University College
of Women for Arts,
Science and Education
Ain Shams University
Culture Collision in Ayub Kan-Din's “East is East” and
Hanif Kureishi's “My Son The Fanatic”.
A Thesis
Submitted to the Department of English language and
Literature University College of Women for Arts,
Science and Education
Ain Shams University
In the Fulfillment of Requirements
For the Master Degree
In English Literature
By
Rehab Farouk Mohammad Elweza
Under the Supervision of
Dr. Fadila Mohamed Fattouh
Dr Hala Bader El-Din
Professor of English Literature Professor of English Literature
University College of Women
University College of Women
Ain Shams University
Ain Shams University
Dr. Mona Anwar Wahsh
Professor of English Literature
University College of Women
Ain Shams University
2010
To the memory of my Father (may Allah rest his soul in peace), my
helpful Mother
And to
My Husband
2010
Acknowledgments
First and foremost I would like to remember my professor
Dr. Fadila Fattouh and invoke Divine care to bless her soul. She
was my teacher during my preliminary year in the Women's
College and she always supported my poor effort to find a place
among this collection of such an exquisite group of researchers.
May Allah bless her soul.
Second I would like to pray for Dr. Hala Bader El-din too.
She had a pretty soul and brilliant mentality. May Allah rest her
soul in peace too.
Indeed my words can not give Dr. Mona Wahsh what she
really deserves from appreciation and gratitude. Were it not for
her guides, support and motherly forbearance, I would not fulfill
this thesis. Dr Mona, I really owe you everything, thanks
forever.
Preface
The clash of civilizations is a concept that has been widely
spread nowadays. This theory mainly focuses on Islam as the
rival for the western culture. From the western nations' point of
view, the theory of clash of civilizations is responsible for the
clashes that occur between the British natives and the Pakistani
Muslims who live in Britain. Indeed 9 September explosions in
the United States of America and Ben Laden's declaration that
Al-Qaida is responsible for these attacks put the Muslims
everywhere in a very critical situation. Also the series of attacks
in Britain and other western countries revived the theory of the
clash of civilizations between the western culture and the
Islamic culture. Islam, the religion of peace and mercy has been
turned into a religion of killing and destruction.
The Pakistani Muslim immigrants who immigrated to
Britain in the 1960 and 1970 were the reel victims of this theory
along with the terrorist attacks because they are treated as aliens
and terrorists who seek destroying their society. These
immigrants were ill-treated since they came to Britain due to
numerous reasons. The terrorist attacks that invade Europe
especially Britain and the United States of America complicated
the situation of the Pakistani immigrants more and more. They
were ill-treated and now they became criminalized. The
researcher chose to analyze East is East for Ayub Khan El-Din
and My Son the Fanatic for Hanif Kureishi because both these
dramas are copies of the Pakistani immigrants' life in the racial
Britain.
The Introduction of this thesis discusses the essence of the
variety of creation and the reasons of clash between the Muslims
and the West from. The Introduction also displays in brief the
images of clash since the crusades to the modern crises between
the West and Islam.
Chapter I discusses the Background of the Pakistani
immigrants in Britain. The ill-treatment they faced and the racial
prejudice and discrimination they were subject to in education,
housing, health and employment. Later this chapter focuses on
the minority drama and its reflection of the situation of these
immigrants with most of the problems and difficulties they went
through. It ends with a survey of the Pakistani minority
playwrights and some of their playwrights.
Chapter II displays culture collision as it appear through the
relationship between the kids and their father in East is East.
The influence of a mixed race marriage upon the children is
intensified in East is East. The clash of culture between the
Pakistani Muslim immigrants and the British natives who still
dream of their past imperialism and see the Pakistanis as their
slaves lead to a family clash between a father and his children.
The father who failed to find an identity for himself wants to
find an identity for his kids but he used wrong ways to achieve
his goal. He used the same ways that were used against him
from the racial society he lived in; he used violence, obligation
and aggression.
Chapter III explores My Son the Fanatic and how the
second generation of the immigrants is full of rage and anger on
the humiliation, scorn and underestimation they face in their
everyday life. The rejection of the British society to some of its
members because they are Pakistanis led some of these young
immigrants to exclude those who excluded them before. The
young boy Farid joins Islamic radicalism to revenge of his racist
society. he has become a criminal instead of becoming a good
citizen due to the underestimation and scorn he and his father
faced inside this society.
The Conclusion epitomizes what the researcher explored in
both the dramas and how both the writers perfectly depicted the
difficulties their community went through .Both dramas are plea
for the British society to reconsider its relationship to the
Pakistani immigrants and to treat them as British citizens .East
is East and My son the Fanatic are messages for the whole world
to replace the clash of civilizations with the intercultural
dialogue of civilizations.
Introduction
Part I
Culture: A Survey of Culture Definition.
Since creation, people and nations have been subject to violence
and fighting. These actions can often occur for many reasons,
two of them either to defend rights or to capture the others'
rights. These violent actions used to be carried out by wars but
nowadays there is another form of these violent actions which is
called terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11 attacks on the United
States of America and the Madrid and London bombings,
Muslims all over the world especially the Afghani and the
Pakistani were accused of being terrorists. Ekaterina Stepanova
in her book Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological
and Structural Aspects (2008) defines terrorism as:
Intentional use or threat to use violence against civilians
and non combatants by a non-state actor in a symmetrical
confrontation in order to achieve political goals. The term
"terror" is largely used to indicate clandestine, low-intensity
violence that targets civilians and generates public fear (11).
During the European occupation in the twentieth century
the Italian called the Libyan 'Mojahedeen' terrorists and the
Algerians suffered the same with the French during their fight
for their independence. Hence the word "terrorist" is not a new
vocabulary specified to special nations or people. As stated by
David Whittaker in his book Terrorists and Terrorism (2004)
"The Romans were the first to invent this word to describe
Crimbi Tribe who was threatening their borders in 105 BC and
the western people used it to describe those people who acted
against their self interest" (19).The first crime on earth is the
killing of Able to his brother Cain is considered a terrorist attack
too.
Nowadays the word terrorists is a main terminology
associated to Muslims. The West attributes this trait to most of
the Muslims everywhere not only 'Al-Qaida' or the Pakistani but
most of the Muslims and the eastern nations in general.
Sometimes even Christians who belong to the Eastern nations
like The Pop Shenoda the Third who was stopped and searched
at Hethero airport in England on the thirtieth of March 2008.
The West attributed the terrorists' attacks of Muslims against
them to what they call the clash of civilizations between the
West and the East; they widely spread this notion everywhere as
their only explanation to this phenomenon. The researcher
focuses upon the reasons for these accusations and their
consequences.
Because the clash of civilizations between the East and
the West is the main reason for the Muslims' accusation of
terrorism from the western point of view, this term should be
spotlighted. In order to define culture collision, the term culture
should be recognized first. The term was first used by the
pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book
Primitive Culture (1974).Tylor said that culture is "that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals,
customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society”(1). Since Tylor's time, the concept of
culture has become the central focus of anthropology. In order
to define the culture clash between the East and the West, the
researcher has to look for the definitions of culture in the
postcolonial period because the Two World Wars changed most
of the world especially from the ideological perspective.
Raymond Williams in his Keywords (1985) puts forth three
interrelated modern uses of the term culture as “a general
process of intellectual and aesthetic development”, “a particular
way of life of a people, a period or a group”, and finally “the
works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic
activity”(80). Although Williams gathered most of the possible
definitions for this term, the second one can be mostly applied
for this thesis' main concern. Edward Said's definitions of
culture are even more relevant because he defined it from his
study of the western mentality regarding the eastern nations. In
his book Culture and Imperialism (1994), culture refers to "all
practices and rituals that are separate from the economic, social
and political spheres and that exist in aesthetic forms. These
aesthetic forms include the novel, art, poetry, etc" (xxiii). The
second definition that Said uses is “a concept that includes a
refining and elevating element. This part of culture causes a
battle between political and ideological thought, helping it to be
a source for the construction of identity"(xxiii). The author
states that resistance to imperialism advanced at the same rate as
imperialism itself. The increase in imperialism and resistance
causes a change in culture and a reconstruction of identity.
The researcher considers these definitions as typical
explanations of the term culture. It is a fact that culture
legislates how people within any society act, think and behave.
This system controls everything in their life and distinguishes
them from any other society. Every country all over the world
differs from the other in its culture; consequently they differ in
their behaviour, in their way of dressing, in their thoughts, and
in their traditions. Inside one culture people could be divided
into two parts: one that has been preserving the historical
identities and resists the temptation to abandon the traditional
ways. This section is often faithful to traditions and customs and
does great effort to keep its heritage from one generation to the
next. The other sector rejects their culture and owes no respect
to its customs or its traditions. They underestimate the heritage.
They dislike it and do not care much if they violate its rules.
They often try to evade their culture.
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner in their book Riding
the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity (1998)
mentioned three layers or levels of culture that are part of any
learned behavior patterns and perceptions. Most obviously the
first layer, which is called the 'National Culture', is the body of
cultural traditions that distinguishes any specific society. When
people speak of Italian, French, or Japanese culture, they are
referring to the shared language, traditions, and beliefs that set
each of these peoples apart from others. In most cases, those
who share one culture do so because they acquired it as they
were raised up by their parents and other family members who
have it (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner:20).
The second layer of culture, which is called “the
international culture”, consists of cultural universals. These are
learned behavior patterns that are shared by all of humanity
collectively. No matter where people live in the world, they
share these universal traits. Examples of such "human cultural"
traits include: Communicating with a verbal language consisting
of a limited set of sounds and grammatical rules for constructing
sentences, using age and gender to classify people (e.g.,
teenager, senior citizen, woman, man),classifying people based
on marriage and descent relationships and having kinship terms
to refer to them (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin).Also raising
children in some sort of family setting, having a sexual division
of labor (e.g., men's work versus women's work, having a
concept of privacy, having rules to regulate sexual behavior,
distinguishing between good and bad behavior are all
"international culture" (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner:
20).
