Popular Testimonial Literature by American Cultural Conservatives of Arab or Muslim Descent: Narrating the Self, Translating (an)Other

Abstract

Bridgette Gabrielle, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, and Wafa Sultan, American writers of Arab or Muslim descent, have written testimonial narratives. They, I contend, take up the role of ethnographers or cultural insiders and produce highly problematic, yet popular, works which, neither purely literary nor solely political, allow them to play on their target audience’s expectations by performing as ethnic Americans. Yet, they manipulate their readers into believing that ethnic diversity and cultural and religious plurality are dangerous. In their testimonial narratives, they therefore imagine the United States as a white Judeo-Christian nation, thus erasing all pluralities, multi-ethnic diversity, and multicultural bodies whose rich fabric they make. Although their narratives marginalize Arab and Muslim Americans, their ultimate target is American multiculturalism.

Key Words:

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Eurocentrism
• Islamophobia
• Multiculturalism
• Testimonial Muslim/Arab American Autobiographies

Notes

1. Ali became a US citizen on April 25, 2013.

2. N. Awad (April 8, 2014) Letter to Frederick M. Lawrence, Electronic Mail, p. 1. Also see K. Hansen et al. (April 6, 2014) Letter to Frederick M. Lawrence Concerning Ayaan Hirsi Ali, p. 2.

3. In Heretic, Ali uses the opposition to Brandeis University’s decision to honor her as a starting discussion point. See Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2015) Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (New York: Harper), Introduction. Kindle file.

4. S. Mahmood (2011) Religion, Feminism, and Empire: The New Ambassadors of Islamophobia, in: L. M. Alcoff & J. D. Caputo (eds) Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), p. 83.

5. K. Grewal (2012) Reclaiming the Voice of the Third World Woman, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 14(4), p. 571.

6. S. Sorgun (2011) Like ‘hair sneaking from beneath the scarf’: Contemporary Immigrant Muslim Women Novelists Speak of Gender, Immigration, and Islam (PhD thesis, Northern Illinois University) Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, p. 6.

7. D. Sanders (2012) The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (New York: Vintage Books), p. 6.

8. These four American women writers are joined not only by other women but also by male writers who likewise are of Arab or Muslim descent. Three of the names I am familiar with are Walid Shoebat, Zuhdi Jasser, and Mosab Hassan Yousef. Although the men—especially Jasser who wrote A Battle for the Soul of Islam: A Muslim American Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith and Yousef, who published the autobiography Son of Hamas and is the star of the documentary The Green Prince—have garnered enough attention, the reception of their work is not as strong as that of the women’s. For this reason, I focus here on works by Ali, Gabrielle, Darwish, and Sultan.

9. R. Pérez-Peña & T. Vega (2014) Brandeis Cancels Plan to Give Honorary Degree to

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Critic of Islam, The New York Times, April 8, 2014.

10. M. Emerson (2014) Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, America: The National Catholic Review, April 11, 2014.

11. Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007) The Trouble is the West: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, Immigration, Civil Liberties, and the Fate of the West, Interview by Rogier Van Bakel, Reason.

12. Mahmood, Religion, Feminism, and Empire, p. 83.

13. S. Sheehi (2011) Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press), chapter 3, Kindle File.

14. Ali, Heretic, Introduction.

15. M. C. Taylor (2007) After God (Chicago: University of Chicago), p. 258.

16. Taylor, After God, p. 258.

17. Ibid.

18. G. Gugelberger & M. Kearney (1991) Voices for the Voiceless: Testimonial Literature in

Latin America, Latin American Perspectives, 18(3), p. 4.

19. L. Gilmore (1994) Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Female Self Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), p. ix.

20. K. Grewal (2012) Reclaiming the Voice of the Third World Woman, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 14(4), p. 582.

21. Ali, Nomad, p. 187.

22. Grewal, Reclaiming the Voice, pp. 580–587.

23. Ibid., p. 585.

24. Mahmood, Religion, Feminism, and Empire, p. 79.

25. Ibid., 79.

26. N. Gana (2008) Introduction: Race, Islam, and the Task of Muslim and Arab American Writing, PMLA 123 (5), pp. 1577–1578.

