Counter- Representational Discourse of Islam in Islamophobic States: The Case of Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in Tangerine Scarf (2006)

Abstract

Anglophone Arab literature in general and women in specific witnessed unprecedented change in content and quantity after the Twin Tower collapse. The September attacks of the 2011 brought about great political, social, cultural changes to the situation of Arabs in the West and America in particular since it destabilized their sense of belonging and created an agony and hostility against them. The experiences of social, political, and cultural marginality shape Arab Women’s diaspora fiction which, in turn, attempts to produce a rhetoric of resistance to counter-balance discourses of hierarchies and cultural binaries (self/other, black/white man woman and so forth). In this respect, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), written by Arab American, Mohja Kahf, functions as a mirror which reflects on the image of Islam, the veil and Arab-Muslim identities in Islamophobic states. This paper, therefore, offers an investigation of how, in border zone, Mohja Kahf attempts to correct the fallacies vis-à-vis Islam and Muslim and negotiates journeys of displacement and dislocation that Arab immigrants may experience.