While all cultures have these and possibly many other
universal traits, different cultures have developed their own
specific ways of carrying out or expressing them. People in
China eat with sticks; others eat with spoons, others with forks,
and others with their hands. The rituals of marriage differ in
Egypt from those in South Africa or Britain. The same actions
are done everywhere but differently. Richard Lewis says in his
book When Cultures Collide (2005):
People of different cultures share basic concepts, but
view them from different angles and perspectives leading
them to behave in a manner which we may consider
irrational or even in direct contradiction of what we hold
sacred (2).
The third layer of culture that is part of one's identity is a
subculture. In complex, diverse societies in which people have
come from many different parts of the world through
immigration, they often retain much of their original cultural
traditions. As a result, they are likely to be part of an
identifiable subculture in their new society. The shared cultural
traits of subcultures set them apart from the rest of their
society. Examples of easily identifiable subcultures in Britain
include ethnic groups such as Anglo-Pakistani, Anglo-Indian,
and Anglo-African. Members of each of these subcultures share
a common identity, food, tradition, dialect or language, and
other cultural traits that come from their common ancestral
background and experience. As the cultural differences
between members of a subculture and the dominant national
culture blur and eventually disappear, the subculture ceases to
exist in the form of a group of people who claim a common
ancestry. That is generally the case with the Australian people
who migrated to Britain long ago. Most of them identify
themselves as British first. They also see themselves as being
part of the cultural mainstream of the nation (Trompenaars and
Hampden-Turner: 21).
Subculture also exists within one society. In most of the
world’s countries we can find differences between the people
who live in the north of this country and people who live in the
south, people who live in the east and those who live in the
west. Sometimes they are completely different. We may find
many dialects within one culture, different kinds of clothing,
food, and traditions. But normally these kinds of differences
don’t have much effect on the national identity.
Part II
A-The Clash of Civilizations in Islam and Christianity:
How do different cultures know each other? How do they
meet? From early creation trade was the first means in culture
exchange; merchants were the first people who carried their
culture to another society and vice versa. Then the explorers and
travellers who documented their journeys and the different
cultures they saw. Yet the immediate contact took place with the
invasion which helped to transmit whole cultures to different
societies. This was the direct mixture between two cultures in
one society. Through colonization came the immigration of the
colonizers to the colonized. Then more waves of immigration to
and from most of the world’s countries took place. Nowadays
culture exchange takes place through mass media, the satellites
and the internet.
What is the relation between different cultures? What is the
main reason for the creation of different kinds of cultures and
societies? What are the fundamentals of the communication
among cultures and societies? In the Holy Qur'an the main goal
of creating different races is the progression and development of
mankind. This development would occur through peace and
integration. Each culture should support and complete the other.
It should make use of each development or discovery the other
has achieved through peaceful relations:
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair)of male
and female ,and made you into nations and tribes ,that ye
may know each other (not that ye may despise each other
).Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is
(He who is) the most righteous. And Allah has full
knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)”
(Abudallah Yusuf Ali 49:13).
‫"يا أيها الناس إنا خلقناكم من ذكر وأنثى وجعلناكم شعوبا ً وقبائل لتعارفوا إن‬
)13:‫" (الحجرات‬.‫أكرمكم عند هللا أتقاكم إن هللا عليم خبير‬
The progress of mankind from the early ages till the present
proves this theory. All mankind should support each other and
make use of the progress that any society has achieved:
“And didn’t Allah check one set of people by means of other,
the earth would indeed be full of mischief. But Allah is full of
bounty to all the worlds” (1:251).
‫”ولوال دفع هللا الناس بعضهم ببعض لفسدت األرض ولكن هللا ذو فضل على‬
)251:‫العالمين"(البقرة‬
In Islam, there is not any kind of difference between
people in one nation or in different nations. All mankind are
equal and they should co-operate for the sake of the progress
and development of all humanity. The history of the Islamic
civilization also witnesses great variation in the population of its
countries. During the Abbasid Caliphate when the Muslims
were the most developed nations all over the world, the Islamic
countries were crowded with people from different nations and
different religions and they all formed a strong unity and helped
each other to make the best use of this variation to achieve the
progress that the Muslims had. Dr El Sayed Ataa Allah
Mahgrany says in his book The West and Islam (2006):
We witnessed many ideological, religious and scholarly trends.
And it was normal that during that period not any kind of
variations appeared because of the good characteristics of that
period especially the love and the acceptance for the others. In
the House of Wisdom which was the most important centre for
the science and translation of scientific researches, no body
used to ask about the other's religion or deny his belief so the
Jews, the Christians, the Judaism, the Magus' and the Muslims
used to live peacefully with each other. For example:
1-The family of Bakhteshoa, the sons of Gerheos
the Seriac who was the physician of El Mansor
the Abbasid.
2-The family of Hanin, the sons of Hanin
Ibn Ishaq Al Abady, who was the head of translator was a
Christian from El-Hera (82).
‫ومن الطبيعي أال يظهر فيي‬.‫شاهدنا تيارات مختلفة ومتعددة فكرية ودينية ومذهبية‬
‫هذا العصر اى نوع من التعددية نظر لما يتسم به هذا العصر من خصائص أهمها‬
‫ففي بيييك الحكمييةاهم مرك ي للعلييو‬.‫علييى االقييب أل ي األخيير مداراتييه وقبولييه‬
‫والبحوث ونقل مختلف العلو في ذالك العصر لم يكن األيد يسي ع عين ديين األخير‬
‫وال يتصييييدى النكييييار مييييا يعتقييييد األخيييير ولهييييذا كييييان النصييييراني واليهييييود‬
‫والهندوسىوالبوذى والمجوسيي والمسيلم يعينيون بعضيهم ميع بعيض ونيذكر مينهم‬
:‫على سبيل المثاع‬
‫أبناء جرأليوس السرياني الذ كان قبيبا للمنصور العباسي‬،‫آع بختينوع‬
‫ أبناء ألنين بن إسحا العبادى "شيخ المترجمين "وكان من نصارى‬،‫أع ألنين‬
.)82( ‫الحيرة‬
Dr Mahgrany continues to mention people who belong to
different ethnic groups and different religions. There was a huge
variation in the unity of the Islamic society without any conflict
or violence among these groups but on the contrary the variation
was a main reason for the development because every one cared
about translating books from its original language. The variation
was something useful and helped to elevate the Islamic
civilization. There was no notice for the modern theory of the
clash of civilizations. In the history of the Islamic civilization,
there were so many examples of the tolerance of Islam and the
acceptance of the 'other' without discrimination or prejudice. If
the western nations who abuse the Muslims just for being
Muslims read Prophet Mohammad's (Peace be Upon Him)
hadeeth when Muslims conquered:
Abu Obeidh – peace be upon his name -said that the
Messenger of Allah Peace be upon Him wrote a letter for the
benefit of the people of Najran saying: In The Name of Allah,
The Gracious, The Most Gracious - this is what was written by
the Prophet Muhammad to the people of Najran and entourage
.. To the protection of Allah and His Messenger on their blood
and their money and their religion and their crosses, and the
sale - the churches - and their monks and bishops (646).
‫روى أبو عبيدة – رحمه هللا – أن رسول هللا صلى هللا عليه وسلم صالح أهل‬
‫نجررنن كتبرره لكررم تبابرا هللا بسرم هللا نلرررحمن نلرررحيم – هر ن مرا تببرره محمررد نلنبر هررل‬
‫نجرررنن وحاترريبكاهه لك ر م م رهللا هللا ورسرروله علررى دمررااكم وأمررونلكم وملرربكم وصررلبانكم‬
.)646:‫وبيعكم – أي تنااسكم – ورهبانكم وأساقفبكم(في سبيل الهدى والرشاد‬
Why do civilizations and cultures clash or collide with each
other? How does integration fail? The long history of mankind
since creation proves that any clash happens due to aggression
and selfishness from one side of the two cultures. The wars are
apparent manifestations of the greed of a man or a nation to
dominate another. As Joel Kovel noted in White Racism (1994)
"I shall consider our racial dilemma as the product of the
historical unfolding of western culture"(3).The history of
colonization everywhere witnesses that any violence between
two cultures is not based on the feeling of equality and
integration but it is based on selfishness, greed, tyranny and the
desire for dominating others. The Holy Qur'an declares the
reasons of culture clash 1400 years ago:
"Mankind was a single nation, and Allah sent Messengers
with glad tidings and warnings and with them He sent
The Book in Truth, to judge between people in matters
where in they differed, but the people of the Book, after
clear signs came to them, didn’t differ among themselves
except through selfish contumacy. Allah by His Grace
guides the believers to the Truth" (2:213).
‫"كييان النيياس اميية واألييدة فبع ي هللا النبييين مبنييرين ومنييذرين وان ي ع معهييم‬
‫الكتيياب بييالحح ليييحكم بييين النيياس فيمييا اختلفييوا فيييه ومييا اختلييف فيييه إال الييذين‬
‫اوتو من بعد ما جاءتهم البينات بغيا بينهم فهدى هللا اليذين امنيوا لميا اختلفيوا‬
‫فيييييه ميييين الحييييح بإذنييييه وهللا يهييييدى ميييين ينيييياء إلييييى صييييراق مسييييتقيم"(أع‬
.)213:‫عمران‬
The same meaning is also found in the Bible (The Old
Testament). All nations should seek peace and solidarity.
“For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken
down the middle wall partition between us, for to make in himself
of twain one new man, so making peace” (14-15,Aph2).