27. A. Amireh (1996) Publishing in the West: Problems and Prospects for Arab Women Writers, Al Jadid, 2(10). Available at: www.aljadid.com/

28. Gana, Introduction: Race, Islam, p. 1578.

29. Mahmood, Religion, Feminism, p. 79.

30. I locate these four ethnographic rules in the nineteenth century, although some of them were still in use in the twentieth century among practitioners of ethnography. I have modeled these four rules after Laura Nader, who points out that her graduate experience at Harvard University in the 1950s left her with a strong realization: ‘I understood that an unstated consensus had already been long established concerning what ethnographic work should be.’ Nader adds that certain unstated expectations were enforced and they included the following: ‘we were to work in non-Western societies, write about them as if they were bounded entities, ignore power politics which included colonial and imperial presence, ignore similarities between “us and them,” [and] deplore nineteenth-century unilineal evolutionism and exceptionalism but still practice it.’ See L. Nader (2012) Culture and Dignity: Dialogues between the Middle East and the West (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell), p. 53.

31. I. Jusová (2008) Hirsi Ali and van Gogh’s Submission: Reinforcing the Islam vs. Women Binary, Women’s Studies International Forum, 31, p.150.

32. Ali, Nomad, p. xv.

33. Ibid., p. xiv.

34. A. H. Ali (2006) The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, trans. by Jane Brown (New York: Free Press), p. 5.

35. B. Bawer (2006) While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (New York: Doubleday), p. 2.

36. B. Gabrielle (2006) Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (New York: St. Martin’s Press), p. xii.

37. A. H. Ali (2007) Infidel (New York: Free Press), p. xvi.

38. Ali, Infidel, p. 72.

39. Ibid., p. 7.

40. Ibid., p. 60.

41. D. Ahmad (2009) Not Yet Beyond the Veil: Muslim Women in American Popular Literature, Social Text, 99(2), p. 107.

42. Ali, The Caged Virgin, p. 5.

43. N. Darwish (2006) Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (New York: Penguin Group), pp. 110–111.

44. Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel, p. 110.

45. Ibid., p. 33.

46. Ibid.

47. Ali, Infidel, p. 61.

48. P. Abraham (Spring 2011) The Winged Life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Michigan Quarterly Review 50(2), p. 300.

49. Abraham, The Winged Life, p. 301.

50. S. Tovual (1999) Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Bloomington: iUniverse), p. 51.

51. Quoted in R. H. Shultz & A. J. Dew (2006) Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 67.

52. A. A. Ahmida (2009) The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization, and Resistance, 2nd ed. (New York: State University of New York Press), p. 118.

53. W. Sultan (2009) A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out against the Evils of Islam (New York: St. Martin’s Press), p. 243.

54. Sultan, A God Who Hates, p. 10.

55. Ali, Nomad, p. 247.

56. N. Mezvinsky (2011) Islam and Muslims as Seen by the Christian Zionists, in: T. Y. Ismael & A. Rippen (eds) Islam in the Eyes of the West: Images and Realities in an Age of Terror (New York: Routledge), p. 46.

57. Mezvinsky, Islam and Muslims, p. 46.

58. Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel, p. 244.

59. Ibid., p. 246.

60. Ibid., p. 251.

61. Ali, Infidel, 72.

62. Bawer, While Europe Slept, p. 20.

63. Ibid.

64. Sanders, The Myth, pp. 76–77.

65. R. D. Putnam & D. E. Campbell (2012) American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster), p. 151.

66. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (February 2008) Report on U.S. Religious Landscape Survey—Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic, p. 37.

67. Ibid.

68. N. Schaefer Riley (2013) Till Death Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming

America (Oxford: Oxford Univesrity Press), p. 150.

69. Riley, Till Death Do Us Part, p. 14.

70. Ibid., p. 13.

71. Ali, Nomad, p. 242.

72. Ibid., pp. 259–260.

73. W. Sollors (1986) Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and descent in American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 244.

74. Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity, p. 245.