Book "The Reluctant Mullah": Dark secrets and dysfunctional archetypes

Last updated on: May 21, 2010 at 4:00 am by Guest Contributor

Book "The Reluctant Mullah": Dark secrets and dysfunctional archetypes 2010-05-21T04:00:02-04:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The usual …or unusual?

The first thing that strikes the reader of The Reluctant Mullah by Sagheer Afzal is its shelf appeal. The cover exhibits a mysterious figure wrapped up in what appears to be a black cloak and niqab with a red heart nearby, and the introduction “The clock is ticking for Musa. He has just 30 days to escape from an arranged marriage.”

It’s quite a different proposition to the similar sounding – but much more sinister – book The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which predates our Mullah by at least 3 years and explores what leads people to extremism, leaving unanswered in the reader’s mind the question of who exactly are the extremists. The author probably never intended his book to be a Reluctant Fundamentalist anyway, a book which was a serious contender to challenge our preconceptions of terrorists, and written in suitably elegant and powerful style.

So if you read this book, take note of the playful cover – this is a light-hearted comedy of people looking to find not just love but also their place in the world. This is a world far from terrorism and extremists. The book doesn’t set out with a message about Muslims or terrorism. It’s just a new set up for the age-old search-for-love situation comedy.

Our hero Musa is the youngest of four siblings, and has been consigned to Imam school since he’s shown little ambition or skill at anything else. Musa has a big heart, and the innocence of a child, but his family see him as weak and a bit soft in the head. He seems more suited to exploring the wonders of the world, than laying down rules to others on how to direct it.

The eldest son is the dark sheep of the family, the archetypal errant son who comes back to re-join the fold, but ends up wreaking havoc. This homage is to East is East, and is echoed in a current Eastenders storyline, and is repeated with homages to other film genres too. Next is Suleiman, the dutiful son who brings in family income and is tasked with taking Musa under his wing after Musa is expelled from the Islamic seminary. Then we have Shabnam, the only daughter of the family, who shines as a character at odd moments, revealing Afzal’s deeper affinity for writing female characters than he might realise.

Alongside Musa’s parents is the fearsome Dadaji, the patriarch of the clan, a mixture of domineering mafia godfather and sufi saint. He is the catalyst for the story – giving Musa his ultimatum to search for his own bride, or be married to his cousin in Pakistan whom Dadaji has selected for him.

And so with the ultimatum stinging his ears, Musa sets off through a whirlwind tour of arranged marriage rituals to find his bride to be. I’m a romantic at heart, and so it was this thread in the story that kept me hooked – and the results will chime with fans of both Cinderella and When Harry Met Sally genres. We experience internet dating, traditional matchmakers, friends of friends and even TV marriage bureaus with some comic moments. If the romantic storyline is resolved Harry Sally fashion, then the book concludes in homage to a feisty Godfather-style mafia drama. Afzal is clearly a man who knows and respects his genres.

Sagheer Afzal explains how the book references his own personal experiences of getting married. Although Afzal is British born, he chose to have an arranged marriage in Pakistan. At his wedding, his bride-to-be abandoned him, but not before she had fleeced him of the wedding jewellery and £1000. But he’s not bitter, preferring to chalk it down to experience, and take solace in the fact that it has ultimately led him to have his first book published.

As an author who spends time writing about the human stories of contemporary Muslims, I found myself at times over engrossed in a meta-analysis of the story and its construction. I struggled with a conflict of interest between being a reader and a fan of light fiction and being a commentator on Muslims in the arts and media. I found this challenge particularly acute when the book described the processes of looking for a marriage partner as this has many connections to my own book Love in a Headscarf. It highlighted the fact that both men and women today are struggling to find the right process to find a partner and that the processes and expectations can be both a help and a hindrance. However, whilst the 30 day countdown is a powerful literary device to bring the story to a conclusion, as a reader you are left wondering if Musa would have met with more success in his search had he spent a little bit more time on any of the methods he pursued.

I had to constantly check myself from analysing this as a media representation of Muslims, and try to get into the storyline itself. For example, Suleiman finds himself playing the role of both dutiful and preferred son who supports his parents by day, and deals drugs to prostitutes by night. First of all, I wondered at this new narrative – echoed across several of the characters – of the Muslim who appears ‘good’ on the outside, but is hiding dark secrets on this inside; is this the new Muslim archetype? In addition, these are characters who are conflicted and whose religion is the barrier to resolving their inner tensions. Is this the very modern anti-religion perspective creeping into the way Muslim characters are drawn? Again, is this a new type of Muslim literary character?

With my commentator hat on, I found my hackles raised when the split-personality son comes to a resolution to his issues as a Muslim through the ‘saviour’ of a priest’s words. It is impossible to predict what can change the course of a person’s life, and I fully believe that it can be something a person similar to you or totally different to you that triggers a change. However, in a book that makes a failed would-be Imam into a central character, and whose story is focused around the construction of an Islamic centre for young people, one is left with unsavoury echoes of colonial missionaries sent to save the heathens.

In the end, I was left wondering how I would fit into this world (probably very uncomfortably), or whether I had met characters like this in my own personal life (they were unfamiliar to me personally, but this is a novel after all, so my assessment of reality had to be suspended). But mostly I was left wishing that the book wasn’t named after a very different book, which meant it was comparing itself to a totally different kind of story, which other than Muslim characters had nothing in common.

The challenge which publishers need to rise to is to see what the actual story is, and to package and publish it as such. It turns out that the publishers saw ‘Muslim’ and edited, and marketed the book accordingly. The Reluctant Fundamentalist was a dark story of an individual journey playing with notions of who is a terrorist, and how the media puts them forward as representatives of a whole faith group. The Reluctant Mullah is a story of a dysfunctional family torn between culture, religion and selfish motivations, who represent nobody other than their own fictional selves. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Read Shelina’s interview with author Sagheer Afzal at her blog, Spirit 21.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is author of Love in a Headscarf, a humorous and irrevernt memoir of growing up as a Muslim woman. She also writes the Brass Crescent Award-winning blog Spirit 21.

Reviews

Previous Post

May 19, 2010

Jacksonville Human Rights Commission: When media acts responsibly

Next Post

May 24, 2010 Pakistan's Facebook ban: Protecting the violent?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2012 Elections 30 Dayd 30 Writers (2017) 30 Days 30 Writers 30 Days 30 Writers (2015) 30 Days 30 Writers (2016) 30 Days 30 Writers (2018) 30 Days 30 Writers 2017 Ali Asadullah Ali Eteraz Alper Bilgili Arthur Richards Asides Asma Uddin Black History Month Briefings Charles Turner Commentary Cyrus McGoldrick Eman H Aly Fatimah Popal Hajj Hajj and Dhul Hijjah Hesham Hassaballa Hisham Hellyer Ibrahim Abusharif Inas Younis Irfan Yusuf Jalal Baig Junaid Afeef Laila Alawa Laila Alwala Mas'ood Cajee Muqtedar Khan Nakia Jackson Newsmakers Parvez Ahmed Podcasts Rabia Chaudry Rafia Zakaria Ramadan Reviews Safiyyah Ally Saud Inam Shahed Amanullah Svend White The Opinionated Oncologist Visions Wajahat Ali Zahed Amanullah Zahir Janmohamed Zainab Khan

Select a Month November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Clap your hands and shout with triumph! Which psalm calls all peoples to celebrate God as the great King?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 150 Psalm 100 Psalm 47 Psalm 98