،‫ إذ نقيض الحيائا الحياج بينهميا‬،‫ هو الذ جعل مين النيعبين واأليدًا‬،‫ألنه هو سبمنا‬
‫وأزاع فييي جس ي د العييداوة لكييي يخلييح اال نييين فييي نفسييه إنسييانا واألييدا جديييدا صييانعا‬
.)15-14 :2 ‫سبما» (أف‬
In a TV show Called Panorama on Alarabia Channel
Father Nabeel Hadad, Pastor of the Roman Catholic and codirector of the Religious Center, said to Montaha El Romehy on
18 September,2006 that :
There cannot be a clash among civilizations, but rather an
intercultural dialogue. Hence we find that the nations that were
exposed to collision, wars and conflict between each others
also acquired mutual knowledge. In the case of turning this
conflict into a political conflict between religions, we
absolutely reject it (TV Programme I).
‫الحضارات ال يمكن أن يكون بينها صراع بل إنما ألوار ألتى أننا نجد أن األمم التي‬
‫ أما في‬،‫دار بينها ن اع وألروب وصراع كانك أيضا ً تتعلم من بعضها البعض‬
.)1( ‫قضية تحويل هذا الصراع إلى صراع بين األديان فنحن نرفض هذا تماما‬
According to most religions, cultures do not collide or
clash but they converse, and integrate with each other. If
integration is the main reason for the variety of creation and
selfishness is the main reason in violating this rule, what about
the wide spread of the modern theory of the clash of
civilizations that the West publicizes everywhere. This notion
covers a lot of the headlines of international newspapers,
magazines, research papers and books all over the world. The
West also attributes the terrorist attacks on Europe and The
United States of America to the idea of culture clash. What is
the main reason for the declaration of this idea as a modern fact
which the world should be aware of? Why does this notion
appear nowadays?
Part III-Reasons for Clash of Civilizations:
I-Historical Reasons
The theory of the clash of civilizations is spread mainly to
describe the modern situation between the West and the Muslim
countries or Islam, wherever they declare it, they often mean Islam
against the West or them versus us. The West here means the United
States of America followed by Britain then the other western
countries which agree with them and carry out their policy. George
Bush declared the names of The United States best friends' in his
Presidential Address to the Nation, October 7, 2001 from the White
House after beginning his military conquer of Afghanistan "We are
joined in this operation by our staunch friend, Great Britain. Other
close friends, including Canada, Australia, Germany and
France"(Speech: I). These countries and others nowadays see Islam
as a danger which threatens their power and their dominance over the
whole world. They see that Islam is the recent threat especially after
the deterioration of their previous threat The Soviet Union.
The United States of America sees itself as the super power
which should control and dominate everything. Thus it must
guarantee that no threat should challenge its power. The West is fully
persuaded that Islam had a great civilization before and they could
revive that civilization again if they formed a united Islamic power
especially because of the great increase in the Muslim numbers all
over the world even in the western countries. These ancient
civilizations achieved great development in different fields. During
the reign of the Muslims' caliphate, the Orthodox Caliphs (633-661) Abu Baker Elsedeek, Umar Ibn El Khatab, Osman Ibn Afan and Aly
Ibn Aby Taleb, the Umayyad Caliphate(661-750),to the Abbasid
Caliphate(750-1517) and the Ottoman Empire (1517-1924). For one
thousand a hundred and ninety three years the Islamic countries had
been the most developed civilizations in science, mathematics,
geography, medicine….etc. The Islamic conquest also threatened the
West during that long period. While the West was in dark ages as
James Franklin states in his article The Renaissance Myth(1982)
"The western countries and Europe lived in the Dark Ages from the
fifth century till the age of "Renaissance" or "Rebirth" of the
classical values in the nineteenth century"(51). Bernard Lewis in his
lecture Europe and Islam(1990)states:
Muhammad spiritual mission ended with his death,
but his religious and political mission was continued
by his successors, the caliphs. Under their rule,
Muslims progressed from one victory to another,
from triumph to triumph, creating in less than a
century a vast realm extending from the borders of
India to China to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic, and
ruling of new subjects (80).
Huntington too in his book The Clash of Civilizations and
the Remaking of the World Order (2002) confirms the same fact
"Islam is the only civilization which has put the survival of the
West in doubt and it has done that at least twice" (210).During
the Islamic conquest that freed Jerusalem and the Ottoman
Empire which threatened Spain and Europe. Most of the
western writers who wrote about the idea of the clash of
civilizations concluded the same truth in most of their writings.
They fear the Muslims’ religious influence if they commit to the
real power of Islam. Arnold Toynbee confessed in his book
Civilizations on Trial and the World and the West (1958):
Pan-Islamism is dormant — yet we have to reckon with
the possibility that the sleeper may awake if ever the
cosmopolitan proletariat of a ‘Westernized’ world revolts
against Western domination and cries out for antiWestern leadership. That call might have incalculable
psychological effects in evoking the militant spirit of
Islam — even if it had slumbered as long as the Seven
Sleepers — because it might awaken echoes of a heroic
age…. If the present situation of mankind were to
precipitate a ‘race war,’ Islam might be moved to play
her historic role once again (186).
The history witnesses that the Western civilizations'
Renaissance is less than three hundred years against more than a
thousand year of an Islamic development. However the western
countries consider themselves the leaders of the world and the
most developed forgetting their previous history of ignorance
and barbarism during the Dark Ages. The western countries and
the United States of America are completely aware of the real
power of the Muslims' countries so they do their best to weaken
the Muslims economically, socially, politically and spiritually.
The spread of the theory of the clash of civilizations and the
wars against the Muslim terrorists are forms of their great effort
to destroy the Muslims. However, Muslims should admit that
they already have feelings of anger, resentment and hatred
towards the West. But the Western countries misrepresent these
feelings and call them the clash of civilizations, while Muslims
call them feelings of anger and resentment because in Islam
there is nothing called the clash of civilizations. What are the
reasons for those feelings? The reasons are numerous. The
researcher will state some examples for these feelings.
II-Imperialism:
Civilization and culture are related concepts. A way of life
is called a culture. A culture that includes millions of people and
has developed complex systems of art, literature, music, social,
political and religious institutions may be called a civilization.
There are hundreds of cultural groups but only a limited number
of civilizations. History tells us that civilizations rise and fall
with some frequency. Many ancient civilizations, once glorious
and powerful, exist no more. Where are the civilizations of
Rome, Greece, The Pharaohs, Persia, Babylonia, Yemen, India,
China and the Islamic civilization? Although some of them are
on the ash heap of history today but it is obvious that most of
these civilizations are eastern civilizations except for Rome and
Greece. Bernard Lewis in his book The Crisis of Islam (2003)
states the West's fear of the power of the Islamic Civilization:
Islam could provide the most effective symbols and slogans
for mobilization, whether for or against a cause or a regime.
Islamic movements also have another immense advantage as
contrasted with all their competitors. In the mosques they
dispose of a network of association and communication that
even the most dictatorial of governments cannot entirely
control. Indeed, ruthless dictatorships help them,
unintentionally by eliminating competing oppositions (23).
The western countries earlier at the beginning of the
Renaissance began from where the eastern civilizations ended.
They made use of the Islamic development and used it to
achieve their recent progress. However they misused their new
development and began to colonize the eastern deteriorated
countries. Britain, France, Italy and Germany divided many
countries among them. They even fought each other to win
more colonies. Although they became developed countries, they
could not forget their barbaric history in the Dark Ages and they
treated their occupied nations in a completely uncivilized way.
Peter Hitchens writes:
We are used to thinking of Islam as a religion of
backward regions, and of backward people. But we
should remember that Muslim armies came within inches
of taking Vienna in 1683 and were only driven from
Spain in 1492. In those days it was the Islamic world that
was making the great scientific advances which we now
assume are ours by right (10).
They treated the people they conquered as slaves. They
saw themselves as the masters who have a superior position,
enjoy greater wealth, higher prestige and generally more
favourable life chances, better health and longer life, greater
material comfort and superior opportunities to develop their
potential. While the other economic position is inferior, their
social status is lower, and their chances of exercising political
power are not good. They have lower prestige, and their rights
are limited to what suits of the colonizer. It is a version of the
past which excludes not only all coloured people, but most other
'non-British' nationalities from the history of civilizations in
what is now called Britain. The view of immigration depends
on a deliberate rewriting of history because they still have the
nostalgic memory of the glorious past and the passionate desire
to regain the old strength and solidarity.
The British citizens cannot forget their previous colonial
history and still think that they are the masters and their excolonies for example the Pakistanis are still their slaves who
have no rights and should not ask for equality with them. They
deliberately exclude them from their cultural unity and ask for
repatriating them. Karen Armstrong declares to Georgie Anne
Geyer:
All of this should have been expected, but our security
people of the '90s were thinking only of the Irish problem.
What we are seeing now is the ongoing story of
colonialism. These young men are only coming here
because of the regimes that we left behind. Colonialism
didn't finish when we came home, you see. They are now
continuing it here -- it is really a new kind of nationalism
(2).
Karen Armstrong's point of view agrees with that of
Edward Said, in his book Culture and Imperialism (1994) that
the history of colonialism inherited in the British mentality is
the certain background that the British natives act according to.
Said says:
Colonialism began with enslaving another nation under
the assumption that they are unable to rule themselves.
Actually this idea is the basis for all imperial actions
through the history of mankind. Moreover, by time the
whole matter turned into a competition to prove who had
the best nationality of all. Between France and Britain in
the late eighteenth century, there were two contests: the
battle for strategic gains abroad…and the battle for a
triumphant nationality. The colonizer used the concept of
nationalism to mobilize their people back at home by
convincing them that they are superior races who have
every right in the world to seize the colonized peoples'
lands and treasures (9).
The West's occupation of the Islamic world was two-fold,
military and political as well as ideological and cultural. But
since the European attack was primarily and initially political,
the reaction against it in the Islamic world contained in its early
stages a sense of revolt against political repression only. The
Arabian and Egyptian thinker and poet Farouk Goweda states in
his article Why the West Hates Us? :
The first lessons of slavery were brought up in the
Democratic countries which now call for the Human
rights…If hatred of Muslims to the West has reasons ,the
west is mainly in charge because they fought the
underdeveloped countries, obstructed their development
by spreading ignorance and backwardness, made it fields
for his experiences and deliberately captured their best
human resources and took over all their mental and
progressive treasures through immigration .The West
(during colonization) took over all the resources of these
nations for his personal achievements (9).
