An Introduction to Contemporary Female Muslim Writing E-Book

Matthias Dickert

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Scientific Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, Comenius University in Bratislava (Comenius University), language: English, abstract: This essay is meant to give some sort of introduction into topics female Muslim writers are responsible for at the moment. It offers some sort of overview on important female Muslim novelists whose works significantly feature female perspectives of women's themes which range from matters of gender roles, patriarchal structures, life under Islam and Sharia law, emancipation or one of the key elements, hybrid existence. The essay starts with some general notes before it moves on with a closer analysis of the hybrid. It ends with some sort of outlook where female Muslim writing might head to. The bibliography at the end lists up recommended literature by the author of this text.

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Abstract

This essay is meant to give some sort of introduction into topicsfemale Muslim writers are responsible for at the moment. It offers some sort of overview on important female Muslim novelists whose works significantly feature female perspectives of women's themes which range from matters of gender roles, patriarchal structures, life under Islam and Sharia law, emancipation or one of the key elements, hybrid existence.

The essay starts with some general notes before it moves on with a closer analysis of the hybrid.

It ends with some sort of outlook where female Muslim writing might head to.

"... you need not be afraid of coming across a man here. This is Ladyland, free from sin and harm.Virtue herself reigns here."

Taken from: Sultana's Dream (1905) by Begum Rohkeya Sakwat Hossain

Table of Contents:

Abstract

1. Muslim Women Writers

2. Hybrid Description and Hybrid Identity under the Focus of Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism

3. Outlook

4. Literature

1. Muslim Women Writers

To give a definition of what Muslim women writing is about is -at first sight- a fairly difficult venture since Muslim writing in general and Muslim female writing in particular cover a wide range of topics.

If one nevertheless starts to go a step into this direction it must be clearly pointed out at the beginning that Muslim women writing and authors working in this respect are part of a wider set frame which is commonly known by the term 'Muslim literature' which itself is a distinct phenomenon.

There are critics who rather prefer catchphrases such as 'ethnic authors', 'migrant fiction', 'fiction of migration', 'foreign literature' or simply 'Arab' all of which hint at the wide range of this matter.

The common aim of all these terms is according to Kempf (2001) the fact that these novelists all 'share a common bond as Muslims'.

One can therefore simply say that Muslim women writers are novelists of Muslim ancestry or kinship who reflect Muslim identities through their novels' characters. It is hereby important to point out that the notion 'Muslim' is often seen as not only being difficult to define it is also extremely controversial and polemical, too, since it refers to the idea of the ummah (the group of believers) and thus disposes of a rigid religious basis.[1]

The portrayal of female Muslim presentation in the contemporary English speaking novel of the 20th (and 21st) century did not directly deal with national, cultural, linguistic, ethnic or religious identity since these topics cannot (or rather should not) be linked to specific and thus fixed categories or rubrics.

The female presentation of Muslim characters, however, from the very start had always been marked by key terms of 'Postcolonial Studies' and topics such as rigid religious and social structures, migration, immigration, assimilation, exodus, exile, diaspora or ghetto since it is these forces which influence and shape many literary presentations of female Muslim existence.[2]

It is nevertheless important to keep in mind that all of these terms (which are sometimes used as parameters for an interpretation) should be used preliminary or suggestive rather than determinative.

This especially goes for current developments of the 21st century which proved that any presentation of Muslim characters -be they female or male- has become more difficult or complex in times of globalization or after 9/11 which had a tremendous effect on character description as such and showed a new complexity of character analysis. It is striking to see that women in Islam are still generally led by primary Islamic sources of personal law, namely the Quran and the hadiths , as well as secondary sources such as igma, qiyas or fatwas.

Most female characters are set between this Muslim background (at least temporarily) which is of course ideal for character development since it offers a controversial approach by the reader.

This being the case in real life it is important to point out that many (if not most) literary presentations of Muslim women are attached to that as well, be it for the function of the plot, speech or reception.

