Rethinking Muslim narratives: Stereotypes reinforced or contested in recent genre fiction?

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the challenges British Muslim writers and publishers face in a largely secular literary marketplace and a society marked by Islamophobia. It explores these authors’ publication experiences, analysing examples from industry diversity initiatives and from conducting interviews with authors. Arguing that distorted representations strip Muslims of their complex humanity, while more nuanced portrayals can humanize them without resorting to stereotypes, we analyse the thrillers East of Hounslow (2017) by Khurrum Rahman and Take it Back (2019) by Kia Abdullah. The article provides unique insights into the publication tactics of Muslim-heritage writers while also demonstrating genre fiction’s potential as a powerful tool for promoting inclusive narratives and challenging stereotypes. It concludes that genre fiction’s popularity and accessibility can help expand readership beyond literary circles and provide a wider audience for diverse storytelling that might otherwise go unheard in mainstream publishing, thus contributing over time to a more inclusive literary landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Publishing
• diversity
• Muslims
• Islamophobia
• Khurrum Rahman
• Kia Abdullah

Introduction: Challenges for Muslim writers

When Great British Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain published The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters, ghostwritten by Ayisha Malik (Hussain 2017), with the HarperCollins imprint HQ, the novel immediately attracted controversy. Writing in The Guardian, Jenny Colgan (2017, n.p.) used Hussain’s fiction as a pretext for a critique of celebrity novels, complaining emotively about the “shelf space” it would occupy. Colgan’s review depicts two children: one sitting in a library reading, the other baking in a kitchen; one dreaming of being a writer, the other a baker. Colgan intimates that Hussain, by becoming both, deprives the other child of her authorial ambition. The publication of Hussain’s book is “greedy”, “another chance snatched away from that kid whose library is closing down” (n.p.). Joanne Harris (2017), in a blog post written to counter this review, states that Colgan is “a high-profile, well-established white author, begrudging a Muslim woman’s ‘shelf space’” in terms that “sound [ … ] not entirely unlike ‘foreigners stealing our jobs’” (n.p.; emphasis in original). Indeed, Colgan’s review unveiled other prejudices, including a hope that is unfulfilled for “insights into a culture I don’t understand as well as I’d like” (2017, n.p.). As this article discusses, such a demand for insights into an exotic otherness is burdensome for many writers of colour. It suggests that they are commentators for their race, having to educate white people about their own irremediably different culture.

Colgan’s review caused outrage: Nadiya Hussain, one of the few prominent Muslim women on British television, was essentially being told to stay in her cookery lane when each year white celebrities publish large numbers of books without censure. Meanwhile, her book was being criticized for not explaining Muslim culture well enough, reflecting how the industry evinces unconscious bias and places unfair expectations on writers of colour. Revealing widespread prejudices around what should and should not be published by whom, and who arrogates to themselves the right to judge, Colgan’s views provide a useful point of departure for our article and research. This concerns the challenges facing Muslim writers and their publishers, given the dominance of secularism and institutional racism in the mainstream literary marketplace. Considering both writers’ and publishers’ approaches to publishing careers and book marketing, the present article brings together analysis of the publication process for Muslim-heritage writers with close analysis of the growing body of British Muslim genre fiction. We argue that this significant growth highlights the increasing diversity of both readerships and authors. While literary fiction has long been established, the upsurge in pulp genres like romance fiction and chick lit suggests an increasing confidence among writers of Muslim heritage. Within this, the subgenre of romance fiction has begun to garner critical attention (see Newns 2018; Saleem 2021). Yet the increasingly visible crime thriller subgenre remains under-researched. Our article is underpinned by semi-structured hour-long telephone interviews with authors and publishers working in this area, who except in one case remain anonymous and are not quoted, but whose experiences and ideas inform our argument.

In 2004, the Arts Council of England produced In Full Colour, an investigation into diversity in the publishing industry (Kean 2004). Despite the increased visibility of writers of colour and the well-documented health of minority reading communities (Brouillette 2007, 57), publishing is a predominantly white, middle-class, and, increasingly, female world, although top positions continue to be occupied by men. Writers from former colonies, the global majority, and certain echelons of diasporic communities are gradually receiving greater recognition (as Man Booker Prize winners, for example). However, Bernardine Evaristo (2020, 4) notes that “those few famous names only serve to mask the paucity of our numbers in the industry”. Furthermore, Sarah Brouillette (2007, 58) observes that the nerve centres of production and consumption, as well as the economic benefits of book publishing, remain in major western cities. The In Full Colour report concluded that minorities were poorly represented in publishing, particularly in powerful editorial and managerial positions. Where they do break in, such outsiders disrupt the mainstream habitus (Bourdieu 1984, 1990, 52–65). As such, they have to be managed, domesticated, and contained.

