Islam and Postcolonial Discourse

Description

Largely, though not exclusively, as a legacy of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic faith has become synonymous in many corners of the media and academia with violence, which many believe to be its primary mode of expression. The absence of a sophisticated recognition of the wide range of Islamic subjectivities within contemporary culture has created a void in which misinterpretations and hostilities thrive. Responding to the growing importance of religion, specifically Islam, as a cultural signifier in the formation of a postcolonial self, this multidisciplinary collection is organized around contested terms such as secularism, Islamopolitics, female identity, and Islamophobia. The overarching goal of the contributors is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the full range of experiences within Islam as well as the figure of the Muslim, thus enabling a new set of questions about religion’s role in shaping postcolonial identity. Foreword Claire Chambers Introduction Esra Mirze Santesso History of the Muslim Other "Saracens in Middle English Romance" Janice Hawes "The Two Faced Muslim in the Early Modern Imagination: The Cultural Genealogy of a Modern Political Dialectic" Imtiaz Habib 　 Secularism and Islamopolitics "Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy: Mediating Secularism in Postcolonial Egypt" Rehnuma Sazzad "Unmasking Allah: The Violence of Religious Theater in Nawal El Saadawi’s God Dies by the Nile" Rajesh Reddy "The Terror of Symbols: Colonialism, Secularism, and Islam in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure and Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land" Vincent van Bever Donker Female Agency and Subversion "Untranslatable Acts: ‘Veiling’ and the Aporias of Transnational Feminism" Munia Bhaumik "Sex and the City of Riyadh: Postfeminist Fabrication" Jean Kane Islamophobia "Islamophobia and its Discontents" Tahir Abbas "British Asian Muslim Radicalization: Narratives of Travelling Justice/Injustice" Chloé A. Gill-Khan "Mistaken Identities: Performances of Post 9/11 Scenarios of Fear and Terror in the US" Ketu H. Katrak "From Nawab to Jihadi: The Transformation of Muslim Identity in Popular Indian Cinema" Alpana Sharma Postsecular Re-thinking "Politics of Privacy: Distinguishing Religion in Poststructuralist Discourse" K. Merinda Simmons "Baghdad, Beirut, and Brooklyn: Communal and Transnational Visions in Muslim and Arab American Poetry after September 11" Levin Arnsperger "Coming out for Islam? Critical Muslim Responses to Postcolonialism in Theory and Writing" Nath Aldalala’a and Geoffrey P. Nash