Living between two cultures: Muslim Women's Identity in Soueif’s “In the Eye of the Sun” & “Janmohamed’s Love in a Headscarf: Muslim Woman Seeks the One”

Abstract

This study aimed at negotiating the paradoxical representation of Muslim women identity in two literary text; Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun (1992) and Shelina Zahra Janmohamed memoir Love in a Headscarf (2009) in a multicultural British society. These two texts show and explore a third space, reclaiming Muslim identity reconciled with Britishness. The two texts run against Orientalist perspective that respectively represent Muslim women as concubines, harem and other apparatuses of female subjugation and thus gives Muslim women a demeaning identity. Both authors refuse to fit into the conventional categories and stereotypes of subservient Muslim women portrayed by Orientalists. Moreover, they attempt to make sense of being British and Muslim and dispel the assumed irreconcilability between Islam and many key traditional British values. Instead of rejecting their Muslim identity, they reconcile it with Britishness. They belong to a British-based growing group of writers who capture the various moments of their life in Britain as Muslims as well as British citizens. The two texts undermined the dominant narratives of Muslim women as silent victims by means of representations of love, sex, romance in multicultural Britain.