عنوان

Racing Away from Race:

شماره

LA111023

زبان متن نوشتاري يا گفتاري و مانند آن

انگلیسی

عنوان اصلي

Racing Away from Race:

نام عام مواد

[Article]

ساير اطلاعات عنواني

The Literary Aesthetics of Islam and Gender in Mohammed Naseehu Ali's The Prophet of Zongo Street and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's The Whispering Trees

نام نخستين پديدآور

Shirin Edwin

محل نشرو پخش و غیره

Leiden

نام ناشر، پخش کننده و غيره

Brill

متن يادداشت

Some literary discussions on Islam in West Africa argue that African Muslims owe allegiance more to Arab race and culture since the religion has an Arab origin while owing less to indigenous and therefore "authentic" African cultures. Most notably, in his famous quarrel with Ali Mazrui, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wrenches race to serve a tendentious historicism about African Muslims as racially Arab and therefore foreign to African culture. In their fiction, two new West African writers, Mohammed Naseehu Ali and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, allegorize African Islamic identity as tied to Arab race and culture as madness, lunacy and even death. In particular, Ali's short story "The Prophet of Zongo Street" engages with this obsessive dialectic between African Islamic identity and Arab race. Although not explicitly thematizing Islamic identity as tied to Arab race or culture, three other stories by the same authors, Ali's story "Mallam Sile" and Ibrahim's stories "The Whispering Trees" and "Closure," gender the dialectic between race and Islamic identity. Ali and Ibrahim show African Muslim women's abilities to effect change in difficult situations and relationships-marriage, romance, legal provisions on inheritance, prayer and honor. In so doing, I argue, these authors reflect a potential solution to the difficult debate in African literary criticism on Islamic identity and Arab race and culture. Some literary discussions on Islam in West Africa argue that African Muslims owe allegiance more to Arab race and culture since the religion has an Arab origin while owing less to indigenous and therefore "authentic" African cultures. Most notably, in his famous quarrel with Ali Mazrui, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wrenches race to serve a tendentious historicism about African Muslims as racially Arab and therefore foreign to African culture. In their fiction, two new West African writers, Mohammed Naseehu Ali and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, allegorize African Islamic identity as tied to Arab race and culture as madness, lunacy and even death. In particular, Ali's short story "The Prophet of Zongo Street" engages with this obsessive dialectic between African Islamic identity and Arab race. Although not explicitly thematizing Islamic identity as tied to Arab race or culture, three other stories by the same authors, Ali's story "Mallam Sile" and Ibrahim's stories "The Whispering Trees" and "Closure," gender the dialectic between race and Islamic identity. Ali and Ibrahim show African Muslim women's abilities to effect change in difficult situations and relationships-marriage, romance, legal provisions on inheritance, prayer and honor. In so doing, I argue, these authors reflect a potential solution to the difficult debate in African literary criticism on Islamic identity and Arab race and culture.

تاريخ نشر

2016

توصيف ظاهري

133-158

عنوان

Islamic Africa

شماره جلد

7/2

شماره استاندارد بين المللي پياييندها

2154-0993

اصطلاح موضوعی

Africa

اصطلاح موضوعی

gender

اصطلاح موضوعی

Islam

اصطلاح موضوعی

race

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Shirin Edwin

شماره بازیابی

10.1163/21540993-00702010

نام الکترونيکي

فرمت انتشار

p

نوع ماده

[Article]

کد کاربرگه

275578

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y