Cultural Resilience and Faith: Islamic L'identisation in the Diasporic Fiction of Leila Aboulela and Mohja Kahf

This paper explores how the Islamic faith serves as a basis for ethical practice as an active participant in the development of the identity of Muslims in diaspora through a comparison of Leila Aboulela’s and Mohja Kahf’s fictions. While the secular and post-colonial frameworks used to analyse such literature have marginalized religion or treated agency as a form of resistance to authority, this paper introduces the concept of Islamic l’identisation to describe the ongoing process of developing an identity based upon beliefs, disciplined ethics, and lived religious practice. Using Stuart Hall’s (1990) identity as becoming, Homi Bhabha’s (1994) hybridity, Talal Asad’s (2003) critiques of secular modernity, and Saba Mahmood’s (2005) reconceptualization of agency, this paper demonstrates how Islamic faith supports cultural resilience and belonging among diasporic populations. Through a detailed analysis of the texts of Minaret, The Translator, and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, this paper will demonstrate how Aboulela’s focus on internal spiritual growth and Kahf’s focus on negotiating Islam publicly converge in their support for faith as a coherent basis for ethical practice. Ultimately, this paper will argue that cultural resilience is achieved in these works through the continued ethical involvement in Islam rather than solely through resistance to authority, hybridity, or other forms of cultural negotiation.