Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader's Guide

3. Exploring Islam(s) in America: Mohja Kahf

32 3 Exploring Islam(s) in America Mohja Kahf In the late 1990s, the distinguished scholar Mohja Kahf turned to creative writing, publishing the well-received poetry collection Letters from Scheherazad. A few years later, in 2006, Kahf released her first novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, which quickly went on to become one of the most critically and commercially successful Arab American novels. Before the publication of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, most Arab American novelists treated the culture and practice of Islam either tangentially or intermittently. In Kahf’s novel, however, Islam is a primary theme, one that she explores as a highly diverse set of beliefs and customs. Kahf’s focus on Islam does not mean that she ignores issues of ethnicity. In fact, she represents several ethnic communities in addition to Arab Americans . The characters in the novel include an Orthodox Jew, an Arab Christian, and an American-born Hindu of South Asian origin. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, then, is a layered exploration of modern, multicultural America. One of the novel’s effects is to complicate readers’ perceptions of what elements compose the Muslim American community theologically and culturally. Kahf is one of the first American writers to explore fictively the practitioners of conservative Islam in the United States. Her scholarly background as an expert in the representations of Muslim women and Arabic literature is evident in the novel’s structure and its many interpersonal conflicts. Kahf’s main characters grow into more acceptant social agents while retaining their core religious devoutness. The novel’s main character is Khadra Shamy, an American born to Syrian immigrant parents, Wajdy and Ebtihaj. Told from Khadra’s point of view, the novel begins with an adult Khadra returning to the community in which she was Exploring Islam(s) in America | 33 raised on the outskirts of Indianapolis, a small town called Simmonsville. Her family’s life in Simmonsville revolves around the Dawah Center, an Islamic education and outreach office where Wajdy works as a coordinator for a low salary. As soon as she enters Indiana, Khadra begins flashing back to both happy and unhappy childhood memories involving her close African American friends, the siblings Hakim and Hanifa, and their collective dealings with local racists and xenophobes. The story then transitions into a traditional linear narrative charting Khadra’s life as she grows from a child in Indiana into the person we meet as the novel opens, a successful journalist based in Philadelphia. Kahf’s writing style is usually straightforward, with a detailed use of description . At times, her prose can be playful or preachy, though the narrator’s recognition of these qualities tempers them and prevents the novel’s tone from becoming didactic. At other times, the prose is sardonic or even self-deprecating, a style that moderates the fundamental seriousness of the novel’s subject-matter. Kahf is able to explore complex and sometimes controversial material with an inviting and engaging approach because of the amiable prose style she employs, including: • Racism as a layered phenomenon, not only directed at American Muslims by non-Muslims, but existing within the Muslim community itself, particularly toward African Americans by immigrants; • Crossing ethnic and religious boundaries, as exemplified by the interfaith and intercultural relationships that develop in the novel; • A sometimes competing and sometimes harmonious relationship between conservative and moderate Muslims; • Gender issues in Muslim communities; and • The numerous conflicts that exist around the process of Muslim acculturation into the United States. Racism and xenophobia enter into the story almost immediately, setting the tone for their thematic importance. Khadra’s older brother, Eyad, gets into a shouting match with another neighborhood kid, Brian, who responds to Eyad’s admonition to stop his bullying by proclaiming, “Fuck you, raghead.”1 Readers soon learn that the apple does not fall far from the tree. “ACCUSING MY CHILDREN —OFF MY PORCH—BACK WHERE YOU PEOPLE CAME FROM!” Brian’s father, Vaughn, screams at Wajdy after Wajdy calmly knocks on his neighbor’s door (6–7). Kahf’s inclusion of this sort of inhospitality is a common move in much of the American literature that focuses on immigration, although 34 | M o d e r n A r a b A m e r i c a n F i c t i o n different authors, of course, explore such inhospitality in different ways. As the literary critic...