2001-2026: Twenty five years of framing 9/11 from a Muslim perspective

An overview

Matthias Dickert

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9783389168721
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Scientific Essay from the year 2025 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, University of Marburg (Marburger Zentrum für Kanada-Studien), language: English, abstract: The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 marked a historical, political and religious event which has changed the world during the last two decades in many ways. The events around that date automatically transformed the global geo-political scenario. Being such a traumatic attack there is no doubt that it will change the world in the future as well, both in the Western and the Islamic world. Soon after the fall of the Twin Towers critics and Western novelists picked up their work to understand and cover up the events of that day and many critics talk about the birth of new types of novels such as Ground Zero Fiction, the 9/11 Novel or the Post- 9/11 Novel. Writers with a Muslim background started their work later. The dealing with the terror attacks then included this Muslim perspective but it also gave birth to books for children and brought about a renaissance of the graphic novel such as Art Spiegelman's "In the Shadow of No Towers" (2004) or Giannina Braschi's "United States of Banana" (2011). This new kind of literature in most cases turned out to be a representation of the trauma and feelings of people who witnessed this event or who heard about it. It is a form of writing which talks about suffering, pain, the loss of the American Dream, the damage to Western lifestyle, culture and economy and the renaissance and importance of religion. So to speak literature about 9/11widened the literary horizon to provide a platform of human anguish, pain and suffering on all sides involved. It is a new form of writing which includes narratives and counternarratives and thus helps to open another chapter in the relationship between East and West. The new perspectives on cultural, political or religious representation brought new reflections on English fiction in general and showed how this event moulded and counfounded between the relationships of various religious and national identities. Writers with a Muslim background soon developed a counter-narrative to the neo-imperialistic discourse of a traditional misrepresentation of Muslims in general. They also tried (and still try) to construct race, religion, and ethnicity in the wake of a post-9/11 politics which painted a negative image of Muslims. Down the last twenty-five years most Muslim writers reflected matters such as pain, loss, guilt, trauma, the complexities of emotional, cultural and political repercussions, confusion, disorientation and fragmentation in society from their perspective.