Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora : Secularism, Religion, Representations

Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the ‘South Asian Muslim’ have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Here we find the first book-length critical analysis of these representations of Muslims from South Asia and its diaspora in literature, the media, culture and cinema. Contributors contextualize these depictions against the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam, and also against cultural responses to earlier crises on the subcontinent such as Partition (1947), the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhya riots , the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the Kashmir conflict. Offering a comparative approach, the book explores connections between artists’ generic experimentalism and their interpretations of life as Muslims in South Asia and its diaspora, exploring literary and popular fiction, memoir, poetry, news media, and film. The collection highlights the diversity of representations of Muslims and the range of approaches to questions of Muslim religious and cultural identity, as well as secular discourse. Essays by leading scholars in the field highlight the significant role that literature, film, and other cultural products such as music can play in opening up space for complex reflections on Muslim identities and cultures, and how such imaginative cultural forms can enable us to rethink secularism and religion. Surveying a broad range of up-to-date writing and cultural production, this concise and pioneering critical analysis of representations of South Asian Muslims will be of interest to students and academics of a variety of subjects including Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Contemporary Politics, Migration History, Film studies, and Cultural Studies. Cover 1 Title Page 8 Copyright Page 9 Dedication 10 Table of Contents 12 Acknowledgements 14 Notes on contributors 15 Introduction: contexts and texts 18 Part I Surveying the field: comparative approaches 32 1 The making of a Muslim 34 2 Representations of young Muslims in contemporary British South Asian fiction 47 3 Before and beyond the nation: South Asian and Maghrebi Muslim women’s fiction 59 Part II Syncretism, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and secularism 74 4 Restoring the narration: South Asian Anglophone literature and Al-Andalus 76 5 Music, secularism, and South Asian fiction: Muslim culture and minority identities in Shashi Deshpande’s Small Remedies 87 6 ‘A Shrine of Words’: the politics and poetics of space in Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without a Post Office 103 7 Hamlet in paradise: the politics of procrastination in Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator 114 Part III Currents within South Asian Islam 130 8 Liberalizing Islam through the Bildungsroman: Ed Husain’s The Islamist 132 9 Enchanted realms, sceptical perspectives: Salman Rushdie’s recent fiction 144 10 Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim: Bangladeshi Islam, secularism, and the Tablighi Jamaat 159 Part IV Representations, stereotypes, Islamophobia 172 11 Saving Pakistan from brown men: Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan’s last best hope for democracy 174 12 Queer South Asian Muslims: the ethnic closet and its secular limits 189 13 After 9/11: Islamophobia in Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows 202 References 215 Index 230 Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the 'South Asian Muslim' have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and in particular since the events of September 11, 2001.