Writing Islam and Performing Faith in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret

Abstract

The novel Minaret (2005) by Sudanese-British writer Leila Aboulela offers an alternative view of Islam by way of its nuanced treatment of the often unaddressed question of faith and religious belief among Muslim women, notably immigrant Muslim women, struggling to cope with alienation and liminal existence in the west. This paper examines the literary representation of Islam and faith-based subjectivities in the novel, tracing the protagonist Najwa’s struggle to craft a simultaneously modern and religiously compliant subject hood. It looks into the connection between the performance of religious actions and the creation of a pious moralistic self to foreground the role of religion, especially Islam in the dynamics of migrant identity politics. As there is a resurgence of religion in the public sphere in present times, this enquiry can add to the study of religion as an indispensable category of analysis in contemporary identity politics. Drawing from the works of Saba Mahmood (2005) and Meredith Mc Guire (2008), this paper expands the understanding of piety, performativity and empowerment to locate agency beyond the binaries of subordination and resistance, in everyday practices of lived religion. The affirmation of faith and surrender to religious beliefs as depicted in the fiction of Aboulela and the centrality of Muslim religious identity in the lives of the female characters of the novel, I argue, attempt to challenge and redefine the western normative belief that religiosity is always a result of the imposition of external forces that are invariably oppressive or politically charged.