbal Irony - Assent
Throughout Terrorist, Charlie and Shaikh Rashid use words to lead Ahmad to verbally commit to terrorism. They cloak sinister motives in words that are not far off from those of the Koran, so they understate the magnitude of the actions they wish him to do and overstate what Ahmad's commitment to the plot would mean for the state of his religious character.
Situational Irony - Mosque
The disconnect between the mosque that 11-year old Ahmad sought out and the mosque he ultimately finds himself entrenched in is an example of situational irony. Ahmad is idealistic and a true believer of Islam, unlike his shaikh. Somehow, he chose the wrong mosque and ended up in one where he is the only member, aside from his teacher. Ahmad desires different things from his place of worship than actually exist in the one he attends.
Dramatic Irony - Title
Over the course of the novel, the young man Ahmad becomes radicalized. His fall from innocence is mostly unnoticed by those in his world who are not connected to the plot, but the reader watches each progression of belief through the context of the book's title, Terrorist. From the beginning, we cannot consider Ahmad outside of the "terrorist" concept; however, it takes him a hundred pages to approach anything remotely suggesting that label.
Verbal Irony - Sarcasm
The novel features sarcasm as a mechanism of interface between people of different classes and opinions. Mr. Levy, Ahmad's guidance counselor, uses sarcasm to express frustration at Ahmad's life choices; Ahmad, as an eighteen-year-old, returns it. The gap between meaning and phrasing is evident in the relationship between Beth, Mr. Levy's wife, and her sister, Hermione. This serves to understate what is really meant.
Dramatic Irony - Counterplot
The novel follows two threads; we watch an intelligence agency struggle to learn details of a terrorist plot in the making even before Charlie is recruited, and neither side is fully aware of the actions taken by the other. The mechanisms of secrecy taken by both sides do not always work, and we see exactly how close these leads take the people to uncovering the work of their life-or-death opponent.
