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Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film (book review)

Posted: August 14 2023

Social Work student & staff projects, Social Work
Social Work student & staff projects, Social Work

Interested in Social Work and want to learn more about the subject? The book reviews written by our Social Work students and staff help you identify the best literature to advance your learning.

This week:

  • Title: Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film: Transcultural Identity and Migration in Britain
  • Publisher: I.B. Tauris
  • ISBN: 978-0-7556-0171-4
  • Author/s: Peter Cherry
  • Originally published in 2022
  • Reviewer/s: Durali Karacan Doctoral Researcher
  • Published first online at
Book cover of Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film

Integration, assimilation, identity and multiculturalism have been among the most intensely debated topics in Europe since the 1980s, when the Muslim population there began to grow dramatically. Although debates around the terms “migration” and “immigrant” had already become contentious in the Western world by the final decades of the twentieth century, the migration and immigrant debates became much more heated in the global arena after the events in the early years of the twenty-first century led to their association with security risks. The UK is one of the countries that have the biggest Muslim population in the Western world and it has a relatively long history with Muslim minorities (Runnymede Trust, 1997). Certainly, crucial turning points have been marked in the UK, such as the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), which triggered extensive societal debate, irrevocably affecting both Muslim minorities and the whole of British society in a negative way (Allen, 2010). The impacts of the affair did not remain limited to the UK but also spread into additional spheres in the global arena, including politics, arts, education, sports, literature, film and more. Furthermore, in association with the fervent protests against Rushdie and his book by Muslims in the UK, a negative view of Muslim men became engraved in British society’s memory, which perceived them as angry, with long dark beards, backward, uncivilised, anti-democratic and engaged in book-burning (Allen, 2010).

At a time when racism and Islamophobia have increased dramatically in the Western world overall, and when Muslims remain a central topic of public debate on immigration in the UK in the post-Brexit and Covid-19 pandemic era, Peter Cherry’s Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film presents a very timely, thorough and comprehensive analysis of how Muslim men have been represented since the Satanic Verses Affair in the 1980s, as racialised and gendered subjects/bodies in the cultural production of contemporary Britain’s diaspora writers. Cherry’s critical examination of Muslim masculinities suggests that the homogenised and negative portrayal of Muslim men is rigidly stereotyped, although Muslim masculinities in the UK are in reality very diverse.

Cherry’s book, which is based on his PhD research, provides a welcome contribution to both Muslim cultural studies and masculinity studies. It is in two parts, each comprising three chapters, and is structured around two watershed moments: The Satanic Verses Affair and the 9/11 attacks. The first part, “British Muslim Masculinities before and after The Satanic Verses Affair”, analyses Muslim male protagonists in the novels and cinematic texts of Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith and Sally El Hosaini. The chapters in this first part “mostly explore the emergent figure of the British Muslim male archetype” (p. 21). Cherry starts his analysis by investigating Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, demonstrating how the Satanic Verses Affair initiated a new era in which Muslim men protagonists were depicted by negative terminology and constructs in both literature and film. This can easily be seen in Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album (1995) and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), both of which are discussed in Chapter 2. The protagonists in both novels reflect upon and respond to the dispute triggered by Rushdie’s novel, as “they are struggling to construct a fitting identity” (p. 21) in an extremely politicised British Muslim milieu. In the third chapter of the first part, Cherry examines two cinematic texts, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) by Hanif Kureishi and My Brother the Devil (2012) by Sally El Hosaini, addressing “the manifestations of patriarchal and hegemonic masculinity within the two films’ all-male gangs and collectives” (p. 21). The homosexuality of the main characters in each film provides an opportunity to probe alternative forms of masculinity that are less aggressive and coloured by transcultural impacts. Thus, this chapter specifically explores the protagonists’ contrary masculinity practices. Cherry analyses how economic success, hegemonic masculinity, economically driven Britishness, and heterosexuality interact linearly with the characters’ lives; at the same time, he reveals how their homosexuality positively changes and improves their lives, opportunities and opinions.

