Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. xvi, 222 pp. US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-65930-7.
Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora: Secularism, Religion, Representations is a collection of essays edited by Claire Chambers (Lecturer in Global Literature, University of York, UK) and Caroline Herbert (Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK). Claire Chambers and Caroline Herbert have previously worked on Muslim Women Writers(2011) and Postcolonial Cities (2013), respectively. This book is their concentrated theoretical contribution towards South Asian and Postcolonial Studies. It offers an interesting collection of essays focusing on the image and representations of Islam and Muslim identity and the complications surrounding both. The four sections of the book integrate responses from international academics who collectively present a thought-provoking analysis of the subject by observing discourses, reviewing historical facts, challenging theoretical approaches, and analyzing contemporary South Asian literary genres.
The first section, “Surveying the field: comparative approaches,” is based on discussions by Tabish Khair, Anshuman A. Mondal, and Lindsey Moore. Khair narrates his personal dilemma of growing up as a Muslim in India (chapter 1). When the responses in India shift towards associating him with “mullah religion,” he chooses to move abroad. Based on his earlier work, Young Muslim Voices, Mondal (chapter 2) critiques Rushdie and Kureshi, who either create foreign characters or make Muslim characters voiceless (Shalimar the Clown and Satanic Verses), continue to debate secularism vs fundamentalism (The Black Album), or criticize the ways the second generation fights the moral and cultural values imposed upon them by their parents. Lindsey Moore argues that South Asian (Attiya Hussain, Uzma Aslam Khan) and Maghrebi (Fatima Merrinsi) female writers share similar themes, including the conflict between cultural and religious values, public vs. personal space for women, the female body as problematic, the struggle to make women visible, audibility through textual presence, autobiographical accounts, and tracing historiography (chapter 3).
In the second section of the book, “Syncretism, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and secularism,” Muneeza Shamsie argues that Islam has continued to be a threat to Europe starting from the eighth century to the present day (chapter 4). She suggests that this is one of the reasons why many South Asian Muslim writers (Agha Shahid Ali, Shadab Zest Hashmi, Shahid Suharwardi, Imtiaz Dhraker, and Rushdie) evoke Europe’s “suppressed narrative,” reminding their readers of a Euro-Arab culture that flourished in Spain as Al-Andalus. Rachel Farebrother and Peter Morey explore Kashmiri writers Agha Shahid Ali and Mirza Waheed’s poetry and fiction, respectively. Farebrother has reviewed Agha Shahid Ali from a perspective of being detached from the violence in Kashmir (The Country Without a Post Office) (chapter 6). She finds his writings paradoxical because while experimenting with western genres like turning pastoral poetry into political expressions, he also uses cultural and religious symbols from Kashmir. Morey suggests The Collaborator (2011) reflects a kind of procrastination, rejecting the positions of both Indian and Pakistani sides in the dispute over Kashmir (chapter 7). Unlike the other chapters in this section, which focus on fiction or poetry, Caroline Herbert bridges music and fiction in order to understand the minoritization of Muslims and the shared Hindu-Muslim history and offers a close analysis of Shahshi Deshpande’s Small Remedies (chapter 5).
In section 3 of the book, titled “Currents with South Asian Islam,” E. Rashid critiques Ed Husain’s The Islamist as a Bildungsroman creating confusion over Islamism and liberal Islam, which in his view problematizes the nature of British Islam (chapter 8). He contends that Muslim scholars have contributed towards these ambiguities by presenting plagiarized western political thought. Madeline Clements explores Rushdie’s idea of Islam and faith as expressed in Shalimar the Clown(2008) and The Enchantress of Florence (2009) (chapter 9). In her view, Rushdie’s anti-Islam responses to Muslim practices, liberalism, and private vs. public space for practicing religion reflect a kind of identity crisis since Rushdie emphasizes his Indian Muslim and Kashmiri identity and yet remains bewildered about his association with the broader Muslim community. Following the theme of the problematized nature of defining a Muslim, Claire Chambers explores the politically desirable possibilities of a good Muslim through Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim, a novel that complicates these binaries and unsettles the boundaries between the good and bad Muslims (chapter 10).
The final section of the book, “Representations, stereotypes and Islamophobia,” begins with Cara Cilano’s discussion of Benazir Bhutto’s dual personality as representing both “Larkana Benazir” (Benazir from Sindh) and “Radcliffe Benazir” (Benazir from Radcliffe College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts), who was pro-democracy and supported gender equality (chapter 11). Her leadership reflected the war on terror discourse because she identifies the difference between the intra-Islamic debate within Pakistan and the gap between Islam and the West on the international scale, which further divide Muslims into “good” and “bad” categories. Cilano’s stance that Benazir represents American ideologies instead of just representing Pakistan as a leader is vaguely concluded. Aroosa Kanwal discusses post 9/11 interpretations of “Islam,” “Muslims,” and “Terrorism” through the example of Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows and Broken Verses. The author agrees with Shamsie that there is a pressure on the Muslim community to redefine Islam as a religion of peace. Like other authors in this book and Kamila Shamise, Kanwal agrees that there is a difference between being a “Muslim” and being an “Islamist” (chapter 13). On a different note, S.A. Meghani resists the stereotyping of Muslim identities and genders and discusses Straightening Ali, a work of fiction by Amjeed Kabil, and the film Touch of Pink by Ian Iqbal Rashid (chapter 12). The protagonists in both cases deal with their Muslim background and gayness as “incompatible identities” due to which they fear detachment from their families and community.
To conclude, this book deals primarily with the complications of defining the Muslim identity. It challenges the “hardening of definitions” and invisible “prejudices” between Hindu and Muslim identities, religions, personal spaces, and expectations (Tabish Khair and Mondal). The problems of identifying good vs. bad Muslims are an important concern (Cilano and Chambers). The question of differentiating between secular and extremist Islam remains problematic (Husain) but is addressed carefully by some authors. Despite all the pressures in the form of the “War on Terror” (Kanwal), works by Muslim and South Asian writers are observed as intentionally drawing Euro-Arab connections perhaps with the intention of drawing some positive conclusions and maintaining peace (Shamsie). Voicing female writers and queer South Asian Muslims significantly symbolizes dual oppression on the basis of religion and ethnicity (Moore and Meghani). In the process of interpreting Muslim identity, the stereotypes created by South Asian writers are challenged by some authors because in their view this means the misrepresentation of Muslim identity and Islam as ideology. This work emphasizes the responsible role of a creative writer as well as academics who can continue the dialogue and clarify the ambiguities surrounding the topic in focus. While some authors fairly believe that if literature or theory fails to deal with the complexities of issues, bridging discourses like art, fiction (Herbert), and film (Meghani) can address certain ambiguities.
Nukhbah Taj Langah
Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan
pp. 179-181