The Muslim Experience - Book Report/Review Example

The Muslim experience This report offers a comparison between the immigrant experience as portrayed in two novels, “Minaret” by Leila Aboulela and “Maps for lost lovers” by Nadeem Aslam. The subject matter of both these books are Muslim women living in London and details their experiences as members of a minority community living in a foreign town. The following report differentiates the experiences of the Muslim women in either book. All of them suffer the characteristic identity crisis resulting from the clash of cultures and the pressures of adapting to a new culture; however in Najwa’s case the strangeness of the alien experience results in a reaffirmation of her Muslim identity, with an uplifting and positive outcome. In the book “Maps for Lost lovers”, the migrant experience is symbolized by the adoption of foreign values in a manner that bring the destructive aspects of their native religion upon them. Synopsis of “Minaret”: Minaret commences in Khartoum in north Sudan where the protagonist Najwa is the daughter of a senior Government official and a student at a prestigious university. She lives a comfortable life as the daughter of a prominent Muslim man, but prefers the Western lifestyle, including Western music and clothing. She follows the devout, traditional Muslim practices including making donations to the poor, but it’s only on the surface rather than being motivated from within – the hijab is merely a dress form she is obliged to wear rather than being donned as an outward expression of her religion. While in college, she falls in love with a radical Muslim student named Anwar, who openly expresses his contempt for traditional Islamic practices and even goes so far as to deride Najwa’s father in print. When a coup occurs in the country, Najwa’s father is arrested and the rest of the family flee to London. Her brother becomes a drug addict, stabs a policeman and received a long prison sentence. Her mother becomes ill and suffers for a long time before she dies. Najwa meanwhile, finds that another coup had displaced Anwar to London and the couple begin a sexual relationship. In an attempt to cope with her new found poverty and exile in a strange land, Najwa adopts the hijab and re-discovers it from an entirely new perspective. Rather than being a derided and rather unfashionable piece of clothing, it begins to spell security, peace and anonymity to her. She soon realizes however that Anwar has no intention of marrying her and finds the strength to give him up, while also taking on work as a maid in the homes of rich people. She begins to gain a completely different perspective of the hijab as well as her religion and becomes a devout Muslim towards the end of the book. Synopsis of “The Lost Lovers”: This is the story of a Pakistani couple, Jugnu and Chanda who live in London and the story is told from the perspective of Jugnu’s older brother Shamas, who is a very anglicized Pakistani living in London. The starting point of the story is the disappearance of the two people, who were killed because they were cohabiting. Shamas and his wife Kaukab live in London with their two children and as the novel commences, they contact Chanda’s family to try and find out what could have happened to the young couple. The chilling aspect of the story is the underlying subtext of the story which suggests that Chanda’s radical Islamic brothers could have been the cause of the young couple being murdered as an honour killing. The story is an exploration of Islam, representing characters who range along different levels of the Muslim spectrum, i.e., from Chanda’s radical brothers who follow the letter of Islam to the law and killed the couple, while Shamas supports a more tolerant perspective of sexuality, choosing to adopt the English viewpoint. Shamas is a mild mannered poet whose views are like a bridge between two extremes, i.e., the rigid rules of Islamic society vis a vis the more tolerant, easy going views of British society on sexuality. But his decency and innate sense of fairness does not prove to be adequate to counteract the more radical views of his wife, children and Chanda’s family. Shamas’ wife Kaukab is the opposite of her husband in her religious views; as per her view, Jugnu and Chanda living in an illicit relationship without being married is a sin grievous enough under Islamic law to be punished in the cruellest way, i.e., with death. The harshness of Islamic law also shows up in the lives of her three adult children as well; especially in the case of her daughter Suraya, whose husband was able to divorce her in an instant when he was drunk, with the ease of an oral declaration, as available under Islamic law. Comparison of the two novels: The notion of migrancy has been held to refer not just to the displacement of individuals or a race of people but to a state of displacement t hat affects human kind in general. As Sharma(2001) states, while the experience of migrancy could be universal and abstract on some level, yet individuals tend to cross them differently and are not all migrants in the same way. The protagonist of “Minaret” is Najwa, originally a north Sudanese woman from a wealthy Muslim family who faces poverty and isolation as a part of the migrant experience. The women in “The Lost Lovers” do not face issues of poverty as a part of their migrant experience; rather they suffer because of their attempt to cross over the taboos inflicted by their own culture. While different groups of migrants from third world countries belong to different regional and ethnic groups, the religion of Islam is often singled out as the target for discrimination, because there is a tendency to associate migrant believers with an invasion of foreigners who espouse radically different values, which are detrimental to those that