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This paper challenges the thought that the term 'Muslim woman' connotes submissive or backward and is in need of rescue by the West through a literary analysis of the work by Mohja Kahf (b.1967), a leading contemporary Arab-American Muslim woman writer. In her novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), Kahf focuses on the oppressive and discriminatory practices Muslim women encounter when wearing the hijab or veil where the main character and narrator experiences a type of identity split, or fragmentation, when assimilating into mainstream American culture. As a tool for analysis, the notion of liminality by Victor Turner , a British cultural anthropologist, is used to analyze the narrator's choice of being 'betwixt and between' the state of things, or being 'neither here nor there'. The resolution of social and personal conflicts portrayed is mapped to the stages of liminality.

Abstract-Science Fiction is a literary genre of technological changes in human and his life; and is full of imaginative and futuristic concepts and ideas. One of the most significant aspects of Science Fiction is human transformation. This paper will present, firstly, an overview on the history of Science Fiction and some of the most significant sci-fi stories, and will also explore the elements of human transformation in them. Later, it will explain the term of transhumanism as a movement which follows several transformation goals to reach immortality and superiority of human through advanced technology. Next, the views by a number of prominent transhumanists will be outlined and discussed. Finally, three main steps of transhumanism, namely transhuman, posthuman, and cyborg, will be described in details through notable scholars' views in which transhuman will be defined as a transcended version of human, posthuman as a less or non-biological being, and cyborg as a machine human. In total, this is a conceptual paper on an emerging trend in literary theory development which aims to engage critically in an overview of the transformative process of human by technology in Science Fiction beyond its current status.

Leila Aboulela"s novel, Minaret (2005), provides authentic and rich content to explore the Muslim Arab woman"s struggle over creating a modern yet religiously traditional identity. The conceptual framework of Victor Turner"s liminality and Homi Bhabha"s hybridity and the third space are applied in order to frame the analysis of this struggle and to show that the veil is a metaphor for the Arab woman"s positive and negative experiences. In Minaret, the protagonist, Najwa, experiences a sense of in-betweenness or liminality through crises, transitions, and resolutions of secular and religious lives. The different hybrid identities and efforts Najwa makes to come to terms with her developing Muslim identity is discussed, particularly through her and the women around her who choose to wear the veil and modest, rather than revealing, clothing. Together, these form our analysis of the Muslim Arab woman"s struggle to be Muslim through wearing the veil while living in Britain. The veil in this novel is furthermore symbolic of traditional Islamic culture and represents the struggle to be religiously faithful despite being surrounded by non-Muslims or non-practising Muslims. This then provides the means of understanding individual mobility, empowerment, and agency through which liminality is successfully negotiated in order to achieve a hybrid identity of Eastern and Western cultures.