Repositioning sexuality of spatially mobile Muslim women in Kamila Shamsie’s broken verses

ABSTRACT

By drawing on the concept of performatively created third space, we examine how spatially mobile Muslim women in Broken Verses negotiate and challenge heterosexual identity in Pakistan. We argue that the women expand the meanings of national identity through practical hybridity and alternating between feminist reinterpretations of the Quran, cultural norms and universalist individualist consciousness – constructing a third space subjectivity. We foreground third space epistemology to read the gender and sexual subjectivity of mobile Muslim women situated in the heteronationalist setting which is influenced by the emergence of conservative religiosity and increased social and spatial mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexuality
• Muslim women
• mobility
• third space
• Kamila Shamsie

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term lesbian carries Western overtones. Therefore, we mostly use the term same-sex instead of lesbian to refer to the sexual relationships between females.

2 Mobile means those who travel beyond their traditional gendered spaces through various means and get exposure of multiple discourses and opportunities which sharpen their imagination, increase their knowledge and confidence and reshape their thinking of things.

3 These are different forms of mobility.

4 Women Action Forum was made by well mobile elite class women in Pakistan to fight against the newly passed laws by the then military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq (1978–1988). The laws had made gender-biased definitions of fornication, adultery and rape and imposed such restrictions and punishments which marginalized women further.

5 Similar to that in Christianity, Nikah in Islam is a religious ritual which is mandatory to perform before conjugal relationships between a heterogeneous couple. It renders religious legitimacy to the relationship. Consent of the couple is mandatory for such relationship. However, patriarchy has exploited this religious obligation to its favor to impose culturally imbued suppressive decisions of parents and relatives on women by wedding them off through arranged marriages in which, often, women’s consent is undervalued or even neglected and set aside.

6 Jihad is an Islamic term which means to ‘struggle’ in the way of God. The greatest type of jihad is to save one’s own self from indulging in immoral and unethical activities; the second greatest type is to struggle to establish a good Muslim society; and, in the hierarchy, the third one is to physically fight and defend against the enemies of Islam. The hierarchy of the types and their exegeses are controversial among the various religious schools of Islam.

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Notes on contributors

Muhammad Safdar

Muhammad Safdar is a lecturer at the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Management and Technology, Pakistan. He has a PhD in English (literature). His research on gender, sexuality, subjectivity and Muslimness has been published in peer reviewed international journals and books published by Routledge, Wiley and Palgrave Macmillan. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific.

Musarat Yasmin

Musarat Yasmin is an assistant Professor at the Department of English, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan. She has a PhD in Applied Linguistics and has published her research in prestigious peer-reviewed international journals. She has also worked with Routledge, Springer and De Gruyter as a reviewer. She is co-editor of Hayatian Journal of Linguistics and Literature.