exist within the host culture (Shadid and Koningsveld ,67). This in the first instance, prejudices the native population against the immigrants, making their migrant experience a difficult one. Furthermore, migration itself is a difficult process that can lead to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and adjustment problems (Blair, 2000). The characteristic issues associated with migration include a separation from the home country, metamorphoses in habits and livelihood, love and death (Sharma, 2001). Yet another important issue arising in the context of migrancy and exile from the homeland is the question of language acquisition; since migrants are not familiar with the local language, they have problems in communication. This is not a major issue for Najwa who is already conversant with English and has also been visiting London earlier. But for the characters in “The Lost Lovers”, such as Kaukab and Suraiya, who are locked into their own community and have little or no interaction with people in the host country, the lack of knowledge of the language poses a significant barrier in communication and only locks them further into their own community. The major issue associated with the migrant experience is separation from the native land and the development of an identity crisis. Najwa’s experience is the identity crisis associated with the immigrant experience that leads to a reaffirmation of her roots, while in “Maps for Lovers”, the experience of exile from their homeland only highlights the horrors of their native culture and religion, i.e., Islam. The protagonists in “Maps for Lost Lovers” are Jugnu and Chanda, lovers who were killed by their family in an “honour” killing, because they dared to live out of wedlock and this was anathema to the Muslim culture. In this story, Chanda’s experience in exile leads her to experiment with the values of the host culture, i.e, living in a cohabitation relationship rather than marrying, which proves to have disastrous consequences. The two stories thus present two experiences of the migrant experience which are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum. Najwa’s migrant experience leads to a reunion with her Muslim heritage that is predominantly fulfilling and satisfying for her, while the migrant experiences of Chanda and characters such as Kaukab and Suraiya are horrifying and debilitating. At first from Najwa’s perspective, the transition in her status from a member of a wealthy family in Sudan to a poor maid cleaning the homes of rich people in London is humiliating. She expresses her sentiments as she enters a flat that she is just about to clean: "Ive come down in the world. Ive slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isnt much room to move. Most of the time Im used to it ... I accept my sentence and do not brood or look back." (Phillips, 2005). She views her life as a maid in London as a “sentence” or some kind of punishment. This exemplifies the views of Blair (2000) about the depression and mental anxiety that are associated with migrant life, which could be sparked off by age, unemployment and a lack of education. In Najwa’s case, her migrant experience is characterized by feelings of shame, humiliation and anxiety because of her lowered status in London as compared to her status in Sudan. Forced to flee to London after the coup in her country, Najwa is pushed to the brink of an identity crisis, because she is suddenly uprooted from her home culture and pushed into a life without money in an entirely different country with a different religion and a different lifestyle. Her experiences are therefore similar to the immigrant experience of separation from the native culture and the feeling of alienation arising out of making the necessary adjustments to a new culture. This identity crisis leads to Najwa finding some comfort and fulfillment in reaffirming her Muslim identity. Her favorable view of the Western view and lifestyle is eroded little by little as unfavorable events occur in her life. For one thing, seeing London as a member of a rich Sudanese family with a flat in London is quite different from being poor and helpless in the same city. As she loses members of her family one by one and struggles to cope with her expenses being forced to resort to getting a job as a maid, her rosy picture of western life is challenged because the harsh realities do not match up to those rosy dreams. It is a hard fall down a ladder of pride and Najwa is forced to become more humble and in the process, move closer to her religion. This may be noted for example, in her attitude towards the hijab – her disillusionment with her lover Anwar playing a significant role in influencing her changing attitude. Anwar is contemptuous of Islamic views and derides the outward symbols of the religion, such as the wearing of the hijab. He is in favor of Western views and ideals; hence when he also arrives in London after a coup in Sudan, he gets in touch with Najwa and they enter into a sexual relationship. Najwa is in love with Anwar, but her sexual relationship does not culminate in marriage; rather it soon became apparent to her that Anwar does not intend to marry her at all. Najwa is then forced to consider the differences between Anwar, who claims to live by the purportedly “good” Western values and other Muslim men who are strict adherents of Islam. Najwa comes to the conclusion that “these men Anwar condemned as narrow-minded and bigoted ... were tender and protective towards their wives. Anwar was clever but he would never be tender and protective." (Phillips, 2005). This clearly demonstrates how being thrust into an alien culture tends to create a greater attachment to the native vulture in a migrant. Najwa’s disillusionment with Anwar also fuels her disillusionment with Western ideals and drives her