Islam and Postcolonial Discourse

Purity and Hybridity

Esra Mirze Santesso, James McClung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317112563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Largely, though not exclusively, as a legacy of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic faith has become synonymous in many corners of the media and academia with violence, which many believe to be its primary mode of expression. The absence of a sophisticated recognition of the wide range of Islamic subjectivities within contemporary culture has created a void in which misinterpretations and hostilities thrive. Responding to the growing importance of religion, specifically Islam, as a cultural signifier in the formation of a postcolonial self, this multidisciplinary collection is organized around contested terms such as secularism, Islamopolitics, female identity, and Islamophobia. The overarching goal of the contributors is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the full range of experiences within Islam as well as the figure of the Muslim, thus enabling a new set of questions about religion's role in shaping postcolonial identity.

Part I
History of the Muslim other

1 Saracens in Middle English romance

Janice Hawes

Many stereotypes that Muslims face today have origins in earlier periods. Middle English romances, for instance, often depict Muslim (Saracen) figures who are villainous in their chaotic personalities, love of luxury, and “incorrect” worldview. Muslims become the Other against which medieval Christian European identity, including English Christian identity, is defined. The Middle English Period dates from the Norman French invasion (1066) until the advent of the printing press in Britain (late fifteenth century). The canon of Middle English romance is vast; Helaine Newstead lists 118 Middle English romances—not including works by Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower (13–6).¹ Scholars attempt with varied success to subdivide the romances, and A.D. Putter suggests the following categories: “Arthurian romances, homiletic romances, society romances, crusading romances, family romances, penitential romances, exemplary romances, [and] Charlemagne romances” (1). Many involve cultural encounters between Muslims and Christians, and as this study will illustrate, the same works may be placed in more than one category: romances that focus on the struggle of Charlemagne against Saracen forces, for example, can have homiletic qualities. In other words, romances often highlight the heroism of Christian knights by depicting them as saint-like beings fighting Muslim villains for heavenly justice on earth.

Complicating this categorization and having important implications for stereotypes are the venues in which many romances appear; manuscripts that include other works (including saints’ lives and chronicles) suggest that genre distinctions were not important for a medieval audience and that romances form “a complex network of relationships and similarities” (Putter 2). Current scholarship problematizes the traditional definition of medieval romance as “a narrative about knightly prowess and adventure, in verse or in prose, intended primarily for the entertainment of a listening audience” (Newstead 11). An important part of this debate includes the intended audience of these works. Putter identifies two camps of current discussion: 1) those who argue that Middle English romances were “improvised compositions of minstrels” that were “recited orally at feasts and festivals” and were “intended for the ears of ordinary folk” and 2) those who argue they were intended for “the newly literate classes,” mainly “the gentry and the prosperous middle class” (3). To justify each view, scholars point to repeated words and stock phrases that aided during oral delivery or to the evidence of “book” industries that developed (Putter 4–7). Significantly, both sides favor a less elite and more general audience. In turn, stereotypes of Muslims in these texts may reveal attitudes in medieval popular culture, suggesting that these works reflected and possibly influenced attitudes in larger audience circles than we associate with the court circles of more famous authors.²

The first Saracens in Middle English romance: King Horn

King Horn (thirteenth century) may be the oldest Middle English romance and the earliest representation of Muslims in this genre.³ With its repetition and folktale-like plot, the basic story may come from oral tradition: as a boy, Horn is displaced when Saracens invade England and kill his father. Set adrift more than once, the young boy has many adventures each time he lands, including encounters with more Saracens.⁴ These encounters, along with the possible oral origins of the tale, suggest that even in the earliest Middle English romance where Saracens appear, the image of the bloodthirsty anti-Christian villain existed.

Nevertheless, there has been intensive scholarly debate about the identity of these Saracens since Joseph Hall’s and George McKnight’s editions of King Horn that place “Suddene” in the south of England.⁵ Many scholars argue that these Saracens are “Danes” rather than Muslim invaders (cf. Battles 18–28). Historically, the Viking conquest of what would later be Britain and Ireland began about 865. Groups of Vikings began raids, invasions, and settlement, particularly in the northeastern area of England known as the Danelaw. Some Scandinavians eventually settled in peaceful co-existence with the English, while others continued to invade. The “Saracens” in King Horn may be memories of these Vikings.