‫إن أوع دروس العبودية نني ت وترعرعيك فيي بيبد اليديمقراقيات العظميى‬
‫وإذا كانك للكراهية مبيررات فيان الغيرب‬...‫التي تتغنى اآلن بحقو االنسان‬
‫هييو الييذ ألييارب الييدوع النامييية ووقييف أمييا تطورهييا عنييدما ننيير الجهييل‬
‫والتخلف وجعل منها ألقوع تجارب واستولى على أفضل عناصرها البنيرية‬
‫ونه ي عيين قصييد كييل رواتهييا الفكرييية واالبداعييية ممثليية فييي هجييرة أفضييل‬
‫العقوع فيها والغيرب هيو اليذ اسيتولى عليى ميوارد هيذ النيعوب وسيخرها‬
. ‫لمصالحه وإنجازاته‬
The colonizer’s policy was to destroy the people of their
colonies completely least they could flourish and surpass them
again. They made the colonies great markets for their goods,
they didn’t care to build factories or schools in their colonies, on
the contrary they not only neglected exchanging their culture
with them, but they also left feelings of hatred, anger and a
desire for revenge behind them. These feelings were due to their
cruelty and the racial discrimination which they practiced with
their occupied nations. Modern colonialism did more than
extract tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it
conquered, it restricted the economic of the latter, drawing them
into a complex relation with their own countries, so that there
was a flow of human and natural resources between colonized
and colonial countries. Slaves and indentured labour as well as
raw materials were transported to manufacture goods. Ania
Loomba states in her book Colonialism-Postcolonialism(2005)
"Thus we could say that colonialism was the midwife that
assisted at the birth of European capitalism, or without colonial
expansion the transition to capitalism couldn’t have taken place
in Europe" (4).
Edward Said in his book Orientalism (2003) examined the
works of some of the orientalists who wrote about the Arab and
Islam and he found that most of their writings were not
objective or neutral. It essentializes an image of a prototypical
Orient,a biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar,
and unchanging to be depicted in dominating and sexual terms.
The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced with
notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to
facilitate a colonizing mission on the part of the West and was
perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies.
Said found that the depictions of "the Arab" as irrational,
menacing, untrustworthy, anti-Western, dishonest, and--perhaps
most importantly--prototypical, are ideas into which Orientalist
scholarship has evolved. These notions are trusted as
foundations for both ideologies and policies developed by the
Occident. Said states:
Knowledge of east could never be innocent or objective
because it was produced by human beings who were
necessarily embedded in colonial history and
relationships..For orientalism was ultimately a political
vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference
between the familiar (Europe, the West," us”) and the
strange (The Orient, The East," them” )(43).
III- Political Reasons:
The enmity between the West and Islam is not religious or
cultural, it’s political. This result was concluded by many
thinkers and researchers. They found that politics is responsible
for the wide spread of the modern notion of the collision of
civilizations. It even guides popular culture, often possessing a
greater influence over one's imagination and decisions. Politics,
moreover, invades popular culture, often suppressing or
exacerbating concerns that first emerged in other supposedly
political venues. Edward Said writes about the idea of
Orientalism:
My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a
political doctrine willed over the Orient because the
Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the
Orient’s difference with its weakness. As a cultural
apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity,
judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge (204).
The western policy sees Islam and Muslim countries as
dangerous rivals to their domination over the whole world. They
fear the Islamic power that flourished before is going to rise at
any time and destroy their authority over the world. With their
awareness of this fact, they draw the international sphere of the
world policy to attack and destroy Islam in order not to surpass
and exceed their own civilization. Then the western
governments began to attack Islam and to distort its nature to be
presented as a barbaric and demonized religion. The theory of
the clash of civilizations that the West spread recently is another
subtle way of misrepresenting Muslims as Edward Said declares
in his article Clash of Ignorance that “Labels like 'Islam' and
'the West' :They mislead and confuse the mind”(12).
Politics often exploit the thinkers and writers who support
its goals to publicize whatever they want through their writings.
These thinkers with the power of their writings are massive
weapons which could direct a whole nation to believe in any
idea the general policy wish to release. The concept of the clash
of civilizations was invented by thinkers who publicized it and
devoted much of their writings to convince the western people
of its validity. Among these writers are Bernard Lewis(1916-)
,Samuel P Huntington(1927-2008),Oriana Fallaci(1926-2006),
and Francis Fukuyama(1952-).The researcher mentions these
writers namely because they are trustful thinkers that have
attracted the attention of the world's intellectual community and
because their literary productions used to have much respect
and approval from their nations. However they misused this
trust and estimation and persuaded the public with ideas that
were absolutely wrong, ideas that do not even elevate to the
intellectual standard of academic writing.
Bernard Lewis was the pioneer who spoke about the
theory of conflict between the East and the West and the danger
of Islam upon the western nations. The phrase 'the clash of
civilizations' was first used by Lewis in a meeting in
Washington in 1957. It is recorded in the transcript and is used
commonly(Malcolm Holt:1).Bernard Lewis was born to a
middle class Jewish family in London in 1916. He specialized in
the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the
West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works
on the history of the Ottoman Empire. His studies about the
Middle East and Islam qualified him to be the consultant for the
American government for the Middle East affairs especially the
former Bush administration as mentioned by Jacob Weisberg.
He wrote twenty seven books all about the Middle East, the
Ottoman Empire and the history of Islam and Prophet
Mohammad (PBUH).But unfortunately all these writings are
against Islam and the Muslims' history. Bernard Lewis is seen as
the "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the
Middle East" as stated by Martin Kramer in the Encyclopedia of
Historians and Historical Writing(719), his works influenced the
western public deeply. After the 9th of September, many of his
books against Islam were reprinted again and found great
appreciation. He among others was seen as a hero who warned
the western nations from the Islamic threat. Among his most
celebrated books are Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the
Capture of Constantinople (1987), The Political Language of
Islam (1988), Islam and the West (1993),Islam in History (1993)
,Cultures in Conflict (1994) , The Muslim Discovery of Europe
(2001) ,What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and
Modernity in the Middle East (2002),The Crisis of Islam: Holy
War and Unholy Terror (2003),Islam: The Religion and the
People(2004). Most of these books are filled with false
information and generalizations about Islam and the Middle
East.Bernard Lewis who has Jewish roots is deeply influenced
by the Jewish-Islamic struggle. In The Roots of Muslim Rage
published in the Atlantic he states:
We are facing a need and a movement far transcending
the level of issues and policies and the governments that
pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an
ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our
secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both
(60).
Lewis saw the clash of civilizations as basically a clash of
religions namely Christianity versus Islam and he tried hard in
most of his books to establish this theory in the mentality of all
the western nations. He sees that Islam came and captured its
current land from the Christians. He says in his famous article
I'm Right. You are Wrong. Go to Hell:
When two religions met in the Mediterranean area, each
claiming to be the recipient of God's final revelation,
conflict was inevitable. The conflict, in fact, was almost
continuous: the first Arab-Islamic invasions took Islam by
conquest to the then Christian lands of Syria, Palestine,
Egypt, and North Africa, and, for a while, to Southern
Europe; the Tatars took it into Russia and Eastern Europe;
and the Turks took it into the Balkans. To each advance
came a Christian rejoinder: the Reconquista in Spain, the
Crusades in the Levant, the throwing off of what the
Russians call the Tatar yoke in the history of their country,
and, finally, the great European counterattack into the lands
of Islam, which is usually called imperialism (37).
He puts the Muslims' Jihad in a confrontation with the
Crusades while the word crusade was used several times lately
especially after the terrible events of the 9th of September by the
previous president Bush "A crusade against terrorists"(Speech
1). So Lewis puts the entire Islamic world in confrontation with
the Christian nations of the West. He calls for the globalization
of the Islamic countries by separating the secular matters from
the religious ones:
Christianity and Islam are the two religions that define
civilizations, and they have much in common, along with
some differences. In English and in most of the other
languages of the Christian world we have two words,
"Christianity" and "Christendom." Christianity is a religion, a
system of belief and worship with certain ecclesiastical
institutions. Christendom is a civilization that incorporates
elements that are non-Christian or even anti-Christian. Hitler
and the Nazis, it may be recalled, are products of
Christendom, but hardly of Christianity. When we talk of
Islam, we use the same word for both the religion and the
civilization, which can lead to misunderstanding. The late
Marshall Hodgson, a distinguished historian of Islam at the
University of Chicago, was, I think, the first to draw attention
to this problem, and he invented the word "Islamdom"
Unfortunately, "Islamdom" is awkward to pronounce and just
didn't catch on, so the confusion remains. (In Turkish there is
no confusion, because "Islam" means the civilization, and
"Islamiyet" refers specifically to the religion (I'm Right. You
are Wrong. Go to Hell : 38).
Lewis sees that the East is completely backward and
undeveloped for its whole history and the only hope to achieve
progress is to stick to the Western values and customs and he
calls the western nations to help the Muslims to realize the
western growth. He states that in his article Freedom and
Justice in the Modern Middle East published in the Foreign
Affairs:
Modern communications have also had another effect, in
making Middle Eastern Muslims more painfully aware of
how badly things have gone wrong. In the past, they were
not really conscious of the differences between their world
and the rest. They did not realize how far they were falling
behind not only the advanced West, but also the advancing
East -- first Japan, then China, India, South Korea, and
Southeast Asia -- and practically everywhere else in terms
of standard of living, achievement, and, more generally,
human and cultural development. Even more painful than
these differences are the disparities between groups of
people in the Middle East itself (40).