Most female characters are also set in patterns of traditional gender roles, legal matters such as (arranged) marriages, a strict religiously controlled life or political conditions which shape them.[3]

One can generally say that Muslims as characters (and female Muslim characters in particular) are a fairly new phenomenon in contemporary English speaking literature.

For a long time everything attached to Islam or Muslim was looked upon from the traditional colonial or postcolonial perspective which labelled them as 'inferior' or 'other' two notions heavily criticised by the three most influential critics of 'Postcolonialism' Said, Bhabha and Spivak.

This negative reception of the notion 'Muslim' culminated in the trend to subjugate and exclude it from what is commonly known as 'High Literature'.

This (negative) attitude was first broken up by (male) novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi or Khaled Hussein who all used Islam and Muslim characters as tools of social criticism or as identity markers.[4]

9/11 which was first experienced as a traumatic event in many spheres of modern life such as the political, the religious, the economic and the literary field suddenly paved the way for new possibilities and today must be seen in a more positive light as far as Muslim writing is concerned.

Although it was first considered to be a shock ( for both Islam and the West) it soon brought honesty and truth into Muslim narratives because it enabled novelists and readers alike to throw new light on terms such as Muslim identity in East and West, the concepts of what Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism really are about and they opened the gates for a large number of female writers (and their female characters) to express their reality without adapting to a fixed (and mostly male) reality. So to speak 9/11 must be equalled to some sort of liberation process in the sense that the representation of the self suddenly became much more dynamic and honest.

Apart from this positive development there (still) is a negative trend to be noticed as well.

This can be seen in the fact that female Muslim writing still has not yet solved deeply rooted notions of 'otherness' or 'displacement' (both displacement of time and place) the two of which seem to be connected to the notion of 'hybridity' or 'hybrid existence' (see concept of Bhabha). 'Hybrid existence ' in fact is often taken up and used as the basic condition of Muslim existence which is stuck in two or more places.

So another central notion of contemporary female Muslim writing can logically be seen in the term 'home'. The struggle for 'home' - in the case of many married Muslim women it is the family where female characters often function as nestmakers - often symbolises the status of a torn apart between Islam and cosmopolitan offers which are governed by the grip of globalization and an increasing number of mixed cultures (or the alternative of a radical Islam). In short female Muslim existence today has become more complex and more difficult since it is basically hybrid. Hybrid in the sense that many Muslim characters are presented as standing between East and West and Islamic tradition or emancipation.[5]

2. Hybrid Description and Hybrid Identity under the Focus of Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism

The already mentioned parameters of identity formation, failure and powerlessness can bespotted within the structure of many novels stemming from Muslim authors. This literary framework is, above all, marked by the hybrid existence of the main character. The tension arising from this constellation touches other spheres of modern man's identity. One is attached to the question why the search for a purpose in life and the fight for authenticity hardly affect a community; another lies in the danger that man has to play different social roles, a dilemma by which he can be destroyed. Hybrid narration exactly looks at this central concern of modern identity matters. The reader is here confronted with a character who has to live in a complex, dynamic and constantly changing world. Many characters have to face the task of finding their identity, to keep it or to define it anew. The acquisition of this task and its management hint at a central question of modern man's existence - the task to keep its personal unity before it falls apart. The connection of character analysis with multiple approaches to the question of identity under the focus of Islam help gain another formal category that extends hybrid narration. Identity and hybridity approach each other with the result of a critical reflection of the modern expression of the hybrid and the attempt to overcome the utopian imagination of a stereotyped self.

With this notion of hybridity, female Muslim writers often confront the representatives of a cultural 'hybridity' and a 'third space' with the option of a fixed alternative, Islam. This religious alternative must be seen as a third option, along with an open and dynamic position of the personal I and its permanent negotiating of identity.

