You've changed your thesis: You submitted Sum of all Fears as a book featuring Islamic terrorism that had to be scrubbed of its offensive elements before it could be made into a film at all.  

But now the problem seems to be that yes, Hollywood will make movies with Islamic villains, but someone writing a critical column in The Guardian constitutes getting "crucified".  It would be the rare film that *doesn't* get criticized for one thing or another from the Guardian. 

It's also hardly "apples and oranges", given that Tom Clancy's stock in trade was authentic-feeling, intricately detailed espionage stories grounded in real-world politics. Granted, Sum Of All Fears was probably where he started going off the rails, but I'm not sure it's far off some of Homeland's flourishes. 

But if realism/fiction is your concern, your idea of Handmaid's Tale being about an Islamic takeover of the US is an absurd one, since no one was concerned about such a thing in 1985.