Satanized Verses: Terrorizing Islam in John Updike's Terrorist

Abstract

This paper argues that John Updike’s Terrorist – as also The Coup--, antagonizes and misrepresents Islam as a violent, anti-woman and fanciful religion, by selectively quoting Qur’anic verses out of context. The study classifies and contextualizes Updike's discriminately quoted Qur’anic verses according to the pre-mentioned three-fold pattern and recruits a postcolonial frame to situate Updike's anti-Islam ideology and style. It turns out that Updike’s selective quoting from the Qur’an is a vicious strategy which ignores the context of the quoted verses and overlooks the many verses which refute his anti-Islam claims. That is, Terrorist belongs to Islamophobic literature and neo-colonialism and Updike is an extremist apostle of both.