They may also be allusions to the Muslim-controlled Iberian Peninsula, which had an important influence on the development of Europe, even in comparison to the Crusades.⁶ Dorothee Metlitzki calls the intellectual influence of the Crusades “puny” because “they helped to accelerate tendencies already at work in Sicily and Spain,” including an “aspiration to copy the comforts and luxuries of Oriental life, which indeed are richly depicted in medieval romance” (4, 5). Metlitzki emphasizes the importance of Muslim Sicily, noting trends that already existed because of Sicily’s ideal geographical location as the “center of Greek, Roman, Visigothic, Byzantine, and Arab civilization” (7). There is evidence of Arabic intellectual influence (Arabum studia) in ninth-century England with Walcher, prior of Malvern, and his interest in astronomy (Metlitzki 17). Even earlier are examples of books in Arabic in the pre-Norman Conquest library of York (destroyed by fire c. 1137) (Metlitzki 14–15). Robert of Ketton, an Englishman and first translator into English of the Qur’an for whom we have record, pursued his translations in Muslim Spain in the tenth century (Metlitzki 30). In his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Anglo-Saxon monk the Venerable Bede (d. 735) expresses concern about Muslim invaders of the Iberian Peninsula in his entry for 729, noting the dangers of the lues [plague/pestilence] of Saracens who are later punished for their perfidiae [faithlessness]. Many of the stereotypes of Muslim culture that appear in later medieval European texts may have had their origins in these earlier encounters and writings.

Scholars note that the word “Sarazin” was used in Middle English as “a general name for heathens of any sort,” and more specific use of the term “Saracen” to mean “Muslim” may be observed late in Middle English. The Middle English dictionary cites the use of the term to mean “Turk,” “Arab,” or “Moslem” from c. 1300 in the South English Legendary: Thomas Becket, compared to its use to mean a general “pagan” c. 1250 in St. Margaret of Antioch. In addition, the word is listed with the meaning “Dane” in King Horn specifically (“Sarasin(e)”).⁷ There is, in fact, no actual reference to the invaders’ homeland in King Horn. However, the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn (c. 1170), an English text written in French during the Anglo-Norman Period in England, cites places that would have been associated with Islam, including North Africa, Canaan, and Persia.⁸ In the earlier French chansons de geste [songs of deeds], which were imitated by many Anglo-Norman works such as The Romance of Horn, most “Saracens” come from this Islamic world. Such traditions of Islamic places were likely available to the author of the Middle English King Horn since the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn and the Middle English King Horn are analogues (Speed 372–73). English awareness of these Muslim conquests may well be reflected in this early Middle English romance.⁹

There are other clues in the text that these Saracens are not Viking invaders. In line 1333, a knight who is forced to convert refers to these invaders as “‘Sarazins blake.’” As Diane Speed notes, the wording in this text might well be figurative, marking them as the enemy, no matter their homeland or skin tone (580). In fact, these possible indications of skin color (and therefore the invaders’ homeland) are not developed in King Horn as in later Middle English romances. The most compelling argument Speed makes about the Saracens as Muslim invaders involves the religious animosity between the Christians and the Saracens. That these particular Saracens are driven by both secular motives (desire for land) and religious motives (desire to destroy Christianity) is evident by their actions upon conquest. When Horn’s father first encounters Saracens, he is told, “‘Thy lond folk we schulle slon, [shall slay] / And alle that Christ luveth upon’” (47–48). In addition to the killing of Christians, they add destruction of churches and religious artifacts:

The pains [pagans] come to londe [came to the land]

And neme hit in here honde [took possession of it]

That folc hi gunne quelle, [that folk they began to kill]

And churchen for to felled [and churches to destroy]. (63–66)

Speed argues that the Saracens in King Horn resemble stereotypes about Muslim invaders more than Vikings:

[T]he Scandinavians are never said to have intended to stamp out Christianity or impose their own religion on those whom they conquered; on the contrary, those who settled in England accepted Christianity with remarkable speed and were seen to do so. (585)

Whoever these invaders are, the shore is liminal space. As Steven Sobecki explains, it represents a place of “cultural interface” in which the Christians are associated with the land and the invaders are associated with the sea (82). For the hero’s identity as an English Christian nobleman to be established, generic villains of the sea may serve. However, the Vikings who actually invaded exhibited little interest in converting those they encountered, focusing more on land and wealth. Even in romances that emphasize religion, conquering land is often of central importance, particularly to identity creation, and Muslim villains are portrayed in many Middle English texts as desiring both conversion and conquest.