The function of Islam within the modern form of female Muslim writing under the hybrid enables characters to lead a life full of meaning and sometimes even to survive in a modern world that is too often seen as a supermarket of chances. This option does also include failure. The result is a description and reflection of reality, along with the consequences connected with a life in two contrasting worlds, resulting from colonialism, where religion seems to survive as one of the remaining identity markers.

Islam is seen as a central driving force for modern existence and it helps complete the notion of man's identity by adding the religious as a convincing option. In short, Islam is seen as a tool to give permanent or temporary strength and orientation in a world that is out of control. Hybrid existence seems to be a mirror of modern existence, religious existence hints at the possibility to connect the spiritual with the material side of man in order to find a purpose in life.

The use of the religious within hybrid narration helps in two ways. It first creates some kind of framework that is central to the plot. It then offers some sort of sense-giving basis for the individual looking for his identity. Yet Islam, in most cases, can only partly be seen as the ideal source of a stable identity. It mostly functions as an element accompanying the dynamic and constantly changing human concept of identity only temporarily. Many female characters are thus able to discover religion or the religious (anew), to experience it and to integrate it into their lives. Islam can, therefore, become a central element of modern existence, which has instigated erosion, loss of stability and crisis as central elements of the English-speaking novel. It is here that the religious in general and Islam in particular can be used as a 'third place' within the antagonistic fields of East and West. Both function as narrative elements in some sort of borderline crossing, and they themselves are seen as 'permanente Diskurse' (see Foucault).

The dynamic function of the religious shows that constructions of identity are set in the field of a modern self and world experience. Religion in general and Islam in particular have the task to analyse the complex network of modern existence under the focus of identity construction or de-construction. Within this process, they show that true religious identity in the final analysis comes close to emancipation and liberalization two key elements of many female feminist writers. These are both aims that the Muslim characters analysed here try to follow, even though their starting points and aims are different, despite the fact of a common Muslim background.

It is noteworthy to point out that female Muslim characters set in an Islamic background are mostly described in a more traditional and stereotyped way as being inferior to man. Their literary presentation in the West slowly breaks this up and shows the West as a chance which is either taken up, ignored or used as a hybrid setting which too often shows the dramatic tension these women are in.

The reader is here often confronted with a mix of forces in a Western context which includes an enormous dynamic.

A consequence from this lies in the (literary) trend to link the changing images of Muslim women to ongoing processes in European or American relations with the Islamic world (Gulf Wars, 'War on Terror', 9/11; fundamentalism, immigration, xenophobia etc.) as well as to changing gender dynamics within Western societies.[6]

The once slow but now very fast moving process and its literary development are often based on the above mentioned concept of 'hybridity' which basically describes this inbetweeness of persons. Hybridity here stands for a life in two worlds whose poles are Islam and the West. Both play a keyrole in the process of self-identification and the aim to gain (or re-gain) identity.

The hybrid - although it could easily be understood to be a phase of weakness or insecurity- often helps to tear down stereotypes about Islam and its teaching about the role of women because it also contains the option of dignity or equality for Muslim women within the discourse among Muslim and Western readers alike.

Hybrid existence therefore helps to tear down prevailing traditional concepts of the female on both sides and was sometimes also used for an inner Islamic feminist discourse (based on liberaltionalist discourses and postmodernism analyses) in the 1970s and 1980s as well as a response to Islamic traditionalism and Western norms.

Another consequence from this (let me call it like this) 'hybrid condition' included the option for a new space of the present literary presentation of the female. It is here where popular issues such as gender roles, marriage, sexuality, divorce, cultural conflict, youth, feminism or the role of the veil and the burka can be reflected anew.

It is in matters like these that female Muslim characters are presented in terms of the representations of the self, their joyfulness, their sadness and grief, their loyalty, betrayals they encounter and many more their attributes of identity building as such which itself is shown as a permanent process.

