Religification of Metrostanis in the Post-9/11 Era

Abstract

This article analyses how the post-9/11 fictional narratives of two Pakistani writers critique the racialisation of Islam in discourses of American homeland security, patriotism and national belonging after 9/11, which construct Muslims as terrorists and outsiders and disqualify them from US citizenship and belonging. More specifically, in light of many studies showing how Muslim youths increasingly adopt nationalist and religious identities after experiences of harassment following 9/11 and Islamophobia, the article assesses the identity crisis of Pakistani Muslim immigrant youth as depicted in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamid, 2007) and Homeboy (Naqvi, 2010). We explore how these two authors show that these reactive identities are ideological constructs arising from highly diversified negotiations of the complex configuration of sociocultural and political factors in the post-9/11 world.