Dr Lewis does not only try to present his opinion but he
does his best to convince the public opinion that Islam and the
Prophet (PBUH) are all false notions. He sees that the Qur'an is
in contradiction with what the Prophet was doing:
The Koran, for example, makes it clear that there is a duty of
obedience: "Obey God, obey the Prophet, obey those who
hold authority over you." And this is elaborated in a number
of sayings attributed to Muhammad. But there are also
sayings that put strict limits on the duty of obedience. Two
dicta attributed to the Prophet and universally accepted as
authentic are indicative. One says, "There is no obedience
in sin"; in other words, if the ruler orders something
contrary to the divine law, not only is there no duty of
obedience, but there is a duty of disobedience. This is more
than the right of revolution that appears in Western political
thought. It is a duty of revolution, or at least of
disobedience and opposition to authority. The other
pronouncement, "do not obey a creature against his
creator," again clearly limits the authority of the ruler,
whatever form of ruler that may be (Freedom and Justice in
the Modern Middle East :40).
That is Professor Bernard Lewis who aroused the theory
of the clash of civilizations and spent most of his academic
career to prove it and who was included by the Time as one of
its list of 100 most influential scientists and thinkers(Elliott:17).
Dr Edward Said refuted most of Lewis's writing and uncovered
his motives behind his falsehoods against Islam. He said about
him in his article Impossible Histories: Why the Many Islams
Cannot Be Simplified:
Lewis came to the United States in the mid-seventies and
was quickly drafted into service as a Cold Warrior,
applying his traditional Orientalist training to larger and
larger questions, which had as their immediate aim an
ideological portrait of "Islam" and the Arabs that suited
dominant pro-imperial and pro-Zionist strands in U.S.
foreign policy…. Except for anachronisms like Lewis. In a
stream of repetitious, tartly phrased books and articles that
resolutely ignored any of the recent advances of knowledge
in anthropology, history, social theory, and cultural studies,
he persisted in such "philological" tricks as deriving an
aspect of the predilection in contemporary Arab Islam for
revolutionary violence from Bedouin descriptions of a
camel rising. For the reader, however, there was no
surprise, no discovery to be made from anything Lewis
wrote, since it all added up in his view to confirmations of
the Islamic tendency to violence, anger, antimodernism, as
well as Islam's (and especially the Arabs') closedmindedness, its fondness for slavery, Muslims' inability to
be concerned with anything but themselves, and the like
(69).
Yet many writers and thinkers attacked Lewis' writings
claiming that they do not elevate to the standard of an academic
research because they are filled with falsehoods and illogical
generalizations about Islam without using the scientific methods
of analysis. Some Arab writers like Dr El Sayed Ataa Allah Al
Mahgrany(1954),Dr Hasan Hanafy(1953-), Dr. Mohammad
Anany(1939-)Who translated What Went Wrong into Arabic in
2003 and commented on it, and Abd Alateef Altebawy(1910-
1981)concluded that Lewis is writing through his Jewish
inherited hatred for the Muslims. Although he always pretends
to be neutral and logical by showing some admiration to the
Islamic civilization and the Muslims in a few attitudes but the
fact is that he wanders through the Islamic history choosing
elements to enrich his hatred to Islam, making false
generalizations(Mahgrany:20).In a lecture given by Dr Edward
Brian held at Cairo University on 10 March 2009, the researcher
asked professor Brian about his opinion in Bernard Lewis'
theory "the clash of civilizations" and he said "I completely
disagree with Dr Lewis and consider his theory irrational and
even undergraduates would not accept it, forget about him, he is
so old to think about his theories"(Interview I).
Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky in an
interview called 9-11 with Evan Solomon in the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's in a Hot Type program, agrees with
Dr Brian's view; he states "we know that Lewis is just a vulgar
propagandist and not a scholar. Lewis has been called the most
significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq,
who urged regime change in Iraq to provide a jolt that — he
argued — would "modernize the Middle East (TV Programme
II). The most famous writers who strongly refuted most of
Lewis' writings were Edward Said and T.B Irving. At a
roundtable organised by Al-Ahram Weekly to discuss the theory
of "the clash of civilizations" and how to face it Edward Said
suggested that "Lewis' knowledge of the Middle East was so
biased it could not be taken seriously, Bernard Lewis hasn't set
foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years.
He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows
nothing about the Arab world"(7). And in Said's essay Clash of
Ignorance, he considered that "Lewis treats Islam as a
monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal
dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of
"demagogy and downright ignorance"(12).
There were also other thinkers who adopted Lewis's theory
and tried to enhance it. Samuel Huntington acknowledged that
"Lewis' 1990 The Roots of Muslim Rage coined his term "Clash
of Civilizations"(Michael Hirsh 13). The theory was originally
formulated in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise
Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs
article titled The Clash of Civilizations in response to Francis
Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last
Man(1992). Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Huntington sees that the clash among civilizations is absolute,
His article and the book confirm that post–Cold War conflict
would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural
rather than ideological differences "The next world war, if there
is one, will be a war between civilizations" (22). He divided the
world among the most powerful civilizations from his point of
view identifying seven, and a possible eight civilizations:
Western, Latin American, Islamic, Sinic (Chinese), Hindu,
Orthodox, Japanese, and the African. This cultural organization
contrasts the contemporary world with the classical notion of
sovereign states. To understand current and future conflict,
cultural rifts must be understood, and culture — rather than the
State — must be accepted as the locus of war. Thus, western
nations will lose predominance if they fail to recognize the
irreconcilable nature of cultural tensions. He said in his article
The Clash of Civilizations:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict
in this new world will not be primarily ideological or
primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind
and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.
Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world
affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will
occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.
The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The
fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of
the future (22).
Huntington argued that it was not only wrong, but also
conceited and dangerous to think that the Western Civilization
had a universalistic nature. Huntington believed that while the
age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a
normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his
thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future
would be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he
posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest
rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in
analyzing the potential for conflict. The final sentence of his
1996 book confirms his theory "In the emerging era, clashes of
civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an
international order based on civilizations in the surest safeguard
against world war" (321).Huntington mentioned seven axis that
he thinks will affect the world peace. However he sees that
Islam is the most dangerous threat on the western dominance
over the whole world. He says in his book:
On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is
seen as a clash of civilizations. The West's "next
confrontation," observes M. J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim
author, "is definitely going to come from the Muslim world.
It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Meghreb
to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will
begin (220).
It seems that Huntington is one of Bernard Lewis' faithful
students. He spreads his thoughts and confirms them starting
from the theory of the clash of civilizations ending with the fear
of Islamic power to dominate the world again:
Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic
civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the
founding of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and
north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the
thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary
success to bring Christianity and Christian rule to the Holy
Land. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, the
Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway
over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured
Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at Ottoman power
declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western
control over most of North Africa and the Middle East
(200).
Huntington regards the Chinese and the Islamic
civilizations as most dangerous challengers to the Western
civilization. Huntington argues that the Islamic civilization has
experienced a massive population explosion which is fueling
instability both on the borders of Islam and in its interior, where
fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular.
Manifestations of what he terms the "Islamic Resurgence"
include the 1979 Iranian revolution and the first Gulf war.
Perhaps the most controversial statement Huntington made in
the Foreign Affairs article was that "Islam has bloody borders"
(22). Huntington believes this to be a real consequence of
several factors, including the previously mentioned Muslim
youth bulge and population growth and Islamic proximity to
many civilizations including Sinic, Orthodox, Western, and
African. Huntington also sees Islamic civilization as a potential
ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing
common conflicts with other civilizations, especially the West
"The most prominent form of this cooperation is the ConfucianIslamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western
interests, values and power"(22). Specifically, he identifies
common Chinese and Islamic interests in the areas of weapons
proliferation, human rights, and democracy that conflict with
those of the West, and feels that these are areas in which the two
civilizations will cooperate. Russia, Japan, and India are what
Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side.
Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic
groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but cooperates
with Iran in order to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in
Southern Russia and in an attempt to continue the flow of oil.
Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging
in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan,
and other states to augment its international position (322).
Huntington also argues that civilization conflicts are
"particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", He
sees Islam as the monster that sheds blood on its borders
"Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and
Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India,
Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has
bloody borders"(22). This conflict dates back as far as the initial
thrust of Islam into Europe, its eventual expulsion in the
Spanish reconquest, the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on
Eastern Europe and Vienna, and the European imperial division
of the Islamic nations in the 1800s and 1900s. More recent
factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash, Huntington
wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion
in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism - that
is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists. All these historical and
modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his
Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996
book, would lead to a bloody clash between Islamic and
Western civilizations. Along with Sinic-Western conflict, he
believed, the Western-Islamic clash would represent the
bloodiest conflicts of the early 21st century. Although, the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent events
including the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been widely
viewed as a vindication of the Clash of civilizations' theory, but
factually Huntington’s theory uncovered the West’s thoughts
and conspiracy to destroy Muslims as self defense. However,
Huntington’s theory was refuted by many thinkers from his own
culture. It was a theory that paid much attention in newspapers
magazines, books and even in TV shows. Huntington like his
teacher Lewis puts his recommendations to the western nations.
He advises them to strongly control the eastern nations and
weaken them politically and military:
It is clearly in the interest of the West to promote greater
cooperation and unity within its own civilization,
particularly between its European and North American
components; to incorporate into the West societies in
Eastern Europe and Latin America whose cultures are close
to those of the West; to promote and maintain cooperative
relations with Russia and Japan; to prevent escalation of
local inter-civilization conflicts into major inter-civilization
wars; to limit the expansion of the military strength of
Confucian and Islamic states; to moderate the reduction of
counter military capabilities and maintain military
superiority in East and Southwest Asia; to exploit
differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic
states; to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic
to Western values and interests; to strengthen international
institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests and
values and to promote the involvement of non-Western
states in those institutions(22).
He ends his article with his advice to control the eastern
nations politically, psychologically and intellectually:
This will require the West to maintain the economic and
military power necessary to protect its interests in relation
to these civilizations. It will also, however, require the West
to develop a more profound understanding of the basic
religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other
civilizations and the ways in which people in those
civilizations see their interests. It will require an effort to
identify elements of commonality between Western and
other civilizations. For the relevant future, there will be no
universal civilization, but instead a world of different
civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist
with the others (22).
