Globalization, US Imperialism and Fundamentalism: A Study of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

Mohsin Hamid's novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007, engages with the complex issues of Islam and the West, fundamentalism and America's War on Terror. As a “counterhistory” to post-9/11 Islamophobia, the novel contests common notions of terror as an unreasonable ideology of retribution and redemption by exposing the trajectories of imperialism. Analyzing The Reluctant Fundamentalist from the political perspective of a 9/11 novel, this paper aims to create counterintuitive rethinking on the Clash of Civilizations theory and to elucidate the linkages between new American imperialism, fundamentalism, globalization and terrorism.