Literary and Non-literary Responses Towards 9/11

South Asia and Beyond

Nukhbah Taj Langah

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138363786
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429680755
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book presents a range of analytical responses towards 9/11 through a critical review of literary, non-literary and cultural representations. The contributors examine the ways in which this event has shaped and complicated the relationship between various national and religious identities in contemporary world history. Unlike earlier studies on the topic, this work reconciles both eclectic and pragmatic approaches by analyzing the stereotypes of nationhood and identities while also questioning theoretical concepts in the context of the latest political developments.

The chapters focus on discourses, themes, imagery and symbolism from across fiction and non-fiction, films, art, music, and political, literary and artistic movements. The volume addresses complexities arising within different local contexts (e.g., Hunza and state development); surveys broader frameworks in South Asia (representations of Muslims in Bollywood films); and gauges international impact (U.S. drone attacks in Islamic countries; treatment meted out to Muslims in Europe). It also connects these with relevant theories (e.g., Orientalism) and policy perspectives (e.g., Patriotic Act). The authors further discuss the consequences for minorities and marginalization, cultural relativism vs. ethnocentrism, the clash of civilizations, fundamentalism, Islamization and post-9/11 'Islamophobia'.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of South Asian literature, Islamic studies, literary criticism, political sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, those in the media and the general reader.

PART I

Post-9/11 clash of civilizations

1

THE DISCOURSE AFTER 9/11

Cultural relativism vs. ethnocentrism

Kamal ud Din

This chapter explores the conflict between individualistic North (European and North American countries) and the collectivist Muslim South (Muslim countries situated in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa) in the theoretical framework of cultural relativism. According to Alexandra Howson, cultural relativism is associated with a general tolerance and respect for difference, which refers to the idea that cultural context is critical to an understanding of people’s values, beliefs and practices (Howson 2009: 1). Alexandra Howson, in her article referring to Peter Winch, a philosopher concerned with logic, reality and language, argues that some concepts are consistently inexpressible among the languages of various cultures (they are incommensurable) and as a result, the idea of rationality cannot be defined using transcultural notions. ‘Indeed, different cultures have different criteria for rationality, that is, for making judgments about what is true, real or good’ (Howson 2009: 3).

This chapter also explores how, in the post-9/11 environment, the idea that the cultural values of the liberal North and conservative South are incompatible has become extremely antagonistic. To aggravate the situation, discourse in literature, media coverage, and theoretical and political discussions has focused on one issue – Islamic fundamentalist groups, which has served to create an image of Islam that is antithetic to Western conceptions of modernity, tolerance and rationality and which overlooks the essence of Islam, i.e., peace, universal brotherhood and inclusive culture. The perception of the general public in the West has been influenced by the clash of civilizations theory, popularly known as clash theory, according to which people who share the same religion or geography, such as Muslims in the South, also share the same culture and consciousness. Clash theorists try to paint Muslims all over the world as a monolithic group and then ‘pit them against each other under the assumption that their static “cultural values” are in opposition to their competitors’ (Raynor 2006: 2). However, literary responses to 9/11 engage with the oppositional tone of the cultural hegemonic language.

In general, 9/11 has changed the social, political and economic visions of the world and new ideas of culture and identity have emerged, replacing the concept of multiculturalism and a tolerant and inclusive society, the most cherished values of the Western democracies. In fact, 9/11 has situated terrorism at the center of everything; the life and culture of the world revolve around the cliché of terrorism. 9/11 spurred concerns for the daily life of elites and men of the street as well as global issues relating to politics, economy, religion and culture, bringing more attention to the idea of terrorist activity: thus it makes terrorism-related issues an ideal literary focus of study. Many literary outputs today echo post-9/11 situations in the context of ideas of terrorist activity. They cover all aspects of what happened to the World Trade Center and its repercussions on global life and culture. The literature produced after 9/11 illustrates numerous accounts ranging from eyewitness narratives of local writers, points of view of non-Americans and apprehension of Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the immigrant Muslim population in Europe and North America. The discourse in the works of post-9/11 literature differs according to the nationality, political and cultural allegiance of the writers, and ethnic identity or origin, which refers to a person’s inherited legacy. Instead of relativism, ethnocentrism becomes one of the salient features of the Western discourse. American and British writers like Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan depict Muslim cultures and traditions as barbaric, rigid and inhuman, whereas Anglophone writers from the Middle East and South Asia like Mohsin Hamid, Mohja Kahf and H. M. Naqvi tend to counterbalance the discourse of American and British writers.

Against this backdrop, this chapter argues that the conflict between the Western democracies and the Muslim world is neither political nor religious, but cultural. The discrepancies in the approach to life and culture create an unbridgeable gap between liberal individualistic North and traditional and collectivist Muslim South. For example, Americans and Europeans place great importance on individuality whereas Muslims and some Asian countries emphasize a collectivist approach in their cultures. Moreover, modern Western cultures comprise at least three dimensions uncongenial to so-called conservative ideas of Muslims: ‘a preference for secular rationality; the adoption of religious tolerance with accompanying tendencies toward relativism; and individualism’ (Marty and Appleby 1991: vii).