The concept of hybridity can hereby often be found in the attempt to find and to describe a whole in the sense of a complete personality. However, when deconstructed by author, reader or narrative circumstances this notion of an entity is in fact a patchwork of smaller pieces of identities.

Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane (2003) is a good example here because Ali places this basic condition in Nazneen, her main character, when she presents her as a 'British Muslim' whose basic question is: Am I a British Muslim or a Muslim in Britain? Here the Muslim part is outweighted by the local condition of Great Britain and the setting of London as the postcolonial city.

To sum it up again: The hybrid condition of female Muslim characters after 9/11 definitely has become more difficult but critics should be careful to draw a clear cut pre - and post 9/11 line in Muslim women's fiction simply because things are much more complicated.

3. Outlook

Any critical reflection of contemporary female Muslim writing must keep in mind that the basis of Muslim writing must be looked upon from its basis which lies in Arab, Oriental and Asian literature as well as in colonial and post-colonial writing. It is this (hybrid) span between East and West which can often be found in the tensions Muslim characters (and especially female Muslim characters) have to endure. This - let me call it double approach- to Muslim writing does, however, offer the chance to use the literature in a manifold way simply because it offers a wide range of character description or a flexible use of the plot.

9/11 by now has not only been used as a negative narrative element since many Muslim novelists take it up as a chance. It has, however, made Muslim existence and its description

more complex to narrate.

The traditional narrative element of 'otherness' which has governed Muslim writing for a long time has now been criticised by matters of 'diversity', 'flexibility' or 'hybridity' the last being the most influential parameter .

At present many female Muslim characters (and their male counterparts as well) struggle against traditional postcolonial structures, ongoing effects of imperialism and above all globalization forces. It is here where many Muslim women question their background of belonging, their nationality, their history and Islam in a more radical way since globalization is experienced as a threat and chance alike.

The 'hybrid' which can still be considered to be the most influential of these forces was first shown as a dilemma, then as a chance. A chance not only to find Bhabha's 'Third space' (some sort of compromise between Muslim existence and life in the West) but rather as a chance to display the flexibility in this hybrid existence where the hybrid condition is presented as a flexible condition which oscillates between East and West, between Islam and the West.

It is exactly here where writer and female character have to make their way, an enterprise which makes female Muslim writing one of the most striking forms of narration in contemporary English speaking literature. The aims of many female Muslim writers can be seen in the attempt to discuss an existing marginalization of women and to criticise their stereotyped literary presentation. The traditional traps of Muslim women -Islam and Islamic gender role- are taken up and used as chances to clear classical images of the female. So to speak many female Muslim writers try to take out their characters from the images as victims and escapees. The new generation of novelists (such as Monica Ali, Fadia Faquir, Leila Abouleila, Tahmima Anam) thus -slowly but steadily- manage to present deeply rooted literary topics such as love, hate, jealousy, passion and sexuality from a Muslim side. It is here where in the long run another well known topic -the description of the experience of a sensual encounter between the male and the female- can be discussed anew thus also tearing down stereotypes of a stifled sexuality.

4. Literature

Aftab, Tahera (ed.). 2008. Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women: An Annotated Bibliography and Research Guide. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Ancellin, Katherine. 2009. Hybrid Identities of Characters in Muslim women fiction past 9/11. Internet Bibliography.

Armstrong, Karen. 2014. Fields of Blood. Religion and History of Violence. London: The Bodley Head.

Ashur, Radwa et al, 2008. Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999. New York: American University in Cairo Press.

Badran, Margot /Mariam Cooke (eds.). 2004. Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bradley, Arthur/Andrew Tate. 2010. The new atheist novel. Fiction, philosophy and polemic after 9/11.London (et al): Continuum.

Haddad, Yvonne et al (ed.).2006. Muslim Women in America. The Challenge of Muslim Identity Today. Oxford: OUP.

Hermansen, Marcia. 2011. Literature and Muslim women. Internet Bibliography.