The Alternative Muslim Identity

Zehra

Very well written. Surprised to see some criticism to it.

At the end of the day, you belong to your family, your village, your river and your mountain.

This faith & nationality are hairy-fairy stuff, all in the air and imagination. Pick & choose what you like.

nhk

PS: I still believe Irshad Manji is much more honest than MWU and PMU.

F.Zehra,

Pragmatic and logical.

Ofcourse I agree with rozaiba and ferozk. The decision should be made after a lot of deliberation and then stuck to.

I too was confronted with the same choice. In the year 2000 (around the same time as you) I questioned the utility of Muslim identity. Since I never fancied living in the US, the identity I chose willfully was Pakistani and Pakistani alone (Club Human also appealed to me but I had become aware of the numerous nuances involved and couldn`t afford to be idealistic). To do justice to that I moved back.

The question of identity ofcourse has nothing to do with my own personal religious beliefs.

-YLH

Re: # 31

To do justice to that I moved back.

.........You were probably thrown out.

Re: # 33

No actually I wasn`t. I actually had a valid visa till recently and will be travelling back and forth to the United States... early next year. As a matter of fact I got my new MRP only today.

But nice try...

Ana ji: Bhabian Therory of third space is based on what Bhabis of Ranjha told him before he left for Heer`s home town to graze buffalos and cows of her father. Bhabis basically told him that you have no sapce in ``our`` home and your father`s home is no more, so go find some space of your own - which in Bhabi`s view was Third Space for Ranjha.

Bhabian Theory of Third Space applies to beyond Ranjha and Jhang Sial. e.g. I am living in third space called America...so is Samina ji. other two spaces, one of ours and one of our parents became too small for us so we moved to the Third Space.

I believe by mentioning this theory in this context, Samina ji is telling Fatima ji to appreciate the third space rather than bad mouth it but I could be wrong, because sometimes it is very hard to translate Samina ji`s words into humanily understandable languages.
:)

naved

Someone should figure out (they must already have) why some people almost relish the constant enrichment of their identities, while others dread its very prospect.

samina:

agreed. now to see what she will do with jhumpa lahiri`s the namesake.

my reference to ``anthony gonsalves`` was along the lines of words that make no sense on the surface and relating it to how what i posted may still not make sense here `on the surface`.

back to zehra`s article though, and her declarations. . . i think ``intentions`` were good, and again, digging deeper than what`s at the surface is perhaps where this is, but as more than one person has pointed out, clarity would have helped this somewhat. and her footnotes, in my opinion, are classic zehra ``in yo face`` but again, this might be mistaken for arrogance, and be at dissonance with her ``intentions.``

and i think my contribution here is done. . . for now.

I think we are getting more and more confused and lost in an effort to search for the right ‘category’ that we can associate ourselves with. Categorizing is a mere effort to search for right association and relationship. Unfortunately, associations and relationships in general, change all the time. If our identities are related with these relationships, then our identities are changing too. This may very well explain the cause for the identity crises so common these days.

It seems, we humans, have a pressing need to associate ourselves with a group for the sole purpose of realizing an identity for ourselves. It’s a Rule, I guess. Once we have done that, we start feeling comfortable that there are people who are ‘like’ minded and believe in what ‘we’ believe, those who do not, are ‘others’. The ‘others’ translate into oppositions, enemies, and what not. This process happens around us all the time. From a group of four gathered in a social family meeting, to rulers who are forming rules for countries. So who is right? What is right? It’s all relative. Is it really so important to associate ourselves, one way or the other? Maybe so…but what if we try to break this rule? Is it possible?

Here’s a thought. As an individual I’d like to retain my individuality. My religion is a very personal matter, and I want to be respected for what I am, and what I think. In the same token, I should respect others for their individuality and beliefs. I should share my opinions and respect others’. I should either agree or agree to disagree…it’s a harmonious relationship. Isn’t that simple? But apparently it is not. It seems that we ‘must’ enforce our thoughts on others, or once joined the ‘group’; we must protect the collective interest and promote the ideology. We are made to feel ‘threatened’ from ‘others’. Interestingly, this results in an action towards ‘others’ that ends up as a reaction from ‘others’ towards us, and the adversarial process continues. Sometimes these energies are manipulated by a few to serve their vested interests and results in tragedies…..at others, these movements become real success stories and actually form popular belief systems.

In a nutshell, our identity can only be defined and determined by our personal belief system. Associating with ‘categories’ may be an easy way to determine an identity, but may not be a well founded one.

Yes America, or any other place in the world, can be our home too. My concept of a home is where we find peace, love, respect, and security. Our home is where our individuality is preserved and our values flourish. Our home is where we cherish our dignity and relationships. Be it the confines of four walls, or defined by the boundaries of a country. It is an entity within itself that must be preserved else we become part of a cesspool that can only breed hate and enmity towards each other.