In Full Colour was followed by Diversity in Publishing: Programme Evaluation (BOP Consulting 2008), which analysed the impact of the positive action initiatives emerging from In Full Colour, including the establishment of mentoring schemes, school and university outreach programmes, and a diversity network. Yet the 2008 report only tangentially framed the issue in terms of equality and social inclusion. Instead, it sought to “exploit opportunities in the market”; for example, by employing ethnic-minority publishers to encourage greater consumption by “a globalised [ … ] book-buying market” (7, 6).

Both reports neglected the crucial issue of religious identity, which is surprising in the post-9/11 era of oppressive counterterrorism legislation and fierce debates about Muslim integration. Diversity in Publishing apparently monitored those on the positive action programmes only through the familiar equal opportunities criteria of ethnic group and gender. It failed to ask about religious affiliation, unlike the 2001 Census, which had enquired about religion for the first time in its 150-year history (Hopkins and Gale 2009, 4). This suggests that the publishing industry draws on a secular foundation, even though religion has been intertwined with British race relations for much of the 20th century, especially from the 1980s onwards (Chambers 2015, xiii–xxiii). Recent census data pointing towards a shift to a more secular population helps to explain why religious identity has become a more visible strand in the complex tangle of 21st-century British race relations.¹

The publishing industry renewed its focus on diversity and representation following another report, Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place (Kean 2015). In addition to exposing a striking lack of diversity at managerial and editorial levels, this report showcased first-hand accounts from 60 writers of colour, as well as a larger survey of publishers and literary agents mostly from white backgrounds. Many of these respondents felt pressured into the production of exoticizing and stereotypical stories that conformed to the white, western gaze. Numerous articles about the need to make publishing more inclusive then appeared in major British news outlets. This led to the launch of new initiatives such as the Penguin Write Now Live scheme, the 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, and the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. The first two aim to find new writers from marginalized and under-represented groups, whereas the Jhalak Prize recognizes and rewards writers of colour. Some publishers have also attempted to widen participation in their workspaces.²

Despite these progressive currents, the Writing The Future report itself was damning of the industry. Kean’s work has been useful for comprehending how literature in Britain by writers of colour is, and always has been, quite homogenized and limited in scope. It has also helped one of us, the novelist Sairish Hussain, to determine how her creative writing fits into an industry that is “dominated by White, public school educated, ‘Oxbridge’ graduates” (Kean 2015, 22). The accounts of many writers of colour chime with Sairish’s own sentiments:

Black and Asian authors complained that they were expected to portray a limited view of their own cultures or risk the accusation of inauthenticity if their characters or settings did not conform to White expectations. Failure to comply, many felt, limited their prospects of publication. (Kean 2015, 3)

Becoming a published author is notoriously difficult, so it is readily apparent why many writers are willing to change their manuscripts to make them more marketable. Agents and editors specifically advise writers to up the “sari count” or “deal [ … ] with gang culture” so that their work “conforms to White preconceptions” (Kean 2015, 8). One of Kean’s respondents, an “established Indian author”, claimed that misery memoirs were in high demand (see Ahmed 2015, 183–186; Morey 2018, 95–125), saying: “If an unusual novel about minorities is an exposé of weird rituals or traditions, it creates a special appeal: see also, female infanticide, holy men molesting children, forced marriages, honour killings and so on” (Kean 2015, 14).³

Finally, in 2020 a scholarly report, Rethinking “Diversity” in Publishing, was brought out by Anamik Saha and Sandra van Lente (2020). They argued that genuine inclusion in recruitment and retention practices will allow publishers to connect with new readers, but “only if staff are given the resources and freedom to do this work without being burdened to speak for these communities” (3). Significantly, this report calls for inclusion to be prioritized permanently, including during financially straitened periods. Such periods include the recession and cost-of-living crisis in Britain during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and in continued contexts of racism, such as those highlighted by the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd. These two key events from 2020, Saha and van Lente argue, “have exposed the depth to which racism is entrenched in society” (2020, 11). These scholars also demonstrate that diversity initiatives can remain ghettoized while change is endlessly deferred. Put differently, “diversity” can become merely an employment mantra and marketing tool, rather than a serious goal. What is needed is not so much diversity but genuine inclusion.

Pressure to conform to stereotypes

The reports conducted across 16 years suggest that publishing is at best complicit with and at worst coercive in choosing to put forward stories that conform to popular doxa. The representation of people of colour in film, television, and literature is simultaneously scarce, stereotypical, and negative, offering reductive or sensationalized narratives of already marginalized people. Furthermore, the “limited cultural awareness” of predominantly white commissioning editors with regard to their writers’ backgrounds can hinder greater inclusiveness (Kean 2015, 8). As Ana María Sánchez-Arce (2007, 144–150) argues, such gatekeepers control writers’ actions and public expression, pushing them to succumb to stereotypical definitions. The more exoticized a story is, the more it is believed to be authentic. Graham Huggan (1994) describes this as the “blatant hypocrisies of exoticism”, which involve “complacency masked as appreciation; novelty mediated through cliché” (27). There is no real desire to connect with writers of colour and give them a platform to share their “complex cultural realities” (27). Instead, Huggan argues, publishers and literary prizes know that exoticism is lucrative, so they use it as a marketing tool and push for its foregrounding in fiction.

