Muslim Narratives and the Discourse of English (review)

A fascinating and rich group of literary narratives are brought together in Muslim Narratives and the Discourse of English. Some of the authors whose works are treated here are well known, including those by Booker-prize nominees Abdelrazak Gurnah and Ahdaf Soueif and a former winner of this same prize, the now-famous Salman Rushdie. Works by these authors together with those of Fatima Mernissi, Nuruddin Farah, and M.G. Vassanji, as well as several less well-known authors like Che Husna Azhari, Adib Khan, and Ahmed Ali are also included. This short study proposes that these literary works should be read together as "Muslim narratives" and offers interpretations of them as such.

The book is divided into eight chapters, most of which focus on reading works by one author, though several chapters read two or more texts together under a theme such as exilic contexts or women's autobiographies. A full three chapters focus specifically on women's writing. Malak is at his best in the most compelling chapter, "Crisis Reading / Reading Crisis: The Polemics of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses." In this thoughtful exposition on the "Rushdie affair," Malak demonstrates a sensitivity to the nuances of the terms of the debate over this controversial book.

The author defines Muslim Narratives as a noble quest from the beginning, stating that he was motivated to write it by an "aching search for the voices that articulate the poverty of the disadvantaged and marginalized" (2). After connecting the status of Muslim authors in English to this subject position, he then goes on to claim that this work is so important because these authors "project the culture and civilization of Islam from within" (2). This is one of the first indications of the major problem of the study. A fixed and reified definition of Islam and Muslims underpins Muslim Narratives. As this example shows, the book asserts that there is such a clearly defined thing as "Islam" that one is either "inside" or "outside" of. Moreover, though Malak is well aware that the community of Muslims is broad and diverse—encompassing most of the globe and a range of cultures, languages, traditions, and beliefs—this multiplicity is collapsed rather than enhanced by studying these texts and authors through the lens of Islam in this way. Thus, though the work neither claims that all Muslims in all places at all times are the same, nor that Muslim narratives are predetermined by the birth or bloodline of the author, the study is delimited by equally faulty notions of identity.

Such rigid categories trap Muslim Narratives into making exaggerated statements that undermine what the book tries to accomplish. On more than one occasion, for example, Muslims are claimed to have unified beliefs. For example, what definition of Muslim allows Malak to state confidently, "It is a well-known fact that all Muslims consider the Qur'an the primordial source for spiritual, social, and legal reference" (55)?! All Muslims? Does this include Muslims by culture but not religion? How is this "source" defined, treated, and understood differently by different Muslims? What of those who may doubt aspects of their faith? In another example, Malak states that there is a symbolism which a mosque "usually evokes" for a Muslim (85). Certainly there may be some common understanding among Muslims of what mosques are and represent, but how can a literary critic assume that the symbol of the mosque should evoke the same thing in more than a billion Muslims? Though clearly Malak meant to do quite the opposite with this book—and he succeeds to some extent through the brilliantly diverse array of textual examples he includes in the study—he nevertheless in the end reinforces the well-worn Orientalist cliché that it is only through Islam as a religion and civilization that we can understand Muslim people and cultures. The privileging of Islam over all other categories of analysis, whether to denigrate or to praise...