Repossessing Islam Affective Identity and Islamic Fundamentalism in Hanif Kureishi (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reposessing Islam: Affective Identity and Islamic Fundamentalism in Hanif Kureishi
Indialogs, 2015
The present article argues that the processes which seem to have spawned the contemporary generation of British jihadists started in 1980s Britain, when Thatcherite practices led to the rise of racism and the suppression of dissident voices, a by-product of which was the disassociation of Muslim immigrants from the host society. The result was that the next generation of immigrants was much more prone to religious violence, attracted as it was towards thesupposedly-stable sense of identity offered by Islamic fundamentalism. The issue of identity of British Muslim immigrants is examined by revisiting Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album (1995), whose narrative representations open up spaces in the British cultural landscape to intentionally include the marginalised and disenfranchised. The hypothesis is that the essentialist choice faced by his characters within the conflictual context generated by the clash of Islamic fundamentalism and sexual liberation is similar to the one diasporic subjects face today. The argument is that the process of thinking about identity in affective terms, based on the theories of the likes of Brian Massumi and Deleuze and Guattari, gestures towards a new way of addressing questions of belonging for diasporic subjects, which can have a profound effect on the perception of issues such as religious fundamentalism and social integration. RESUME La recuperación del islam: la identidad afectiva y el fundamentalismo islámico en la obra de Hanif Kureishi El presente artículo sostiene que los procesos que parecen haber dado origen a la generación
The identity of Pakistanis is more endangered in post 9/11 situation than it was ever before. Being Pakistani means to be part of a society divided into various groups at war with one another on religious, sectarian and political issues. To have one unique national identity is simply impossible in such a situation, when Pakistan is not only engaged in war on terror but also herself a victim of terrorism. People loyal to different groups mainly divided into liberals (educated, enlightened and progressive) and fundamentalists (religious extremists, fanatics and ‘jihadis’) feel themselves marginalized in their own society. They are looked as ‘others’ in their own homeland. Their situation is comparable to that of the characters portrayed in the selected works of Mohsin Hamid and Hanif Kureishi facing identity crisis in a diasporic environment. Pakistani writers like African, Central and South American writers are responding back to the old colonizers and today’s policy makers. 9/11 transformed the image of the Muslim world into fundamentalists and terrorists forever. Another obsession with Pakistani writers is the loss of values, religious and political exploitation of common masses, suicide attacks, and sectarianism and the consequent evolution of an individual’s perception of his identity in an alienated social framework.
Reenvisioning the Question of Postcolonial Muslim Identity.pdf
In our contemporary era of transnationalism, the issue of identity has assume unprecedented significance and scope. In this paper, I intend to discuss the complexities and nuances of the Muslim identity in the postcolonial literary discourses. One of the basic contentions of the paper is to find some pattern in the transnational and transcultural diversity presently characterizing the Muslim identity discourses. Hence, this paper is a plea to discover some kind of literary and discursive sharedness in the contemporary postcolonial Muslim writings. It has been observed that at this point in time the Muslim identity in not only subject to myriad influences, it is also a topic of heated and passionate debates. In fiction, memoirs, travel writing, media and cultural narratives, the issue of Muslim identity is invested with all kinds of representations ranging from uncouth explosive-bearing terrorists to friendly and sociable people. It has also been shown that the Orientalist legacy, far from being dead, is being given new lease on life by the highly 'constructed' and 'worked over' images of Muslims in the Western media. The large Muslim diasporic populations settled in the European countries are specifically bearing the brunt of such stereotypical depictions built by media persons, political commentators, analysts and 'cultural experts'. Faced with this mighty discursive onslaught, the Muslim writers, novelists, poets, intellectuals have been responding variedly and with considerably mixed motives: acceptance, rejection, rectification, resistance, etc.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2022
Terrorist (2006) by John Updike has been classified within the post-9/11 novel genre where many American authors depict their counter-narratives to the horrific event of 9/11. The novel revolves around the life of a young teenager named Ahmad and his religious mentor, Shaikh Rashid, who are accused as terrorists. This study problematises the issue of the identity of Muslim characters in facing oppression using the concept of cultural imperialism by Iris Marion Young (1990), focussing on the social treatment of Muslim minority characters in America perceived as inferior to the entire American cultural mainstream. The objective of this study then is to examine the author’s depictions of the American society as the cultural imperialism persecuting Muslim characters. The findings highlight the Muslim characters’ inability to emulate the prevailing American cultural imperialism which oppresses them. As such, the study’s originality lies in the interpretation of the aversive affinity betw...