Huntington's theory found great attention and was revived
after September 2001. However many thinkers confronted it
seriously and tried to refute it in newspapers magazines, books
and even in TV shows. In TV the topic was discussed by many
programmes, the most famous one was Think-Tank when it
tackled this topic in a very controversial talk show aired 19
October 1995 on PBS television:
MR. WATTENBERG: The topic before this house: 'Islam and the
West: Is there a clash of cultures?’ this week on 'Think
Tank.’ The West has long seen Islam as a rival culture. A
thousand years of conflict, from the Crusades to the recent
Gulf war and terrorism in New York and Paris, have
bolstered this view. But is the clash perception or reality.
Joining us to discuss the role of Islam in the modern world
is Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the
School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins
University; Dr. Fouad let me ask you a question. A few
years ago, Samuel Huntington wrote a very controversial
article in 'Foreign Affairs' called 'The Clash of
Civilizations.' May be you could just lay out his thesis, I
know you have a problem with it.
MR. AJAMI: I wrote a response in 'Foreign Affairs' to Sam
Huntington, entitled, 'The Summoning.' My response to
Huntington was almost interesting that Huntington, who has
been one of the most brilliant students of the state, decided
to dispose of nation states. The idea that civilizations are
blocs, that you can take a look at the whole length and
breadth of the Muslim world, all the way from Morocco to
Indonesia, and subsume it under one category, was false
because, several societies in the Muslim world are in
trouble, they are in trouble because they cannot compete in
a modern world economy (TV Programme II).
Among the critical reactions to Huntington's treatise, the
following papers are of especially excellent quality, Stephen M.
Walt, "Building up New Bogeyman," Foreign Policy, spring
1997, Donald J. Puchala, "International Encounters of Another
Kind," Global Society, January 1997, and John Ikenberry, "Just
Like the Rest," Foreign Affairs, March-April 1997. Although all
these thinkers refuted and still refute Huntington’s theory. Not
only Western thinkers have reaction to the theory of the clash of
civilizations but also there are many Arab thinkers who wrote
about the widespread of this theory. Most of them refused it on
the basis of their understanding to the history of mankind and to
the teachings of our Holy Qur'an. Dr Mohammad Hassanen
Hekel in Egypt, Dr Moneer Khory in Lebanon, Mr. Amr Mousa,
and many other thinkers wrote about this theory and most of
them refute Samuel Huntington's theory. Dr Hekal wrote in El
Araby Magazine:
I agree with the school that refutes clash of civilizations or
even the intercultural dialogue of civilizations, the reason is
that all the world nations’ advancement and progress were
poured in one universal civilization …In fact we turn the
political struggle into wars of culture identity that withdraw
from the universal and comprehensive human progress
which with any provocation turns into sedition, then turn
the sedition into war, and the war into boycott, and the
boycott turns into self –siege. Unfortunately the Arabic and
Islamic governments consciously or unconsciously acted
with shortsightedness in dealing with the crisis. Mostly they
tried to use that sedition in diversion and distraction (1).
‫إننييي قري ي ميين مدرسيية تييرجس أنييه ليييك هنيياس مييا يمكيين أن نسييميه صييراع‬
‫ والسييب أن هنيياس ألضييارة إنسييانية واألييدة‬-‫ أو ألييوار ألضييارات‬- ‫ألضييارات‬
‫ على قوع التاريخ أفضيل ميا توصيلك ليه‬،‫صبك فيها شعوب وأمم وأقاليم الدنيا‬
- ‫وفييى المحصييلة فإننييا نجييد أنفسيينا بييالواقع وبسييهولة شييديدة‬. . ‫ميين رقييى وتقييد‬
‫ نسياعد عليى تحوييل صيرا عيات سياسيية إليى أليروب‬- ‫مح نة في نفك الوقيك‬
‫هويييات ألضييارية تخييرغ ضاةييبة منسييحبة ميين شييراكة التقييد االنسيياني الجييامع‬
،‫ ويتحوع بالفتنة إلى أليرب‬،‫ يتحوع باال ارة إلى فتنة‬- ‫والنامل مع أ استف از‬
‫ ومين سيوء‬،‫ ويتحوع بالقطيعية إليى ألصيار لليذات‬،‫ويتحوع بالحرب إلى قطيعة‬
‫ تصرفك ألياع الفتنة‬- ‫ بوعي أو بغير وعى‬- ‫الحظ أن ألكومات عربية إسبمية‬
‫بقدر كبير من قصر النظير فيي إدارة األزميات إن ليم يكين بقيدر كبيير مين سيوء‬
. ‫النية بمحاولة استغبع الفتنة لإللهاء والتغيي‬
Mr. Amr Mousa the Secretary General of the Arab
League also refuted Huntington's theory in a symposium
arranged by the League in co-operation with Anna Linda
Institution for Dialogue Between Civilizations under the title
“the Wrong Concepts in the Cultural and Religious Dialogue”.
Many high standard experts from the Mediterranean countries
participated in that symposium. Mr. Amr Mousa confirmed that
the symposium discusses something very dangerous which the
political and cultural sphere face nowadays and that this
problem comes from the intentionally or unintentionally wide
spread of wrong concepts all over the world about the
intercultural dialogue of civilizations. He declares:
The theory of the clash of civilizations is applied on Islam
only. But the theory of the clash of civilizations is a
deceptive title although it bears something real but it is
applied only on Islam that is to say the clash is between the
West and Islam not between the West and the Judaism or
Buddhism. The collision that is only between the West and
Islam and that the talk about the clash of civilizations is a
beautification and a cover for this collision between the
West and Islam (Saudi Press Agency 1).
‫نظرييية صييراع الحضييارات تطبييح فقييا علييى االسييب دون ضيييرة فهييي عنييوان‬
‫خييادع وفيييه شيييء ميين الصييحة ولكنييه يطبييح فقييا علييى االسييب ألي ي أصييبس‬
‫ إن‬.‫الصراع بين الغرب واالسب وليك بين الغرب واليهودية والبوذية وضيرها‬
‫الصيييراع قيييائم فقيييا بيييين الغيييرب واالسيييب معتبيييرا أن الحيييدي عييين صيييراع‬
‫الحضييارات مييا هييو إال تجميييل للصييورة وتغطييية علييى الصييراع بييين الغييرب‬
. ‫واالسب‬
Most of the Arabic and some of the Western views see that
the clash of civilizations is a myth spread by the West to terrify
the Muslims in order not to surpass them technologically or
economically especially because the Arabic and Muslims’
region owns the most powerful means for any economical
progress, namely Oil, the greatest power that the whole world
needs to produce and industrialize and this is another primary
reason for the west’s lust to capture the Arabs’ land sometimes
through occupation and another time through controlling them
economically, politically and spiritually by spreading such
theories as the clash of civilizations.
III-Media and Literature
The most effective tool that helped to spread false thoughts
and hostility against Islam is the media with its variable kinds.
A study of news press coverage of Islam between 1994–1996
revealed an underlying discourse in which Islam was presented
as a threat to British society and its values, and Muslims were
seen as deviant, irrational, different, and unable to fit in with
British society. In analysing media coverage a distinction can
be drawn between unfounded hostility towards Islam and
Muslims and legitimate criticism that excludes phobias and
prejudice but includes disagreement or disapproval of Muslim
beliefs, laws and practices. Muslims feel that media agencies
fail to reflect a representative range of views from Muslim
communities when reporting on issues affecting these
communities as well as failing to reflect their cultural diversity.
Kai Hafez in his book Islam and the West in the Mass Media
(2000) declared that "Muslims were presented as a fifth column,
a threat to Britain from within, and the loyalty of British
Muslims were called into question"(162). Hafez's words were
confirmed by The Sunday Times columnist, Melanie Philips,
who wrote under the title Britain Is in Denial about the Angry
Muslims Within that “thousands of alienated young British
Muslims, most of them born and bred here but who regard
themselves as an army within, are waiting for the opportunity to
help to destroy the society that sustains them” (40).
The western media and literature are also responsible for
enhancing the gap between Muslims and the world. They are
able to direct a whole nation into certain directions, and
convince millions of people of what policy desires. Media could
be easily controlled and directed by particular people. Jonathan
Tobin quoted in his article We are Intellectual Prostitutes "the
freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses. And
it's true"(19). Today when it embraces mass-circulation
newspapers and television, it is colossal beyond imagination.
And we must not forget another fact about the media. Their
political influence extends far beyond newspaper reports,
articles, and television programmes. In a much more subtle way,
they can influence people's thought patterns by other means:
newspaper stories, pages dealing with entertainment and
popular culture, movies, TV "soaps", "educational"
programmes: all these types of fare help form human values,
concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, sense and nonsense
and what is "fashionable" and "unfashionable". These human
value systems, in turn, shape people's attitude to political issues,
therefore determine the public opinion of the whole western
nations. Yet for some strange reason there is very little public
discussion in Britain today, as an example, of who actually
exercises media control. Sairra Patel analyzes the often
unfavourable way Islam and Muslims are depicted in the British
media:
In June of 1995 an event seen as an international tragedy
took place in that an American government building in
Oklahoma City was bombed. This atrocious act of
terrorism killed many innocent people, including
children. The following day a British newspaper, today,
carried the headline "In the name of Islam", accompanied
by a picture of a fireman carrying the charred remains of
a dead baby. It was then very quickly established that the
bombing had, in fact, been carried out by Christian
militants. This incident illustrates a trend which has
emerged in the media - the deionization of Islam and
Muslims. The word 'Islam' means 'Peace', and also
'Submission to the will of God'. The Islamic religion and
way of life is essentially one which provides total
harmony and fulfillment to its followers, yet the media
does not portray this image. In television, films, books,
newspapers and magazines Islam is presented as being a
backward and barbaric religion. It is seen as oppressive
and unjust; and more then this it is seen as being most
oppressive to women. These various forms of media
misrepresent Islam in different ways, but overall achieve
the same negative result - the creation of 'otherness’ and
from this a growing barrier of misunderstanding and
hostility between Islam and its followers, and the West
(2).
