A piety novel can reinforce Islamophobia by endorsing female submission.
Evidence
Recent attacks on Aboulela by critics such as Sadia Abbas and Waïl Hassan have focused on the pious passivity displayed by Minaret’s protagonist Najwa and the way the novel as a whole appears to endorse types of female renunciation and doctrinal orthodoxy favored by the stricter Salafi theology currently gaining ground in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. They cite approving comments made by the protagonist about sharia punishments and her desire to subjugate herself to protective males. Abbas in particular picks up on Saba Mahmood’s influential analysis of those orthodox Muslim women in Egypt’s dawa movement, for whom piety “is performative, behavioural and yet creative of subjectivity.” These insights can be applied to Najwa’s choice to renounce the secular satisfactions of romantic love and material independence in favor of subordination to religious norms. This position not only chooses submission over willed action in the world but also, in Aboulela, is dismissive of other modes of agency, such as feminism and Marxism, whose materialist focus dooms them as forever unsatisfactory to the woman of faith. Hassan sees Najwa’s choice as a complete disavowal of freedom and agency that plays into the hands of right-wing interpretations of Islam. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 475
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Directly relevant to distinguishing novels that contest vs. quietly reinforce Islamophobia — the reader’s hinge question. Contributes the insight that even Muslim-authored religion-positive fiction can play into right-wing readings when it depicts submission.
- DEFINE: Introduces Saba Mahmood’s performative/creative subjectivity model of piety as a lens for reading Muslim female protagonists.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the distinction between ‘creative subjectivity’ and ‘pious passivity’ offer a tool for reading how agency is depicted in Hamid and Naqvi?
- STORYSTEM: A protagonist who narrates her own renunciation of secular agency as chosen faith could be a compelling counterpoint to secular-liberal reader expectations — a genuine tension to dramatize.