Naved

ana,

apparently film writers are a LOT smarter than they are allowed to let on in their films according to Mehta`s Maximum City....but I think Mira Nair is really engaging these issues, particularly if Vanity Fair is any indication of how smart Mira really, really is...

thanks samina. :)

after posting all that, what comes to mind is amitabh bachchan`s hilarious dialogues during the song, ``my name is anthony gonsalves.``

those who remember it will know what i`m talking about. :)

Ana,

Well my thesis and doctoral work concerns itself with the creation of alterity and third spaces, an ideological site of fluid and overlapping identities for postcolonial scholarship. Suleri, Satrapi and Moaveni (as well as Amitava Kumar and Suketu Mehta) use the genre of the memoir but have rewritten the genre itself so that their texts become the discourse of several political, historical and personal identities. Because the binaries of the ``western`` or the ``eastern`` genre cannot provide this location of in betweenness/shifting alterity, third space critiques the notion of `authenticity` by its very mediated and mediating existence.

okay. . .

i remember when i bought my copy of homi bhabha`s ``the location of culture,`` i felt myself drowning in his words, and was relieved that i could actually make sense out of more than i thought i could. ironically, when i was getting ready to take my MA comps. in english literature and i told my post-colonial lit. examiner that i was reading bhabha, she told me to forget bhabha for the time being. i ended up forgetting bhabha for a long while. :)) every so often though bhabha pops up as a reminder not to dismiss him completely.

i`m posting this from another site, since i no longer have ``the location of culture`` with me, and so the explanation is from a benjamin graves. and he explains it rather well, i think. better than i could at least. so apologies in advance for the cut n` paste rather than explaining something ``theoretical`` meself.

Whereas Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak uses deconstruction as a critical tool to rethink the oversimplified binary opposition of ``colonizer`` and ``colonized`` and to question the methodological assumptions of postcolonial theorists (herself included), Homi K. Bhabha uses deconstruction to dismantle the false opposition of ``theory`` and ``political practice``--a distinction reminiscent in many ways of Marx`s distinction between superstructure and base. Bhabha advocates a model of liminality that perhaps dramatizes the interstitial space between theory and practice--a liminal space that does not separate but rather mediates their mutual exchange and relative meanings. Bhabha argues (perhaps in defense of himself) that European theoretical frameworks are not necessarily intellectual constructs that ignore the political situation of the dispossessed Third World. A critic cannot choose between ``politics`` and ``theory`` because the two are mutually reciprocal; ``theory,`` an instrument of ideology, narrates and in so doing creates the ``political`` circumstance of Third World oppression. In other words, much as he treats the the ``liminal`` space between national constituencies, Bhabha is interested in juxtaposing ``politics`` and ``theory`` in order to find where they overlap and how the tension between them in turn produces their hybridity:

The pact of interpretation is never simply an act of communication between the I and the You designated in the statement. The production of meaning requires that these two places be mobilized in the passage through a Third Space, which represents both the general conditions of language and the specific implication of the utterance in a performative and institutional strategy of which it canot `in itself` be conscious. (The Location of Culture 36)

According to Bhabha, the ``third space``--another way of framing the liminal--is an ambivalent, hybrid space that is written into existence. In other words, what mediates between theory and politics is writing--not merely theoretical discourse but cultural exercises such as novels, cinema, music. As Jacques Derrida suggests in Writing and Differance, writing does not passively record social ``realities`` but in fact precedes them and gives them meaning through a recognition of the differences between signs within textual systems. Bhabha, then, re-appropriates Derrida`s notion of differance to suggest cultural difference and its representation and negotiation in the form of writing.

from ``the commitment to theory`` benjamin graves, brown university.

if you want to wade through more of this, here is the site:

http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/poldiscourse/bhabha/bhabha3.html

in regards to #20. . . samina, koi na. i`m searching for the explanation meself. don`t worry yourself about it. i`ll bring it here as you believe it`s pertinent, and then you can elaborate.

a.

i`m afraid arjun isn`t going to understand what the `bhabian theory of the third space` is here. neither will some of the other interactors.

samina, would you care to explain what that is exactly? :) (without quoting bhabha if possible. i`ve found that translations are sometimes needed for what he has to say)

Arjun,

hey...no one said that what Fatima Zehra is in the process of developing and sorting out is easy...but some of the ideas being discussed in this piece seem to refer to the Bhabian theory of the ``third space``.

Fatima Zehra,

I hope that you understand that I am showing my respect for your work by asking the questions I did. I`m starting to think of Manji`s work in terms of James Baldwin`s stances in relation with Black/Jewish/Anglo Muslim/Christian communities....we went over one of his essays on Richard Wright`s Native Son, and some of his points are blazingly relevant.