In fact many searches proved that the Jewish are the real
controller over the media in Britain and the United States of
America. Thomas Sparks writes:
Even though the Jews are only 0.5% of the population in
Britain, they have an almost total grip on the media here,
systematically, constantly and intensely feeding their
propaganda and example to almost everyone in Britain,
which is nothing new. With this media, they are
uniformly, deliberately, systematically, constantly and
intensely promoting both the transformation and
permanent destruction of Britain into a multiracial,
“multicultural” state, and also the interests of the socalled “state of Israel”, against the wishes and interests of
the native British people (1).
Literature also has great effect on the western view and
was also used as a constant political tool for strengthening the
idea of the clash of civilizations. The difference between the
media and literature is that the importance of literature was
discovered and made the best use as early as 1427 years ago,
since the rise of Islam, English Literature revealed ignorance,
prejudice, or both, against this religion. Most of the ancient
writers misrepresent Muslims in drawing their characters. Byron
Porter Smith said in his book “Islam in English Literature”
(1939) that:
Chaucer, Sir John Mandeville, the medieval plays
,Lydgate ,Shakespeare ,Marlow and many later writers all
make references which show how vast was the gap of
misunderstanding or I should say prejudice. To most of
these writers who had received their information at
second or third hand, Islam and its Prophet represented a
dangerous semi-pagan element which must at all costs be
kept at arm’s-length,
(Introduction xv).
if
not
actually
destroyed
To prove that politics control literature let’s have a view at
the history of the West and the Muslims, During the Crusades
(1095-1588). Islam was the arch-enemy of Christendom. In
November of 1095; Pope Urban II initiated the first European
attempt at colonizing the Muslim world - known in the West as
the Crusades - by drawing this fateful picture. The Pop speech
was mentioned by August C Kery in his book The First
Crusade:The Accounts of Eye Witnesses and Participants
(1958):
For you must hasten to carry aid to your brethren
dwelling in the East, who need your help, which they
have often asked. For the Turks, a Persian people, have
attacked them I exhort you with earnest prayer - not I, but
God - that, as heralds of Christ, you urge men by frequent
exhortation, men of all ranks, knights as well as foot
soldiers, rich as well as poor, to hasten to exterminate this
vile race from the lands of your brethren Christ
commands it (29).
The Pope's words lay out many of the themes that would
characterize this mass colonial movement East for the next two
centuries. In one reading of the Crusading venture, restless
knights and small-tune princes are enticed by their lords with
tales of land and wealth enhance the hopes of turning their
swords away from the increasingly nervous feudal
establishment, or what the Pope calls the faithful brethren.
Landless folks and the poor - euphemized by the Pope as
criminals - can also be turned Eastward with enticements of
land and Divine forgiveness. But what is most interesting here is
that the Pope conceptualizes his Oriental Other in racial terms.
The enemy, for now, is the debased races of Turks and Persians,
and Islam is not yet a part of the Western conceptual matrix but
their defeat at Hattin by Saladin was a severe shock for them
that made them use the word crusade for any political campaign
against the Muslims till nowadays. Dr Bothaina Abou El-magd
said in her essay “Image of Islam and Muslims in the Drama of
William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe:
The memory of the crusading military operation left a
trace not only on literary and public records of medieval
England but on the English language. The term Crusade
has been widely adopted in the English-speaking world to
apply to a variety of issues: military, as in Eisenhower’s
war memoir Crusade in Europe; social as in Thomas
Jefferson in 1786 for a “Crusade against ignorance .As in
J.W. Bush’s ‘Crusade Against terrorism” after 2001
attack on America (29).
Shakespeare showed great interest in attacking Islam and
Muslims and in using the crusade issue as early as 1597 the date
of his composition of his Henry IV part 1 King Henry said that
he is going to lead the crusade to “chase these pagans in those
holy fields” (1.i.24).Henry states that his main intention from
his coming crusade to atone for his murder of king Richard II
whom Henry dethroned in 1399:
I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land.
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
(Richard II (c.1595), V.vi.49-50).
The image of Muslims was often imprisoned in stereotypes
all over ages, the same demonized image was repeated in
literature but it moves from an Islamic country or region to the
other according to the growing power of this Islamic region,
that’s to say, when the Turkish empire grow in power during the
sixteenth century, the whole Europe directed their crusade
against the Turk and literature then intensified this image. The
word Turk at that time meant Islam and Muslims everywhere.
To Shakespeare for example, the word Turk was the Synonym
of barbaric and monstrous treatment, cruelty and evil, Henry V
in ascending the throne, assures his fearful nobles “This is the
English throne, not the Turkish court (Henry IV part 2,V ii.47).
In Richard II, Shakespeare assures his inherited prejudice
“Peace shall go sleep with Turks or infidels” as a declaration of
war(Richard II.IV.I.139). In Macbeth the witch threw into the
cauldron a nose of Turk”( IV.i.29) as an image of devils
actions. Another conflict between the East and the West during
the sixteenth century was the conflict between the Muslims and
Christians in Spain. Like the Turk, the Moors as a Muslim
represented threat and an alien culture to Christian Europe in
general and England in particular.
This stereotypical image continued and was repeated in
most of Shakespeare and Marlow’s literary works and in the
literary writings to many other writers all over ages.
Unfortunately the same image during this modern era is still
accompanying the Muslims figures everywhere. The Muslims
nowadays are not the Turks or the Moors, they are now
terrorists from Afghanistan, thousand copies of Osama Ben
Laden, who have long beards and wear short galabias with Guns
and bombs killing children and destroying modern western
civilizations. In When Cultures Collide (1999) the author
Richard Lewis mentioned all the major terrorist incidents from
1970 to 2002. Over fifty five incident most of them are Muslims
and Islamic movements and events including the defenders who
fight for their land in Palestine and Russia without referring to
the massacres made by the Israelis in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria
or Egypt, or by the Russian in Chechnya and in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. He also mentioned all the terrorist organizations
allover the world and of course most of them were Muslims
(280-301).
The form of media which reaches most people in Britain
on a daily basis is television. It therefore has the power to
communicate with and influence people at all levels of society.
Television offers a source of information which viewers often
accept as being factual, and thus use as a basis to form their own
ideas. Therefore it should provide an accurate picture of what it
seeks to portray. With regards to Islam this is rarely the case,
instead only two stereotypical images of Muslims are offered.
The following is a report from Sairra Patel about the TV in
Britain and its effect on the public opinion. It shows how wide
is the gap between the image of Islam and Muslims and their
reality. She analyzes the often unfavorable way Islam and
Muslims are depicted in the British media:
We have characters from films and dramas, such as BBC
1's 'Eastenders' and BBC 2's 'This Life', who are Muslim,
though only by name. These characters are Western
conformists, totally adopting Western values and culture.
There remains no sign of their religious or ethnic identity,
and should the issue of their cultural background be
mentioned it is treated as a cause for embarrassment. The
other and more common stereotype is that of the violent
religious fanatic. In current affairs programmes we are
constantly offered the image of Muslims as savage
terrorists, killing innocent people with no remorse. No
insight is given as to why some Muslim organizations
carry out acts of violence. What results from this is that the
common people, the viewers labels - and therefore with
'Islam' they immediately associate negative images (Patel:
3).
There are also many films that have a negative portrayal of
Islam and Muslims, enhance the stereotypical ‘the clash of
civilizations theory and depict them as the demonized enemy for
the west. The Siege (1998) and Executive Decision (1994) are
well-known films because. The Siege, as its title suggests,
centers on the ‘invasion’ of New York City by Palestinian
terrorists. Released three years prior to the bombing of the twin
towers, the film sets out an expectation of Muslim perpetrated
terrorism on the streets of New York. The terrorists randomly
target innocent New Yorkers, on buses, in schools, on the street,
in order to cause mayhem and strike fear in the hearts of the
public and administration alike, and are all human suicide
bombers. Set as this was at a time when no human, suicide
bombings had been perpetrated in a Western country, the impact
of this representation is important in quelling suggestions that
Islamophobic or prejudicial representation of Muslims as
terrorists and potential suicide bombers is a ‘natural’ result of
atrocities like the Madrid and London bombings, and one that
negates the rights of Muslims to complain.
Similarly in Executive Decision the audience is confronted
with yet another set of Palestinian terrorists. Having hijacked a
Boeing 747, they proceed to beat and kill innocent people,
including an air hostess and a US senator (who was about to
enter into negotiations for them), en-route to blowing up
Washington, DC and the Eastern Seaboard of the USA with
barrels of a nerve gas (DZ-5). In the opening scene, US soldiers
raid a house where the DZ-5 is thought to have been kept after
having been stolen by Chechens. Later, a well-known terrorist,
Jeff El-Sayed, is hijacked and then handed to the US so that he
can be used as a bargaining chip by his own second in
command, Nagi Hassan, played by David Suchet. Nagi, sporting
an Arab accent, on several occasions prays or makes reference
to Allah or Islam, even saying Allah Akbar with his last breath
as he is shot dead aboard the plane. His conversation with Jaffa
captures some of the most inaccurate and damaging associations
made with Islam and Muslims:
Rejoice in your freedom,
Allah has blessed us.
A great destiny awaits us both,
All of Islam will embrace you as its leader.
I am your flame,
The sword of Allah,
And with it I will strike deep into the heart of the
infidel (Film I).
The subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against the
Muslim nations and their culture using all the possible tools in
everyday life had led to the current crisis between the West and
the Muslims everywhere. The history of the long tradition of
false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in
Western culture had served as an implicit justification for
Europe and America's colonial and imperial ambitions. The
West is devoting all its power to maintain this ambition. The
theory of the clash of civilizations ,the wide-spread of various
concepts which attack Muslims like ,islamophobia, identity
crisis, them versus us, Crusades against terrorists are all new
born concepts which enhance the gap between the West and the
Muslim nations.
