Believing and Belonging

It is not mere colonialism or primacy of the English language as such which underpin the flourishing of English literary writings by Diaspora Muslims in Britain, though both of them as well as the emergence of younger Muslim generation offer a pertinent context. Long after the generation of Muslim pioneers of the East India Company’s era such as Sheikh/Sake Deen Muhammad or the eminent intellectuals of post-1857 phase such as Muhammad Iqbal, Syed Ameer Ali, Attiya Faizi and Sir Fazl-i Husain, the contemporary generations are multi-disciplinary and well represented in fiction, media, academia, arts and some critical studies. Muslim writings, including several in theology, history and geopolitics, are predominantly neither couched in apologia nor defensive; instead, in several cases, they attempt a serious dialogue at the various levels. Falling beyond the clichéd cultural clash, or self-abnegation, several new works especially in fiction go beyond the kind of unilateralism that Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi or Monica Ali have depicted through a rather uncritiqued chest-beating. Of course, this new generation of writers focus on similar issues of identity, gender, generation gap, political Islam, domestic violence and racism with their characters putting up heroic resistance against odds, which may stem from numerous directions....