Abstract
In our contemporary era of transnationalism, the issue of
identity has assume unprecedented significance and scope. In this paper,
I intend to discuss the complexities and nuances of the Muslim identity in
the postcolonial literary discourses. One of the basic contentions of the
paper is to find some pattern in the transnational and transcultural
diversity presently characterizing the Muslim identity discourses. Hence,
this paper is a plea to discover some kind of literary and discursive
sharedness in the contemporary postcolonial Muslim writings. It has
been observed that at this point in time the Muslim identity in not only
subject to myriad influences, it is also a topic of heated and passionate
debates. In fiction, memoirs, travel writing, media and cultural
narratives, the issue of Muslim identity is invested with all kinds of
representations ranging from uncouth explosive-bearing terrorists to
friendly and sociable people. It has also been shown that the Orientalist
legacy, far from being dead, is being given new lease on life by the
highly ‘constructed’ and ‘worked over’ images of Muslims in the
Western media. The large Muslim diasporic populations settled in the
European countries are specifically bearing the brunt of such
stereotypical depictions built by media persons, political commentators,
analysts and ‘cultural experts’. Faced with this mighty discursive
onslaught, the Muslim writers, novelists, poets, intellectuals have been
responding variedly and with considerably mixed motives: acceptance,
rejection, rectification, resistance, etc.
Dr. Jamil Asghar. (2016) Re-envisioning the Question of Postcolonial Muslim Identity: Challenges and Opportunities, Journal of Research ( Humanities), Volume LII, Issue 1.
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