Istanbul University Press, 2024
The increase in terrorist attacks at the verge of the 21st century and the politics of associating Islam with violence and Muslims with terrorists have brought the subject of Islam and Muslims under serious investigation among scholars of the humanities and social sciences. New vocabulary words such as jihad [struggle], Sharia [Islamic law], Dar alHarb [house of war], Dar al-Islam [house of Islam], hijab [headscarf], al-Qaeda, mujaheddin [jihadist], Taliban, and kafir [disbeliever] were introduced into political and intellectual debates along with new phraseologies such as Islamic terrorism, Islamic extremism, Islamization, Talibanization, Islamic fascism, Islamic jihad, the Green Terror, and Islamic bomb into the daily lexicon to malign the image of Islam and Muslims and to strengthen biased arguments. This chapter aims to analyze the literary response of Muslim writers regarding diaspora and the negative projection of the Muslim identity and stereotypes, especially after the 9/11 incident. The questions are addressed through select literary texts on topics such as how the Muslim identity and hijab identity came under the spotlight of racial and cultural discrimination in Western societies. The study discusses texts such as the Pakastani-Brit H.M. Naqvi’s (2009) Home Boy, PakistaniAmerican-Brit Mohsin Hamid’s (2007) The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Lebanese-American Laila Halaby’s (2007) Once in a Promised Land, Palestinian-Egyptian-Australian Randa Abdel-Fattah’s (2005) Does My Head Look Big in This?, Indian-British Shelina Zahra Jan Mohamed’s (2009) Love in a Headscarf, and Bangladeshi-British Monica Ali’s (2003) Brick Lane. The chapter argues that, despite the ongoing international propaganda campaign against Muslims, they have revisited and reclaimed their identities and resisted and exposed the biases in the contemporary discourses against Islam and Muslims.
THE MUSLIM BODY AS A MARKER OF RACIALIZED IDENTITY
Humanities Circle: International Journal of Central University of Kerala. Special Issue on "Minding the Body"., 2016
9/11 witnessed the reification of terror from an emotion of extreme fear into something that one is at war with. Islamophobia reared its head in the ugliest manner possible after 9/11 as Orientalism got a new lease of life and countless Muslims across the globe found the burden of “collective responsibility” thrust upon them. In the days after September 11, 2001, “brown [became] the new black and Muslims the new Jews” in the United States and much of the Western world (Dabashi 6). This paper explores how the Muslim body becomes a site of racist discrimination and Oriental stereotyping, that conflated terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism with symbols of Muslim identity, in post-9/11 America through a close reading and critique of a novel that powerfully captures the anxieties and vulnerabilities of the Muslim diaspora in America after 9/11—Home Boy (2010) by Pakistani writer H.M. Naqvi. It traces how the self-fashioned sophisticated, cosmopolitan, hybrid identities of the young protagonists disintegrate in the face of rampant racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic hostility following 9/11. The beard, brown skin and the hijab or woman’s head scarf, become markers of racial difference and an invitation to othering in post-9/11 America, exposing the fissures in the US model of the melting-pot and its mask of cosmopolitanism. Keywords: 9/11, Islamophobia, Muslim body, cosmopolitanism, terrorism, Muslim identity, bodily humiliation, racial profiling
Global social sciences review, 2022
The current research analyzes Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers and Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire in the light of the concept of ambivalence, hybridity, and mimicry, and the way these texts establish a connection with trans-culturalism, terrorism, and Islamophobia. If Shamsie's novel Home Fire highlights the issue of fundamentalism and its effect on the distorted image of Muslim immigrants, similarly, Aslam's counsels cultural hybridity among diversity and heterogeneity for lasting peace and prosperity in diasporic societies. The present study not only explores the feelings of alienation, ambivalence and interdependency of trans-culturalism but also sheds impartial light on the clash of cultures and the subsequent issues, such as subjugation, exploitation, victimization, and injustice meted out to the Muslim Community across the globe on foreign soil. The researchers have adapted qualitative and descriptive methods while relying on the thorough reading of the selected British-Asian novels as well as the related critical reviews.
POSTCOLONIAL ISLAMOPHOBIA AND IMMIGRANT CRISIS IN KHAIR'S "JIHADI JANE"
Toplum ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2021
Islamophobia is frequently encountered as an inevitable reality in today's political and social life. Especially, Islamophobia-based hate crimes witnessed in the media deeply affect Muslim immigrants living in Western society and even lead them to be seen as potential terrorists. In particular, it can be easily said that the relationship between the West and Islam bears the traces of colonialism. The clear similarities between Western imperialism and radical Islam testify to this common legacy. This post-colonial Islamophobia affects immigrants as mentioned above, but the real blow strikes Muslim women immigrants. In Western society, the dress of Islam for women attracts enough attention and Muslim women are mostly targeted by hate crimes because they cannot integrate into society in this way. This situation accelerates the process of exclusion and marginalization of Muslim women immigrants and strengthens the hand of radical Islamic terrorist organizations in recruiting militants. This is one of the biggest obstacles to the creation of a multicultural environment, a source of problems stemming from Western imperialism and radical Islam. At this point, the works and discourses of Muslim-origin authors are of great importance in terms of digging into the depths of this problem and finding solutions. The works of these authors, who address immigration issues as an insider and identify the root sources of the problem, have the potential to play a key role in overcoming today's political and social impasse. In this context, the aim of this study is to put the reality of Islamophobia in Western society on a theoretical ground, to clarify the colonial connection of this fear and to discuss the problem with quotations and examples from Tabish Khair's novel Jihadi Jane.