The Sege of Melayne and The Sowdane of Babylone

The next works I wish to consider are more clearly retellings of conflict with the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. Both The Sege of Melayne (hereafter The Siege of Milan) and The Romance of the Sowdane of Babylone (hereafter The Sultan of Babylon) are part of the Matter of France (the Carolingian cycle), medieval romances that depict Charlemagne’s struggle against Muslim invaders on which the earlier chansons de geste also focus.¹⁰ Thus, both of these texts represent a fossilization of Muslims as violent aggressors against European Christianity.

The Siege of Milan has no known source but is found in the British Museum manuscript Additional 31042.¹¹ Referred to as the London Thornton manuscript, it is one of two collections of medieval writings known to have been copied by Robert Thornton of Yorkshire. The British Museum manuscript dates from about 1450, though the poem itself was probably written in the second half of the fourteenth century. A member of the gentry rather than the aristocracy, Thornton arguably compiled his manuscripts with sacred history in mind (Johnston 160–62), illustrating a common focus of late medieval England. By the time of this text, an important part of being English was Christianity: religion and nascent nationality tied together. Using Foucault’s ideas about “instruments of inquisition, regulation, and discipline” common as developing western European nations forged their identities, Geraldine Heng discusses the thirteenth century as the start of the development of a sense of nationhood (137). Because they used these “instruments” of state observation and power, medieval European land control coalesced into the hands of fewer and fewer heads of state. In turn, this partition of land became more stable in the late medieval period, and some areas of late medieval Europe began to develop what we would recognize as national identity, including the use of religious identity to strengthen national identity. This is certainly true of England: Christianity in this poem is tied closely to European identity, and this is arguably the starting point for English identity.

The two key Christian figures in The Siege of Milan are Charlemagne and Bishop Turpin, both instruments of God. As Suzanne Akbari argues, the plot involves both “deeds of knights” and “hagiography” (22). This combination is not unusual in romance, but what makes this poem stand out is “that this community is not merely unified, but so full that it cannot accept any more members: here, incorporation in the body of Christ has a finite limit” (Akbari 23). Archbishop Turpin “is a miles Christi” [soldier of Christ] who “throws himself into the heat of battle more passionately than any knight” (Akbari 25). Thus, The Siege of Milan is particularly militant. “Alle Lumbardy” is destroyed at the beginning due to “hethen” men who destroy all “gaummes” [pleasures] (10, 12, 11). The sultan wars against Christianity “with wronge” (14). Recalling the Saracens of the earlier King Horn, the sultan has the rood and icon of Mary burned in “kirkes and abbayes” (25–29). Needless to say, the Christians take a dim view of the enemy, the “‘cursede Sarasenes’” (610), whom Charlemagne calls the “‘hethyn hownde’” (1318). While this is not unusual language in romance, coupled with the militant Christianity of Turpin, it emphasizes the “rightness” of Christianity over Saracen belief and culture.

Many scholars note that the “abuse” of the Virgin of which Turpin is guilty is just as violent as his religious fervor, and Turpin has been compared to a pagan (and Muslim) enemy renouncing his gods (Akbari 26). Upon hearing from Roland that the Saracens have killed many of their side, Turpin exclaims to the Virgin Mary, “‘[W]hare was thi myght / That thou lete thi men thus to dede be dight?’” [Where was your might that you allowed these men to be killed?] (547–48). Later he expresses confusion at the ways of Heaven: “‘Me ferlys of thy fare’” [I wonder at your ways] (552). As Patrick Geary has argued (and Akbari notes), however, such abuse of holy figures was not unheard of in the medieval period:

[I]f saints were quite capable of demanding their due and ready to strike [whoever] offended them, they also owed certain reciprocal obligations to their devotees, and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries neither clergy nor people hesitated to pressure, threaten and even physically abuse saints who shirked their duty. (117)¹²

Turpin’s actions illustrate that this is not so much a renouncement as a questioning. That Turpin remains true to his faith is evident by his sincere prayer to Mary and refusal to convert to Islam in lines 601–12. Unlike many of the Saracens depicted in romances, Turpin is unwavering in his belief. Such militant Christianity is linked to writings of the First a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figure
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART I History of the Muslim other
• PART II Secularism and Islamopolitics
• PART III Female agency and subversion
• PART IV Islamophobia
• PART V Postsecular re-thinking
• List of contributors
• Index