The second section of the book, “Writing British Muslim Masculinities after 9/11”, comprehensively analyses how Muslim male protagonists in the novels by Monica Ali, Suhayl Saadi, Nadeem Aslan, Zia Haider Rahman, Kamila Shamsie and Guy Gunaratne are required to construct their masculinity under the suffocating impact of twenty-first-century global events. In the fourth chapter, Cherry successfully reveals how locations (cities) shape the cultural practices of masculinity, and how urban environments serve transcultural identity transformation for immigrants by examining Muslim male protagonists living in London in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2004), and in Glasgow in Suhayl Saadi’s Psychoraag (2004). The following chapter expands Cherry’s analysis of “location” theoretically to illuminate how the protagonists in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know (2014) “struggle to ‘locate’ themselves and so retreat into violently patriarchal forms of masculinity” (p. 22). Both characters lack a sense of belonging to a place, as they are racialised and classed, triggering an aggressive and violent expression of patriarchal masculinity that manifests itself as physical and emotional abuse of women as a way to reterritorialise themselves. The final chapter discusses the importance of family, fatherhood, brotherhood and home when constructing masculinity, by examining the protagonists in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017) and Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City (2018). Cherry also explores the “metaphorical deployment of death” (p. 22) in both novels, and closes the chapter by querying: “For how long, and why, will the Muslim male be read in fiction as an obtrusive figure within the British nation?” (p. 202).

Cherry argues in general that transcultural interaction and impacts are inevitable in the modern world, and elaborates on how they transform British Muslim masculinities. The protagonists in the novels and films who live in the biggest cities of the UK, e.g., London and Glasgow, constantly encounter transculturation in their local milieu, and experience the transcultural impact of national and global incidents. The similarities and differences between them in the practice of their masculinities reveal that their concepts of masculinity have been coloured not only by their cultural and religious backgrounds, but also by transcultural exchange. However, this intensive transcultural exchange typically creates a crisis in Muslim men’s identities, and particularly in their masculinity construction. Remarkably, the Muslim male characters in the novels and films discussed by Cherry are generally marginalised by the white British majority on the basis of race, religion and culture. Their marginalisation is evident in the construction, practice and performance of their masculinities, worsening the crisis experienced by Muslim men.

Cherry specifically examines the cultural products of male and female British diaspora writers who have both Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds, and this enables him to explore the intersectional and transcultural aspects of British Muslim masculinities comparatively. However, almost all the protagonists have a South Asian background, and only one cultural product focuses on British Arab Muslim masculinities (p. 8) and, consequently, British South Asian Muslim masculinities comprise the book’s main focus. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that Cherry’s book investigates novels and films in which the protagonists are entirely fictional. None of the books and films are based on true stories, so he is examining exaggerated characters and stories. Moreover, as Cherry acknowledges, “literary and cinematic texts do not always neatly map onto social scientific models” (p. 13). Nevertheless, his work makes an excellent contribution to Muslim cultural studies and masculinity studies, successfully revealing that Muslim masculinities in the UK are highly diverse, and that transcultural interactions have the capacity to substantially transform British Muslim masculinities.

The detailed comparative analyses of the masculinity practices of Muslim men as protagonists in literature and film offer a wealth of knowledge and a deeper understanding for researchers interested in minority/Muslim and masculinity studies. Those policymakers seeking a better grasp of how minority and Muslim men construct and practise their masculinities may find the book beneficial, as Cherry analyses the (in)famous books and films that have inevitably influenced Muslims residing in the UK. General readers may well also find the book of interest, as it examines modern novels and films that have been widely read or viewed.

References

  • Allen, C., Islamophobia (Farnham, Surrey: Asshgate, 2010)
  • Runnymede Trust, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All (London: Runnymede Trust, 1997). accessed 21 July 2023