Kean highlights the issue that writers of colour become regarded as commentators for their ethnicity, with an expectation that they will tackle topics such as outlandish cultural practices and journeys of migration. According to Kean’s research, Black and Asian writers resent being turned into “totems for their communities” (Kean 2015, 14). They desire simply to tell stories instead of always having to represent their ethnic background or their religion. Here we should clarify that religious bias is not just a subset of racial or ethnic bias. Specific forms of religious and cultural unease around Islam and Muslims, or outright Islamophobia, are linked but not reducible to racism and ethnic chauvinism. Muslim-heritage writers experience a similar form of exclusion to Black and other ethnic-minority writers, but it is nonetheless distinctive. To adapt Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin’s (2011, 119) work on film and TV, Muslims in literature, too, exist “as mere traces. When it comes to their representation [ … ], the tendency is for individuality and specificity to retreat behind the all-encompassing signs of ‘Muslimness’ – clothes, skin color, ritual.” In the 21st century, Islamophobia is more socially acceptable than overt colour prejudice. Furthermore, Islamophobes can blame their own aversion on others’ beliefs, which are supposedly freely chosen and therefore acceptable to critique. Like other forms of prejudice such as antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred adheres more to culture than colour.

The well-established “burden of representation” has been notably discussed in relation to Black art and to existing exclusionary structures of racism (Mercer 1994). Black and brown writers are manoeuvred into becoming spokespeople for a diverse group of cultural and ethnic outliers with whom they may or may not feel an affinity, leaving them vulnerable to attack as their work is pinioned within a web of culture-talk. As Mike Phillips (2006) puts it: “Audiences and people in general look at our work with the question [sic] in mind, ‘What is he saying about us? Does he like us? Is he attacking us? Is he condemning us?’.” The message is considered less important than the messenger and their relationship with recipients, leading to the loss of new and urgent stories.

Black and brown writers may move out of the margins by acting as representatives of those “marginalized communities from which they come” (Mercer 1994, 235). However, impossibly, they are simultaneously expected to speak for and represent their communities, and to take an anti-colonial or anti-racist political stance (Huggan 1994, 24). It is hard enough for minority writers to fictionalize their experiences. As Pierre Bourdieu (1993) noted, the literary marketplace is a battleground on which “what is at stake is the power to impose the dominant definition of the writer and therefore to delimit the population of those entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer” (42). When the field is enlarged and less-established writers gain the opportunity to speak, they face pressures to be interpreted positively by “their” communities as well as to satisfy the assumptions of publishing houses.

Publishers’ assumptions include what will appeal to white readers, which is another area of contestation. An anonymous writer of colour expressed frustration with publishers and agents who were hesitant to commission books with non-mainstream settings and primarily non-white characters. The respondent was even advised to make one partner in their novel’s central love relationship white, because white readers supposedly struggle with books featuring “ ‘foreign’ settings or all-Black casts” (Kean 2015, 8). However, such decisions may not reflect what white audiences wish to read. Furthermore, the publishing industry seems helpless to appeal to non-white readers, a group assumed to be hard to reach. Thus, alongside the problem of exoticization is an impetus towards “whitewashing” (Saha and van Lente 2020, n.p.). Writers are pushed to exaggerate their difference or to erase it, but are seldom invited to show it as textured, context-specific, and a quotidian lived experience.

The power of artistic recognition

These intertwined issues have been explored in the film industry in ways that also have resonance for the literary marketplace. In “Airports and Auditions”, the actor Riz Ahmed (2016, n.p.) outlined three stages of cinematic representations of Muslims: stereotyped figures (the taxi driver, terrorist, cornershop owner, or oppressed woman); new portrayals that subvert and challenge those caricatures; and, finally, “the Promised Land, where you play a character whose story is not intrinsically linked to his race”.⁴ Our article will provide textual analysis of two recent novels to explore whether portrayals of characters not primarily viewed through the lens of race or culturally specific experience can help minority writers reach that Promised Land. Conversely, is the contemporary British publishing scene structured in such a way that they fall short?

Inspired by Riz Ahmed’s (2017) House of Commons speech about the power and harm of media representations, in 2017 Sadia Habib and Shaf Choudry developed the Riz Test, a version of the Bechdel Test for cinematic portrayals of women. This posed the following key questions about stereotyping in cinematic portrayals of Muslims:

If the Film/TV Show stars at least one character who is identifiably Muslim (by ethnicity, language or clothing) – is the character:

1. Talking about, the victim of, or the perpetrator of terrorism?

2. Presented as irrationally angry?

3. Presented as superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern?

4. Presented as a threat to a Western way of life?

5. If the character is male, is he presented as misogynistic? Or if female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?

