Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East since 1967

Afterword

180 Afterword Despite the defeat of Arab nationalist projects and the resurgence of political Islam, this resurgence remains the least dominant theme in literature since 1967. In an article entitled “The Faith of Islam in Modern Arabic Fiction,” Trevor Le Gassick notes that there is “a striking absence of advocacy of Islamic values” in the works of Arab intellectuals and writers who “have been out of touch with the current mood of their co-religionists” (1988, 97). The marginalization of the religious dimension can be attributed to the fact that the majority of writers and intellectuals continue to retain their nationalist, secularist, progressive views that regard religion as belonging to the past and, therefore, unequipped to solve the complex social and political problems in the area. These writers see a strong complicity between Islamist groups and Arab regimes in the suppression of freedoms and the use of intellectuals as scapegoats to mend an unstable and unpredictable relation between Arab states and Islamic groups. Over the past three decades, smear campaigns have targeted many Arab intellectuals.Writers,academics,andjournalistshavebeenintimidated,attacked, incarcerated, and murdered for their opinions. For instance, in 1992, the Egyptian columnist Faraj Fouda was murdered by extremists, and in 1989 Nobel Prize–winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in an attack by Islamists, not to mention the systematic killings of intellectuals in Lebanon following the withdrawal of the Syrian army in 2005. Other measures aimed at intellectuals , writers, and artists include accusations of blasphemy, lawsuits condemning their literary and artistic works, and confiscation of their books in an attempt to silence them, alienate them from average Arabs, and force them to submit to the dominant ideology. Many Arab intellectuals view Islamists with suspicion and regard them as agents of tyranny and violence. When Nasr Hamid Abu-Zeid, the Egyptian Afterword | 181 university professor and scholar, was accused of apostasy and forced to separate from his wife, a statement of support by a group of Arab intellectuals appeared in the Lebanese journal Al-Adab, attacking extremists and referring to them as “forces of darkness” and “imams of ignorance” who, with the support of “illegitimate and defeated regimes,” battle against freedom, thought, learning, and progress (1993, 95). While such collective support is prevalent in Lebanon, other Arab writers live in fear of state persecution. Fearing retaliation, they exercise self-discipline when it comes to political and religious issues, which they refrain from writing about or use tropes, allusions, and double meaning to avoid getting into trouble. On the whole, writers have steered clear of dealing with men as Muslim individuals since any attempt to historicize and socialize Islam is faced with hostility by Islamists whose approach is “textual [rather] than historical or social” (Abu-Rabi‘ 2004, 9). Al-Amir’s The Day of Judgment is one of the few books from this era that focuses on a religious personality, a moderate sheikh, who is in direct confrontation with militant Islamic groups who want to occupy his mosque in an attempt to liberate it (2003a, 162) and impose their brand of Islam. However, while the novel details the sheikh’s personal ideas and inner feelings and desires, the Islamists remain abstract, enigmatic figures. Nevertheless, many reviews of The Day of Judgment applauded Al-Amir’s courage “to walk this minefield” (Al-‘Umayr 2002, 31), her explicit attacks on militant Islam, and her partiality for a secular form of life. Other novels either overlook the religious dimension altogether or, like Sharara’s If the Days Turn to Dusk, refer to Islam peripherally or as a last resort for Arab men after a life of disappointment with the modern, secularist, autocratic Arab state. In reaction to a concept of ummah that encompasses the entire Muslim world without taking into consideration “the major historical, political, and cultural differences between the many countries that in fact make up the Muslim world” (Abu-Rabi‘ 2004, 159), many writers recoil from a monolithic Islamic agenda (although they had embraced a united Arab nation) to dwell upon their private experiences within their local settings. In addition to the Palestinian problem that promotes a pan-Arab ideology and continues to feature in the fiction (particularly in Palestinian and Jordanian literature), indigenous local experiences have taken precedence in literature to ward off a unitary and timeless Muslim agenda. Among the topics these writers deal with are the Lebanese war, modernization 182 | Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab...