Diasporic Muslim Fiction Does (Not) Exist : De/Constructing British and US-American Muslim Narratives
In the aftermath of September 11, numerous publications on Islam and Muslims emerged that sought to capture the (rediscovered) Muslim Other in Europe and the United States. In their literary works, diasporic Muslim authors present the complexity of Muslim life. This dissertation examines four British Muslim narratives (Hanif Kureishi's Black Album, Robin Yassin-Kassab's The Road from Damascus, Leila Aboulela's The Translator, and Diriye Osman's Fairytales for Lost Children) and four American-Muslim narratives (Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account, Michael Muhammad Knight's Taqwacores, Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, and Sulayman X aka Nick Wilgus's Bilal's Bread). The selected works not only challenge Euro-American normative notions of religion, nation, and secularism, they also question and defy prevailing Muslim views on gender and sexuality.