If the answer for any of the above is Yes, then the Film/TV Show fails the test. (Habib and Choudry 2017, n.p.)

Such criteria, which have proved influential to TV executives such as Channel 4’s Head of Drama (Hollick 2019, n.p.), are also highly relevant to literary and genre fiction. As Ahmed’s comments to Parliament underscore, an expansion of the ways in which Muslims are imagined culturally remains vital when it comes to a sense of belonging and inclusion: “Every time you see yourself in a magazine or on a billboard, TV, film, it’s a message that you matter, that you’re part of the national story, that you’re valued. You feel represented” (2017, n.p.). By contrast, distorted reflections and misrecognition, the actor argues, contribute to alienation and even radicalization. Some narratives strip others of their complex subjectivity. Meanwhile, more storied tales reveal them in their flawed but vibrant fullness. There should be no need to resort to the tired tropes identified in the Riz Test of strict, tyrannical fathers; angry, militant men; and oppressed, subservient women. The reality is infinitely more interesting.

Representation not only affects our sense of value and inclusion but also plays a key role in how we recognize ourselves in texts. Rita Felski (2008, 23) sees the encounter with a truthful literary portrayal as involving, for the reader, an epiphanic moment of (self-)recognition or “flash of connection” that alters their perspective. Felski writes: “I feel myself addressed, summoned, called to account: I cannot help seeing traces of myself in the pages I am reading” (23). Her discussion of the mode of address and appeal for accountability from text to reader recalls Louis Althusser’s ([1971] 2014) characterization of ideology as interpellating or summoning individuals: “[T]he hail rings out, ‘Hey, you there!’ [ … and] the subject answers, ‘Yes, it really is me!’ ” (191, 195). The Marxist critic interpreted this as a call to conformity which works to sedate the reader into accepting the material and social status quo. By contrast, Felski (and Riz Ahmed) regard the moment of recognition as having the potential to foster real connections between creators and consumers, encouraging moments of self-recognition that can lead to expanded world views.

Muslim writers aiming for more gradated narratives

To explore this galvanizing potential further, we scrutinize four case studies: in brief, Sairish Hussain’s (2020) The Family Tree and Saima Mir’s (2021) The Khan; and then, in more detail, Khurrum Rahman’s (2017) East of Hounslow and Kia Abdullah’s (2019) Take It Back. With the exception of Khan’s novel, these were published by HQ/HarperCollins. As the publishing industry’s awareness of its harmful tendency to stereotype people of colour in books increases, the depiction of Muslims seems to be evolving new categories. Our interview data indicates that HQ is at the forefront of this inclusive movement. Lisa Milton (Chambers 2021, n.p.), its executive publisher, told us that she wanted “to create access for new authors” of both fiction and non-fiction “to have their voices heard”. Accordingly, HQ is publishing a wide array of writers from diverse backgrounds, thus highlighting their stories.

Sairish Hussain describes her relationship with HQ as overwhelmingly positive and supportive. They shared a vision for The Family Tree: to publish a story about a Muslim family that is not about them being Muslim, thus avoiding harmful stereotypes and tokenism. But suggestions were made by the publisher that Sairish disagreed with. For example, she was asked to dramatize 9/11 in real time, rather than including it retrospectively as a news event that the protagonist thinks about. Sairish concurred that the event was too life-changing for Muslims for it to be excluded. Yet she argued that many books cross over the time frame of 9/11, and that non-Muslim writers would not be expected to acknowledge the attacks if they did not fit into the narrative arc. Similarly, a suggested book title, “The Yellow Pashmina”, caused concern. Although it represents the mother’s pashmina shawl, a running motif in the novel, Sairish argued that the name had an orientalizing effect. HQ listened to her concerns and the title was changed. This receptiveness, coupled with the imprint’s wide and growing range of non-traditional voices, indicates HQ’s vanguard position in bringing change to the industry.

Saima Mir’s (2021) The Khan also tackles the limited range of topics that authors of Muslim heritage might write about. Like The Family Tree, Mir’s novel is a thriller set in Bradford. Frizinghall, a suburban area where the mills have been repurposed and gentrified while the city struggles with an identity crisis, textually encapsulates Bradford. The Khan explores the metropolis’s complex history, including race riots and the resurgence of the far right. Sakina, a sex worker, and Khalid, a pimp, add to the narrative’s urban texture, as protagonist Jiah Khan becomes embroiled in an underworld of prostitution, drugs, and organized crime. Prayer receives some focus, but Islam is presented more in cultural than religious terms. Mir, of Pashtun ancestry, explores Pakhtunwali, that ancient cultural code from Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, a region known for its emphasis on hospitality and feuds. The Khan was published by Point Blank, a crime imprint of OneWorld. This publisher has a laudably inclusive ethos, but its independent status makes for limited impact. By contrast, HQ is owned by HarperCollins, long part of the exclusive “big five” group of publishers (Squires 2007, 21; Flood 2020, n.p.). HQ is therefore in a stronger position to address racial inequality in the industry.

