Us/Them–Our Values/Their Values

Representations of Islam and Modern Enlightenment in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction in English

Abstract

The binaries of Us/Them–our values/their values, broadly define the existing polarisation between the West and Islam. The purpose of this study is to analyse these binaries as well as representations of Islam in Nadeem Aslam’s The Wasted Vigil, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire and Uzma Aslam Khan’s The Geometry of God. Three fundamental areas analysed from these fictions are: Islam and radicalism; secularism, feminism and Islam; Islam, reason and modern enlightenment. In each case, however, the representation of Islam is starkly scant, political and Eurocentric. Islam is primarily seen in connection with Talibanisation, “Jihadism”, while its egalitarian aspects remain thoroughly subdued in the fictions. Thus, the knowledge and images in The Wasted Vigil and Home Fire generate a particular kind of ideological representation of Islam which clashes with the secular, liberal and democratic West. It also analyses Islam,
reason and modern enlightenment in The Geometry of God. The Islam presented in this fiction is an ideologically closed system, strictly orthodox, averse to modernism and rationality. Modern enlightenment, on the other hand, represents the positivists’ acceptance of knowledge, education and rationalism. Thus Islam, reason and enlightenment are in a state of perpetual conflict. Furthermore, Khan also tends to construct an ideological disparity and collision between evolution and creationism. It will be argued that, in all cases, fiction restricts Islam to conservatism, irrationalism
and orthodoxy, denying the progressive historical connections between Islam and modern science. The study applies Lacanian Dialectics to debate these issues. Lacan’s dialectic, unlike the Hegelian triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, projects a permanent state of collision between opposing world views. It also explicates that how we present ourselves is always subject to the interpretation of others.

Keywords: Pakistani fiction in English; Islamic fundamentalism, Lacanian dialectics, modern enlightenment