The Black Album - Essay Example

Some authors writing about Islam, like Alex Haley, come from Christian backgrounds. Other authors, like Amitav Ghosh, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishie, and Salmon Rushdie, come from Islamic backgrounds. The difference in the portrayal is the authors experiences. It is important to explore the Muslim character in the modern age in the light of current international and local political events. This will be achieved by having a review of some of literary texts written in the 20th and 21st century.

In order to understand Islam in literature, an analysis by comparing and contrasting various literary texts will be undertaken. In this study I will focus on how selected writers, authors, and thinkers interpret the relationship between Muslims and the West, particularly as the land of immigration for Muslims from the Middle and Far East.. These texts talk about many themes such as Muslims communities, the separation of these communities from the outside Western world, the relationship between Muslims and the people from the West, the radical points of view some of Muslims in the west posses, the ‘crises of belonging’, and the search for an identity that seem to affect many of the characters in these texts.

The influence of the Islamic terrorist minority will be shown. The Western world has fixated on the terrorist and violent aspect of Muslims since before 9/11. An example provided will be Malcolm X. Malcolm X did not believe in the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King (a Christian). Although Malcolm X intended the violence to be in self defence, Islam became equal to violence in his writings. The way that these writers characterize people of different mentalities among the Muslims, the fairness of their characterization, the attitudes and the changes in them, the description of these characters as being similar or different, and the way these texts regard the