closer to the other side, i.e., towards Islam. While the hijab earlier represented restriction and limitation, with the passage of time, it begins to represent a protective veil behind which she is able to hide away from the trials of her life to find some peace and protection. As opposed to Najwa’s migrant experience, which reawakens in her, a love of her native culture, the migrant experience of the women in “The Lost Lovers” is an accentuation of the solitude and loneliness as well as the feeling of isolation that immigrants feel within a host country. Najwa’s experience may be differentiated from that of Chanda, living in the locality of Dasht-e-tanhaii or the desert of solitude – an apt name symbolizing the feelings of separation and homesickness that migrants feel. This name aptly describes the migrant experience of women such as Kaukab who never emerge from the rigidity and restrictions of Islamic culture, but continue to carry them into a foreign country as well. The two texts therefore differentiate the migrant experience as positive in the case of Najwa and negative in the case of “The Lost Lovers”. The latter only heightens the isolation that migrants feel, which leads them to cling even harder to the practices of their native culture. When living in a foreign country, a migrant’s native culture appears more attractive and they fight harder in order to adhere to them and ensure that the practices are continued. This may be noted in the experience of the woman Kaukab who has no sympathy for the dead woman Chanda, because she dared to have a sexual relationship with her lover without marrying him and this was anathema to the Muslim culture. The same need to adhere to Islamic laws also means that her son in law is able to divorce her daughter Suraiya in a drunken fit through an oral declaration. In contrast to Najwa’s experience, where being exiled from her homeland draws her closer to her roots, Kaukab in “The Lost Lovers” is an example of the mental extremes that migrants suffer, including depression and anxiety. Chanda is subjected to death, while Suraiya is divorced by her husband through mere oral utterances in accordance with the laws of the native culture. Since these migrants are now in a different culture where there is more freedom, they could have been drawn into the foreign way of life; however by virtue of being in exile from their homeland, they appear to feel the need to remind themselves of their roots by enforcing the external observances and practices of their culture. Rather than condemning the acts of murder and an oral, three minute divorce as horrific, especially when they occur in a country such as Britain where there are a multitude of laws to support human rights and freedoms, Kaukab argues vociferously and vehemently in their support. Despite any religious justification that could be offered for the actions of Chanda’s brothers in killing the couple, the bottom line is that the crime of murder was committed, with two people being killed for engaging in a consensual act which essentially involved only themselves and did not significantly harm anyone else. It was not merely a gross invasion into the lives of the two lovers, it was also a violation of values such as respect for life and tolerance, which religion should promote. Through Kaukab’s support for the murder on the grounds that it was in accordance with Islamic law, her migrant experience suggests that her views have not progressed at all after her entry into Britain; rather the isolation and alien-ness experienced by these migrants pushes them closer into their own culture and people. In conclusion therefore, it appears that as compared to Najwa’s experience, where her identity crisis prompts her to seek a return to her roots in a positive fashion, Kaukab’s affirmation of her Muslim identity is a negative one because it favors and supports the destructive elements of her religion. While Najwa’s experience is uplifting, Kaukab’s experience is regressive because it supports the injustice meted out to Chanda and Suraya under Islamic law. In a Western civilization where mass pressure and the group mentality was not really existent, it would have been easy for Kaukab to condemn the killings without suffering any adverse consequences. But her choice to support injustice indicates her adherence to the negative and fanatical elements of Islamic law. It may also be noted that Chanda’s attempt to tackle her identity crisis by adopting some of the elements of the new culture, i.e., by adopting the sexual lifestyle of her new home country, turn out to be destructive because she is murdered on the grounds that it is an “honour killing”. In a similar manner, despite having recourse to all the justice that is possible in Britain, the rigid adherence to Islamic law means that Suraiya’s experience is also destructive because her husband is able to divorce her on a whim merely by getting drunk. The experience of all these migrants suggests that the alien-ness and isolation of being in exile in a foreign country is exacerbated to the point where their need to preserve their identity becomes so compulsive as to make it a negative one. References: Aboulela, Leila, 2005. “Minaret”, Bloomsbury Aslam, Nadeen, 2006. “Maps for lost lovers”, Vintage Books. Blair, R.G., 2000. “Risk factors associated with PTSD and major depression among Cambodian refugees in Utah”, Health and Social Work, 25(1): 23-30 Shadid, W.A.R. and Koningsveld, P. Sj Van, “Intercultural relations and religious authorities: Muslims in the European Union”, Peeters Publishers. Sharma, Shailaja, 2001. “Salman Rushdie – the ambivalence of migrancy –Critical essay”, Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 2001; Retrieved May 1, 2010 from: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_4_47/ai_91653352/pg_2/?tag=content;col1 Read More