Muslim masculinity in Khurrum Rahman’s East of Hounslow

Non-normative perspectives on gender in general and Muslim men and masculinity in particular are central to East of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman (2017), a comedic thriller about a petty drug dealer turned MI5 recruit. The protagonist, Javid Qasim (“Jay”), is an unremarkable small-time criminal sent to a terrorist training camp to assist MI5. The figure of the Asian drug dealer has featured previously in M. Y. Alam’s (2002) Kilo (Chambers 2020). Meanwhile, the stereotype of the young, male Muslim terrorist has often been examined, most notably by Kamila Shamsie (2017) in Home Fire. Although the reader will continue to associate criminality and terror with Muslim men after reading East of Hounslow, Rahman attempts to find a human story behind the mugshots that are often splashed across newspaper pages. In an essay, he writes: “[T]here’s a suit of armor that [Jay] wears, a defense mechanism, that regardless of whatever situation Jay is dropped in, he would never allow the world to see his vulnerability and fear” (Rahman 2020b, n.p). Although Jay beats unconscious one racist who confronts him, and deals drugs to young people, he is a gradated character with a share of softness and anxiety as well as street-smart swagger.

The exploration of British Pakistani connections with drug dealing is not unreasonable when statistics are considered. According to drug conviction data from 2013 to 2014, more British Pakistanis are convicted for importing Class A drugs than white British people are (Daly 2017). This may in part be due to their greater likelihood of being stopped and searched by authority figures. Criminologist Mohammed Qasim (2018, 146), who spent time with drug dealers in Manningham, Bradford, concluded that Asian pushers are “just like so many others up and down this country”, regardless of race and religion. Like most dealers, they work this illegal trade as a shortcut to earn money and to evade poverty, poor education, and unemployment, while also succumbing to peer pressure and macho posturing (141–143). This emphasis on common motivations across ethnic backgrounds caused by deprivation is significant, especially in a context where the drug-dealing lifestyle is often linked to Muslim hypermasculinity. Max Daly states that although “working in factories, corner shops and takeaways” was previously acceptable, younger Pakistani men find these occupations “degrading” and aspire to “drive sports cars and wear expensive clothes and jewellery” (2017, n.p.). Inner-city youths, like those portrayed in Rahman’s (2017, 2018, 2020a, 2021) four novels and interviewed for Alam’s non-fiction book Made in Bradford, see drug lords driving around in “the best cars [ … ] able to do anything” (2006, 174). Drug dealing is therefore not only a way of earning money quickly, but also a means to fund an ostentatious display of masculine confidence.

Genre fiction is not always or primarily concerned with accurately reflecting reality. However, many genre fiction authors, like their literary fiction counterparts, do aim to capture the realities of specific communities or social issues. Notably, crime fiction and its subgenre, the thriller novel, often serve both to entertain readers and to create a sense of security. The genre has long been associated with justice and with reinforcing the idea that criminals are usually caught and punished or rehabilitated, thus reassuring readers (Todorov [1966] 1977; Porter 1981). East of Hounslow repeats this trope through Jay Qasim, whose apprehension as a petty crook and subsequent transformation into a MI5 agent with the ability to outsmart his foes conforms to generic conventions. No criminal mastermind, his rehabilitation as spymaster at once meets readers’ expectations and bespeaks a redemption through complicity with espionage. While crime thrillers often reinforce conventional notions of security and justice, the genre also explores the nuances of, and motivations behind, criminality. East of Hounslow’s depiction provides a glimpse into the multifaceted personalities of those featured in journalistic reports, representing them not only as criminals.

The dream of becoming a dealer and thus escaping destitution should be understood in the context of poverty and social exclusion. Deeply rooted in the milieu of Asian west London, East of Hounslow explores such issues. Jay and his friends, like the British Asian men studied by Sadek Hamid (2017, 5), combine “Asian patriarchy and popular black ‘gangsta’ subcultures to assert their male privilege”2017. With little else to preoccupy them, their interests are in drugs, money, cars, and women. Jay “goes to prayers on Friday, like a good Muslim boy”, but otherwise he “deals drugs, has sex and pretty much goes against most of the Islamic faith” (Northern Crime 2017, n.p.). His language is conversational and peppered with expletives, and his attitude to avoiding trouble while being Muslim is both entertaining and poignant:

You’ve got to play the game otherwise you might as well carry a big fat kick me sign on your back. Don’t walk around wearing a sodding shalwar kameez with a great big dopey beard and drive around in a fuckin’ Honda. That’s when you get pulled over and that’s when you get racially abused. But not me. Why? ’Cos I play the game. (Rahman 2017, 9; emphasis in original)