This cultural gulf between modern Western culture and Muslim culture is one of the discordant elements between Judeo-Christian and Muslim cultures. However, the reality is that the post-9/11 phase of globalization is the age of uncertainty, for unpredictable changes have taken place in accepted and well-defined ideologies. Their impacts can be felt across national boundaries, which has led to rapid changes and fluctuations in the daily life of people belonging to all regions.

The problematic nature of clash theories

9/11 has created such mistrust not only among individuals but also different cultural groups that everyone eyes another with suspicion. The condition nowadays is that ‘One cannot easily determine whether a person is what he/she “claims or appears to be or has been in the past”’ (Appadurai 2006: 139). The planes that crashed into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, the 7/7 bus bombings in 2005 in London, and one year earlier, the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam have become some of the causes of anti-Muslim sentiments and the widening fissure between Muslim and Western cultures.

The pre- and post-9/11 discourse of the clash theorists put forth the idea that a culture is attached to a state or government. However, this notion is erroneous because the interests and policies of a political party or a political system cannot represent or encompass the entirety of cultural values and traditions within the culture of that particular group as well as the cultures of other communities that share the same faith or religion. What is needed in the existing situation is to think of culture in terms that are both historical and non-territorial.

The majority of post-9/11 writers and commentators view this gap between Muslim and Western cultures using Huntington’s (1997) idea of the clash of civilizations. Huntington is of the opinion that the epoch in which ideologies such as neo-liberalism and communism clashed has ended, and that conflicts are expected to occur between civilizations with their specific culture and religion, such as Christianity and Islam. Moreover, Huntington’s idea of Islamic culture is erroneous for he does not make distinctions among the cultures of different Islamic countries that have idiosyncrasies of their own depending on the region, indigenous customs, traditions and superstitions. This diversity in cultures renders individual cultural characteristics to each country, nation, community and sometimes even individual members of a society. Critics, particularly the authorities on Middle Eastern studies, Islamic scholars and other people related to the study of Islamic law and society, have challenged the notion of a single harmonious and homogeneous Islamic culture. They draw attention to diverse cultures that are in practice among almost one billion Muslims living in diverse regions and climes all over the globe, such as Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Europe, and the ‘differences between Muslims who are radical or moderate, traditional or modern, conservative or liberal, hard-liner or revisionist’ (Norris and Inglehart 2002: 4). The idea of a uniform Muslim or Western culture is too naive a notion because of major cross-national differences in culture. For example, we can see the diversities in the Muslim cultures of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and South and South East Asia.

Treading the perfidious fault-line between the binaries of extremist and liberal, and us and them, Anglo-American theorists sound the false alarm of Islam and Muslim culture and civilization as potential threats to Judeo-Christian culture and civilization. Gabriele Marranci remarks, ‘I argue that Europe perceives Islam as a “transruptive” force that, through transculturation processes, might be able to challenge the alleged Judeo-Christian heritage of Europe’ (2004: 105). Dabashi, in his article referring to Huntington and Fukuyama, who claim that the West has won the ‘historical game’ and it is the age of civilizational conflict, writes about

the cultural assertiveness and challenges to the West that have come from Asia and from Islam. These have been the dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Islamic challenge is manifest in the pervasive cultural, social, and political resurgence of Islam in the Muslim world and the accompanying rejection of Western values and institutions.

(2004: 109)

In fact, the misrepresentation, misinterpretation and misunderstanding, as well as suspicion, of Islam and Muslim culture as transruptive have been the cause of animosity between two great civilizations and cultures. The antagonism between two cultures has disturbed the framework of human collaborations that link people across national boundaries. According to Fred Halliday,

The response to 9/11 on both sides has been, in essence, a rejection of universalism: of the belief, gradually built up over the 20th century, in shared moral and legal principles and in the ability of states and international bodies successfully to resolve conflicts through multilateral action.

(2004: para. 2)

The above discussion has indicated that Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations became very popular among the politicians and writers of the West after 9/11. They have been playing up this idea in their discourses, the tone of which was set by former American President George W. Bush who, in his discussion of the ‘War on Terror’ on 28 October 2005, drew a similarity between Islam and communism that had been a fear for American social, political and economic systems and cultural values: ‘The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century’ (Bush 2005: para. 19). In this discussion, President Bush seems to be voicing Huntington, who in 1993 came up with the theory that the period in which ideologies such as neo-liberalism and communism clashed has ended, and that conflicts are expected to occur between civilizations with their specific culture and religion, such as Christianity and Islam.

However, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart claim that the original thesis of Samuel Huntington assumed ‘that the primary cultural fault line between the West and Islam concerns government’ (Norris and Inglehart 2002: 3). According to them, Huntington overlooks ‘a stronger cultural divide based on issues of gender equality and sexual liberalization’ (ibid.). This false assumption by Huntington that the clash of civilizations is cultural yet the dividing line is political culture, not social culture, is challenged by ‘cohort analysis that suggests that as younger generations in the West have gradually become more liberal on these issues, this has generated a growing cultural gap, with Islamic nations remaining the most traditional societies in the world’ (ibid.: 15).

Hence, the core issue that divides the liberal West and traditional Muslim worlds is neither political values nor religious faith; rather it is the understanding of and approach to sex and gender issues as well as other cultural differences. As Norris and Inglehart as well as other critics have rightly pointed out, this conflict revolves ‘far more centrally around Eros than Demos’ (Norris and Inglehart 2002: 3). Martin Amis, a celebrated British writer, draws his readers’ attention to almost the same issue when he refers to the cultural difference between the Muslim youth of Pakistan and those of the Northern hemisphere (Amis 2006). He opines that the fault-line between the Western and Muslim cultures is ‘Eros’, not ‘Demos’. He illustrates his point of view by narrating the experience of his friend, a reporter and political man of letters who visited Peshawar, Pakistan just after 9/11 in mid-October 2001. He visited a market stall and began to ‘haggle over a batch of T-shirts bearing the likeness of Osama bin Laden’ (Amis 2006: para. 2) on sale right outside the mosque. The youth of Peshawar encircled Amis’s friend at once. He further adds a commentary and contrast that at this time of day, their coevals in the West spend their time and ease their frustration by eating and drinking heavily, dancing and having sex, even with strangers. He emphatically asserts to his readers that the difference in the culture is ‘Eros’, not politics or religion. He remarks, ‘These diversions were not available to the young men of Peshawar’ (Amis 2006: para. 2).

Norris and Inglehart object to Huntington’s theory and remark that in his clash thesis there are sharp cultural differences between the core political values common in societies sharing a Western Christian heritage – particularly those concerning representative democracy – and the beliefs common in the rest of the world, especially Islamic societies. For Huntington, the defining features of Western civilization include the separation of religious and secular authority, the rule of law and social pluralism, the parliamentary institutions of representative government, and the protection of individual rights and civil liberties as the buffer between citizens and the power of the state (Norris and Inglehart 2002). Huntington in his book remarks, ‘Individually almost none of these factors was unique to the West. The combination of them was, however, and this is what gave the West its distinctive quality’ (Huntington 1997: 72). But Huntington’s claim is that the strongest distinguishing characteristic of Western culture, the aspect which demarcates Western Christianity most clearly from the Muslim and Orthodox worlds, concerns the values associated with representative democracy. Norris and Inglehart also reason why Huntington assumes so by referring to Midlarsky’s opinion – this claim is given plausibility by the failure of electoral democracy to take root in most states in the Middle East and North Africa (Midlarsky 1998).

Norris and Inglehart draw readers’ attention to Huntington’s contention that important and long-standing differences in political values based on predominant religious cultures will lead to conflict between and within nation-states, with the most central problems of global politics arising from an ethnoreligious clash (Norris and Inglehart 2002). However, they also point out that it remains ambiguous whether Huntington is claiming that the core cleavage concerns Western democratic values versus the developing world, or whether the main contrast lies as a fault-line between the West and Islam, but the latter has been the primary popular interpretation of the thesis, and the one which has aroused the most heated debate.

Hence, it is well-nigh impossible to adopt the discourse in literature or politics, or religion, particularly in culture, that describes Islamic/Muslim culture as harmonious and based on fanaticism, jihad, narrow-mindedness, intolerance and rigid ideas. There will be complications and problems in working with cultural dimensions of conflict between the West and Muslim world if Western writers, critics and thinkers, as well as political leaders, assume the discourse and misinformation about Islam and Muslims furnished by the media and popular literature.

Culture, religion and post-9/11 terminology

Every culture is multi-layered, irrespective of religion, or region, or race and color. What one sees on the surface of Islamic culture or Muslim culture may not expose differences below the surface, because Islamic culture is not a uniform culture: it varies from people to people, region to region, and country to country. Allama Iqbal, in one of his lectures, remarked that Muslim culture is not rigid but elastic, not confining but liberating, not illogical but rational, as well as inclusive, for it has the provision to assimilate elements of the cultures of the areas where Muslims live their lives while observing the basic tenets of their faith. Moreover, he also asserts that it is humanistic in character (Iqbal 2013). However, the behavior of members of these diverse groups of Muslim culture, who may not conform to norms for individual or contextual reasons, does not reflect the cultural norms and values of Muslims as a whole. Thus, generalizations of cultures are not possible and there is no substitute for building re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Post-9/11 Clash of Civilizations
• Part II Post-9/11 Literary Genres Vs. Policies
• Part III Bollywood, Drones and Images
• Part IV Who Else is Marginalized?
• Conclusion
• Index