Liberalism and Islam in Contemporary Global Literature
Post-9/11 interdisciplinary scholarship has considered questions of Islamophobia, Islam’s incompatibility with the democracy, Muslims as either ‘victims’ or ‘perpetrators’, or Muslims responding or adapting to the Muslim demonization in and outside the Muslim world. But there is little to no scholarship on how Islam in everyday life shapes or is shaped by western liberalism in post-9/11 global fiction. To that effect, this panel aims to understand the complicated relationship between liberalism and Islam through contemporary Muslim literature. It also seeks to understand the ways in which contemporary fiction and its depiction of “acceptable” Islam have Orientalized Muslims in a post-9/11 economy.