Jay tries to show his “feel for the game” (in Bourdieu’s [1990, 66] sense of an understanding of social dynamics) when it comes to so-called British values and aesthetics. Like the anglicized Conservative politician Karamat Lone in Shamsie’s Home Fire, he is depicted as “Striding Away from Muslimness” (2017, 52). Distancing himself from his stereotypical shalwar kameez-wearing, Honda-driving brethren, Jay breezes over the worldwide “plight” of his Muslim contemporaries, asking, “But what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” (Rahman 2017, 9; italics in original). Dispelling the idea that all Muslims harbour political anger, he offers an unusually laid-back and humorous male Muslim perspective. However, the drug-dealer stereotype is again employed here, along with a central plotline involving terrorism and spying. As outspoken as Jay may be, there is a limit to the subversiveness of his story when the same tropes are recycled. Although Jay is humanized through comedy, there is still a lucrative reason for writers to include radicalization and terrorism in any narrative that involves Muslims.

East of Hounslow comprises 94 short chapters, giving the impression of a film script: an MI5 officer “waited a beat” before continuing a conversation with Jay, and there is “silence on my end for a beat” when Jay is on the phone with his mother (Rahman 2017, 84, 121). Unsurprisingly, in 2020 Rahman indicated that he wrote his novel “just like I would write a movie. I wanted the story to pop and come alive off the page where I could visualise Jay staring down at me from the screen and see the action running through my mind” (Rahman 2020c, n.p.). Rahman noted that he derived the novel’s tonal palette from his favourite films, “combining the dialogue of Fargo and Reservoir Dogs, with the hard-hitting drama of Boyz ’n the Hood and American History X” (n.p.).

Apart from these highly regarded American movies, the novel is markedly similar to the British film Four Lions (Morris 2010). This is especially noticeable in the radicalization plotline, where Jay infiltrates the cell intent on bombing shopping outlets full of “slags‚ dealers‚ chavs‚ fuckin’ name it” (Rahman 2017, 40). Compare this with Four Lions’s extremist convert Barry talking of “blowing up your slag sister” and his comrade Fessel’s motivation to target the “US embassy or some other such slag utility” (Morris 2010, n.p.). As with Barry, Rahman creates a convert character, Kevin, who is more strident about his beliefs than those who grew up as Muslims. And, just as Chris Morris’s plot incorporates a “thick as fudge” character named Waj, Rahman’s Akhtar “did not have a clue”, wears a “blank expression”, and seems to be an easily-led “sheep” (2017, 238). Both characters suffer from attacks of conscience, although Morris’s Waj shrugs off his better self to go through with a suicide bombing while Rahman’s Akhtar retreats. The jihadists’ trip for training in Pakistan and from there to Afghanistan is also alike in the two texts.

The comparison between Rahman’s novel East of Hounslow and the film Four Lions demonstrates the way that archetypes involving Muslim characters and terrorism endlessly populate fiction and film. The similarity between the two texts, including the radicalization plotline, characters, and trips to Pakistan, is a reminder of how limited representations of Muslims in popular culture remain. Ultimately, Rahman brings Morris’s well-researched comedy from screen to page, adding complexity by exploring the connection between drug dealing and the lack of opportunities available to young British Muslim men in 21st-century London. Yet, in the final analysis, the twist Rahman places on stereotypes in order to create young male characters who are rounded and humanized falls back on received ideas.

Grooming gangs and intersectional thinking in Kia Abdullah’s Take It Back

Perhaps the most monstrous stereotype currently in circulation is that of the Muslim man as a perpetrator of grooming and child sexual exploitation. The media tends to focus on British Asian, mainly Pakistani, gangs of men abusing vulnerable white girls in UK cities. The disturbing details follow a pattern that involves perpetrators befriending and establishing relationships with victims whilst enticing them with gifts, intoxicants, and money. Victims are then coerced into sexual activity and passed around other men. In The Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan (2011, n.p.) states that there could “hardly be a more emotive story than this”, which involves “Sexual abuse! White girls! Pakistani men!” and, of course, a “politically-correct establishment letting it all happen!”. Ella Cockbain (2013, 24, 25), describes the issue as a flashpoint with a “clear political dimension” as the “victims’ whiteness and offenders’ otherness are both regularly overstated”. An attempt is made to “paint British Muslims and Asians as sex predators on a national scale” (Gilligan 2011, n.p.). This is partly due to the over-representation of this type of on-street, group grooming as a particular tactic of Asian men (as opposed to white perpetrators’ lone, online strategies). Yet sensationalist reporting overlooks how racial profiles of those convicted for child sexual exploitation reflect the demographics of the areas in which these crimes occurred (Berelowitz et al. 2012). There has been fierce public debate as to whether grooming is a racially or culturally motivated crime because Pakistani men specifically target white girls. This has been rejected by commentators who observe that the perpetrators are opportunistic and target the “most easily accessible and vulnerable” (Vallely 2012, n.p.). In contrast, Asian girls are often more “strictly parented” and remain in the home at night (2012n.p.). The simplistic picture of Muslim sexual aggressors and white victims has also been undercut by Manveen Rana’s (2014, n.p.) report for the BBC’s File on 4 radio documentary series, in which she exposed the fact that Asian women were victims in the high-profile Rotherham case alongside white women, but that the former’s voices have not been heard.

