“The Image of Islam in the Post 9/11 Era in John Updike’s Terrorist” | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Article 2, Volume 72, Issue 1, October 2020, Pages 3-20 PDF (443.85 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2020.161947 | ||
| Author | ||
| Ahmed Hassan Mohamed Suliman Suliman | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This research paper is an attempt to explore the image of Islam manifested in the post 9/11 American literary contexts, an image that revives in the Orientalist studies that intellectually emerged as Neo-Orientalism. In their discourses, many neo-Orientalists overemphasize a distorted image of Islam as an anti-modern, anti-democratic, and anti-Western ideology that is based on antagonism and terrorism against the non-Muslim Western ‘Other’. Consequently, Muslims are distortedly depicted as terrorists who hold a Jihadist agenda against Westerners generally and Americans particularly. These neo-Orientalist misrepresentations of Islam and Muslim have highly affected the post 9/11 American literary canon. Published in 2006, John Updike’s Terrorist is considered one of the remarkable novels that centers on examining the nature of Islam and the features of Muslims, within the framework of neo-Orientalism. Pivoting around Edward Said’s anti-Orientalist approach, this study aims at offering a critical reading of the depiction of Islam and Muslims in Updike’s Terrorist. Discussion principally depends on analyzing different quotations from the novel, which represent the nature of Islam and the temperaments of Muslims. The study has concluded that Updike, in Terrorist, misrepresents Islam as an intolerant, antagonistic, anti-Other, and violent religion that constitutes an existentialist threat to the United States | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Islam; Muslims; Edward Said’s Orientalism; Neo-Orientalism; Updike’s Terrorist | ||
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