A grooming-gang scandal is at the heart of Abdullah’s (2019) bold third novel Take It Back, set in Whitechapel in London’s East End, in which Abdullah consciously subverts conventional types and perspectives. Take It Back’s central character is Zara Kaleel, a woman of Bangladeshi heritage who was a high-flying barrister prior to quitting her job at the bar and working for a nominal salary for Artemis House, a sexual assault referral centre. Zara was grieving the death of her father, from whom she had been estranged since the collapse of the arranged marriage into which she had felt emotionally blackmailed. Nevertheless, she values helping vulnerable, assaulted women articulate their call for justice. She champions 16-year-old Jodie Wolfe, who is disabled and disfigured by neurofibromatosis. Yet Zara faces a quandary when Jodie alleges that four British Asian boys raped her, because she knows precisely how the tabloid press will portray the white female accuser and the accused brown, Muslim men.

From Take it Back’s opening, Zara chafes against stereotypes and refuses to side with “her” community. As a Muslim woman who swears, drinks alcohol, and has sex outside marriage, Zara is portrayed in ways close to what Saha and van Lente call “whitewashing” (2020, 25). That said, Abdullah counterbalances this with metafictional introspection:

Zara Kaleel’s self-image was built on the singular belief that she was different [ … ] to the two tribes of women that haunted her youth. She was not a docile housewife, fingers yellowed by turmeric [ … ]. Nor was she a rebel, using her sexuality to subvert her culture. And yet here she was, lying in freshly stained sheets, skin gleaming with sweat and regret. (2019, 1)

Zara is a sometimes contradictory character, who also features in Abdullah’s (2020) later novel Truth Be Told. She is alienated from both literature’s domestic goddesses and deracinated women who shrug off traditions via a defiant sexuality. However, she comes closer to the latter pole. In the novel’s opening, she worries about her casual relationship with an American climber named Luca. Later, her professional credibility is undermined when the press broadcast a video of her having sex in a public place with a man she barely knows. Her increasing dependency on the legal high of Diazepam causes this recklessness. As Zara tries to escape her addiction, she must make a false choice as to whether she considers herself first as a Muslim or as a woman. Zara attempts to reconcile her faith with other aspects of her identity such as her sexuality but is met with disapproval and alienation from all sides. For instance, as a Muslim woman of South Asian heritage, she is marginalized by mainstream British society, yet she is also deemed permissive and modern by many in the Muslim community. Her conflicting loyalties to the young brown men and to the vulnerable girl highlight the difficulties of being a Muslim woman who experiences hostility both to her faith background and to her gender identity.

The abuse case is further compromised by the fact that Jodie is an unreliable witness, while some of the boys make misogynistic comments on social media and have assaulted girls before. These complexities, in addition to issues arising as a result of Jodie’s disability and social class – she is described as a “chav” (Abdullah 2019, 131; see also Jones 2011) – create a combustible courtroom drama. Abdullah is unsparing in her critique of sexual violence and gendered notions of honour, yet, above all, impugns prejudice in the mainstream media. One newspaper’s headline screams “FOUR MUSLIM TEENS RAPE DISABLED ENGLISH GIRL” (Abdullah 2019, 137). Following that attention-grabber, the reportage builds to a crescendo, supplying lurid details and using emotive diction which plays on majoritarian preconceptions of the Muslim sybarite:

Action must be taken against these predatory men who choose young, native British women on whom to feast. Their actions are symbolic of a wider epidemic that signals to Asian men: “We can have these women; they are here for the taking.” We must stop them taking. We must call for justice. (139)

The imagery in the first sentence is of male carnivores hunting down and devouring their prey (Adams [1990] 2015, 19–44). The unnamed women are limned in terms of virginal whiteness, vulnerable and ripe for the picking. The op-ed then segues into virological discourse, with the journalist implying that an excess of tolerance infects the British body politic. As Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb (2021, x) argues, Muslims’ depiction in the west has long been “wrapped in both Islamophobia and the figural vocabulary of contagious disease: the so-called epidemic of radical Islam and terrorism”. Preying on apparent British tolerance, homogenized groups of “Asian men” are positioned as grasping and opportunistic. Meanwhile, an imagined cohesive white community is created – by means of rabble-rousing first-person-plural pronouns in the popular press – and the majority population somehow appear as the silenced, passive victim of an unjust system. Through her inclusion of fictional press reports in Take it Back, Abdullah satirizes the right-wing media’s reductive and racist portrayal of Muslims. Also ridiculed are depictions of the non-Muslim British majority as a beleaguered minority persecuted by outsiders who go unpunished because of “woke” politics. The populist press’s capacity to twist any story to make it fit a racist agenda justifies Zara’s initial hesitation about taking on a case with such explosive potential, particularly as she believes the white woman and not the ethnic-minority men.

Abdullah is a clear-sighted, intersectional thinker when it comes to questions of race, gender, and class. There exist “mounds of delicate nuance” in the way she depicts the various individuals and groups who come to trial (Abdullah 2019, 117). Apparently monstrous and predatory men from Asian backgrounds, regularly demonized by tabloid journalists, are portrayed in Take it Back as complex and human in Take it Back. As the plot unfolds, clear distinctions are drawn between handsome and arrogant Amir Rabbani; his sidekick Farid Khan; compassionate Mo Ahmed; and Hassan Tanweer, the only Bangladeshi-heritage boy in this largely British Pakistani group of accused men. In addition, and in contrast to Rahman’s unashamedly masculinist novel, Abdullah opens up many different models of womanhood. Not simply victims or saviours, her female protagonists are flawed but well-rounded characters who are considered within their formative contexts.

Conclusion: A Promised Land still to come

Abdullah’s novel ultimately transcends the usual formulaic frontiers of the thriller, demonstrating how genre fiction potentially provides a space where Muslim writers can challenge prevailing expectations. That being said – as with Rahman’s East of Hounslow – they may equally fall short of this goal. The implication, perhaps, is that writing that flies under the canonical radar may have greater freedom to bend imposed, hegemonic expectations.

Our research into Muslim-heritage writers’ experiences in publishing has revealed an unequal literary landscape. As is argued in this article’s opening sections, over the last two decades the issue of inclusivity has been a heralded focus of publishing, but there remains extensive scope for improvement. Organizers of such initiatives as the aforementioned Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour point out the lack of inclusion in publishing and the related dangers of tokenism, anticipating a time when such prizes are no longer needed (Singh 2017, n.p.). Nikesh Shukla (2016), a long-time campaigner for more inclusive books, states that “diversity is a sham. We’re about normalisation” (n.p.). His comments again point to the continued importance that books reflect, as this article has argued, not monolithic perspectives of “diverse” cultures, but the complexities of everyday multicultural and multiracial British society.

This article has gone beyond the existing critical oeuvre on representations of British Muslims to offer, first, a detailed exploration of the publication experience for Muslim-heritage writers as they negotiate with the gatekeepers of the publishing industry. We drew on author interviews and book industry reports, analysed in detail here for the first time. Focusing then on close readings of crime thrillers, a genre gaining in popularity among Muslim-identified authors in Britain, the paper has highlighted a growing body of genre fiction. Produced by affected writers, this work reflects the multifarious experiences of complex Muslim protagonists who occupy ambiguous territory in between, or sometimes succeed in inhabiting a space beyond, prevailing cultural and religious stereotypes. Despite the increased visibility and recognition of some authors of colour, the publishing industry remains saturated by white people and world views. The Promised Land for characters whose stories have nothing to do with their race has not yet been reached. However, good strides are being made in that direction, particularly via the route offered by genre fiction. This article reveals the challenges and opportunities available to Muslim writers in a predominantly white and secular publishing industry. As new generations of Muslim-heritage writers continue trying to break down barriers, what is needed from publishers, academics, and reviewers is an amplifying stage for their voices.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Chambers

Claire Chambers is professor of global literature at the University of York, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is author of British Muslim Fictions (2011), Britain Through Muslim Eyes (2015), and Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels (2019), among other works.

Sairish Hussain

Sairish Hussain studied at the University of Huddersfield, and was awarded a vice-chancellor’s scholarship for her PhD. Her novel The Family Tree (2020) has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and nominated for the Guardian Literary Award and Waterstones Award. She is now writing her second novel.

Notes

1. By the time of the 2021 census, the response of “No religion” had increased significantly in England and Wales from 25.2 percent (14.1 million) in 2011 to 37.2 percent (22.2 million). The Covid-19 pandemic may have influenced the spike in atheism or agnosticism (Office for National Statistics 2022).

2. Initiatives include the HarperCollins Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) paid 12-month traineeship.

3. The statement could easily pass as a description of Nadeem Aslam’s (2004) Maps for Lost Lovers. This prize-winning, post-9/11 novel, nominated for the Man Booker and IMPAC Prizes, winning the Kiriyama Prize and the Encore Award, reinforced what white publishers expect from Muslim communities. If Kean’s respondent is correct, then these plaudits connect as much to the book’s divulgence of “Muslim” depravities (honour killing, the abortion of female foetuses, a paedophilic Muslim cleric, and so on) as to its intertextual and heavily poetic style.

4. Jack Shaheen ([2001] 2009) had earlier done something similar to Ahmed’s British Muslim perspective, from an Arab American standpoint.