The minority Muslim immigrants who live in Europe
have a strong feeling of alienation because they live in a country
which refuses their existence and refuse to accept them as
Europeans because they are Muslims and practice the Muslims’
rituals. The British society nowadays is like a coiled spring
because the tension and frustration spill over into the
disintegration of community relations and social cohesion. The
public opinion in Britain now asks the government to act
logically to solve this critical situation. We join the Muslims
immigrants in Europe and Britain and ask the British
government not to agree on every procedure the United States
of America takes and to try to solve the identity crisis that
spread among its citizens. However the Muslim world hopes for
a better understanding between the two poles –the Muslims and
the West- during Barack Obama's presidency period especially
after his speech in Egypt on 4th June 2009 from Cairo
University which called for a new beginning between the West
and the Muslim world. President Parak Obama summarizes
most of the researcher's views in the beginning of his speech:
We meet at a time of tension between the United States and
Muslims around the world - tension rooted in historical forces
that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship
between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence
and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More
recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied
rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in
which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as
proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the
sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led
many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of
Islam (Speech IV).
Chapter I
The Social and Literary Background of the Pakistani
Immigrants in Britain
Part I :
Pakistani Background in Britain
Recent examples of terrorism and urban unrest committed
by ethnic minority migrants in Western Europe have renewed
public interest in questions of alienation and assimilation.
Many Europeans have been particularly shocked by the fact that
individuals born and raised in their society could feel alienated
enough to resort to violence. The series of events such as the
September 11 attacks against the United States of America and
the Madrid and London bombings and the debate on prophet
Mohammad cartoons have highlighted and given great attention
to the situation of the Muslim minorities in Europe.
In the aftermath of September 11 and 7/7 the minority
Muslims and the Islamic values have been at the center of a
debate concerning their compatibility with the western values.
The civil liberties of Muslims' citizen have been eroded.
Already generally excluded, disadvantaged, alienated,
misrepresented and vilified. In the current period Muslim
minorities are further thrust into the limelight in negative terms.
Tahir Abbas states "Even before the events of 9/11, British
Muslims’‘ ‘loyalty’’ to a cultural national identity was in
question"(290).The western government began to restrict
Muslims' freedom to practice their ordinary customs and
traditions beginning from wearing hijab when France prohibited
it in 2004 ending with Switzerland prevention of building
minarets of mosques in December 1st 2009. Although the
Muslim community in General and the Pakistani immigrants in
particular played a very active role in the reconstruction of
Europe especially Britain after the Second World War, the
Pakistani Muslim minorities became victims of the negative
stereotyping and prejudices which threaten community cohesion
within Britain because of their large number. They have become
the first suspected criminals in any terrorist attacks. Tahir Abbas
confirms this view "The recent ‘‘foiled terrorist plot’’ of 10
August 2006 has revealed an interesting set of issues in relation
to Islamophobia in Britain. Within hours of the arrests, over 20
arrests had been made, largely relating to British Pakistani"
(295). The word war on terror that was declared by the George
Bush administration in his Presidential Address to the Nation,
October 7, 2001 from the White House included all Pakistani
Muslim immigrants in Britain. Though these minorities were
given facilities before to immigrate to Britain because the
British government needed them to help in its reconstruction,
the British natives neglect this fact pretending that these
immigrants are intruders and should be uprooted from their
lands. As the concentration in this thesis is on the Pakistani
Muslim Minorities in Britain so the history of these immigrants
in Britain will be discussed.
Immigration is a multi-dimensional phenomenon.
Economical, political or social factors, one of them or a blend
could be the main reason for immigration. People have often
moved from one region to another in order to improve their
standard of living, or to escape from poverty, war and injustice.
It was stated in Skilled Immigration Today: Prospects,
Problems, and Policies (2009) by Jagdish Bhagwati and Gordon
Hansona that many factors in our world have managed to
increase the rate of immigration as economic disparities
between developing and developed countries, trade
liberalization which needs as one of its components mobility of
skilled labors, transnational immigration. The demographic
changes also is a helpful factor in immigration because in
developed countries the birth rate and the population are lower
than the developing countries which forces many developed
countries to ask for skilled immigrants to help in the
technological progress. Colonialism also created a mutual
movement of immigration from the occupied country to the
country of the colonist especially because immigration is often
from the less developed countries to the more developed ones
(15). Its worth mentioning that the starting point of the Muslim
calendar is not the year of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)birth,
but the day when The Prophet immigrated with his followers
from Mecca to establish a new community in Medina. Because
one of the Muslims main goals is the construction of the
universe, The Prophet and his followers were well accepted and
hosted and they helped to develop the place they migrated to.
Clifford Hill said in his book Immigration and Integration
(1970) “Much of the Old Testament is an account of the
movements of tribes of Semitic people and their attempts to
settle in a land already occupied by others”(1).
After the two World Wars the European countries which
participated in the war were so exhausted. Muhammad Anwar
in his book Between Cultures: Continuity and Change in the
Lives of Young Asians (1998) mentioned that Britain needed
reconstruction and at the same time suffered a strong labor
shortage so they resorted to facilitate the immigration to give a
hand in the rebuilding of their lands. Britain which was one of
the most exhausted powers in the Second World War was
terribly consumed after it lost most of its colonies(5). Britain’s
need to reconstruct and the reallocation could only be filled
according to David Mason's Race and Ethnicity in Modern
Britain(2000) by substantial immigration, and where better to
receive a large influx of immigrants than from Britain’s very
own Commonwealth States? These countries “provided a readymade source of recruitment” (23).The 1948 British Nationality
Act gave citizens of Commonwealth countries special
immigration status, allowing them to freely “enter, work, and
settle with their families” (25). The Open Society Institute in
Britain, Minority Protection department made a research,
entitled Muslims in the UK (2002) that:
The large-scale immigration of Muslim communities from
the 1950s onwards was a part of a wider process of postwar migration. During the early period of migration, State
policy operated under a laissez-faire assumption of
assimilation (78).
Yet what happened later was completely different "It was
thought that the Black and Asian immigrants would adapt
quickly to the cultural, life style, and attitudinal norms of the
host community. However, social tensions soon began to
emerge, particularly in relation to housing"(Institute 1:78).The
natives refused the existence of these immigration, they also
denied their citizenship and many parts were against
immigration like Enoch Powell who declared in his most
famous speech "Rivers of Blood" made on April 20, 1968 that:
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be
permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000
dependants, who are for the most part the material of
the future growth of the immigrant descended
population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged
in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we
that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate
for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and
fiancées whom they have never seen (Speech:3).
A letter from eleven Labour MPs to Clement Attlee stated
by Richard Skellington in his book Race in Britain Today
(1996), further demonstrate the racist atmosphere of this time
immediately following the Second World War "An influx of
coloured people domiciled here is likely to impair the harmony,
strength and cohesion of our public and social life and to cause
discord and unhappiness among all concerned”(51). White skin
was the norm while other skin colours were exotic mutations
which had to be explained if not rejected. Notions of "we" and
"the others" spread in the daily talks inside the society and the
media. Thomas Hylland Eriksen in a conference in Amesterdam
said in his paper The Epistemological Status of Concept of
Ethnicity (1993):
The most fundamental fact of ethnicity, as investigated
by anthropologists, is the application of systematic
distinction between "We" and "the others". The
we…..is a perennial feature of human groups. The
moment they come into contact
groups….ethnicity appears (6).
with
other
Dr Nabil Matar, Professor of English and Head of
Humanities and Communication Department at the Florida
Institute of Technology has already written one book, Turks
Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (1999) to dispel
this myth of "others" stating that the British invented it long ago
to describe the Muslims without having logical claims for that
denomination. Matar states:
In their discourse about Muslims, Britons produced a
representation that did not belong to the actual
encounter with the Muslims. Rather, it was a
representation of a representation: in order to represent
the Muslims as Other, Britons borrowed constructions
of alterity and demonization from their encounter with
the American Indians(19).
Consequently the government began to limit the
immigration
of
Commonwealth
citizens.The
1962
Commonwealth Immigration Act required any migrant to obtain
a voucher before being given leave to enter. Richard A. Boswell
in his book Essentials of immigration law (2009) states that
there were three kinds of vouchers that applicants should obtain:
Category A vouchers were issued to those who had already
acquired a job in Britain; Category B vouchers were for those
who did not yet have a job secured, but clearly possessed
special skills that would be beneficial to British society;
Category C vouchers were issued on a first-come, first-serve
basis to those who fell into neither A nor B. The Category C
voucher, however, was abolished by Labour in 1965 when they
came to power(70).The 1971 Immigration Act restricted
opportunities of entering Britain even more. Those who did not
meet the requirements of the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration
Act now had to obtain a work permit every 12 months in order
to remain in Britain. This act ended almost all new primary
immigration from ‘new’ Commonwealth, or coloured, countries.
Family reunification is now the main source of continued
settlement in Britain from these countries (Mason: 26-28).
During these periods Indians were the first South Asians
to arrive in large numbers, and enjoyed relative economic
success due to higher education and skill levels upon arrival and
their likelihood of culturally adapting to British society because
of their previous deep contact with the British culture through
colonization. Ikhlaq Din stated that in the 1960s and 1970s
Bangladeshi and Pakistani began to arrive in large numbers
because of two main causes: First the Partition of India into the
Republic of Pakistan, Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian
union and the low economic statues that dominated the lands
after the partition in 1947. Second, the building of Mangal Dam
and the displacement of thousands of people from their lands
and villages (29). Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants tended
to have less education than previous waves of Caribbeans and
Indians because they first came to work as cheap labours in
textile mills and when this industry collapsed, Bangladeshi and
Pakistani found social mobility difficult and remained the
poorest ethnic minority groups in Britain (Ikhlaq Din: 29). They
began to work in low labours like driving taxis, or working in
shops. Therefore, while research on ethnic minority alienation
in Britain has studied all South Asians, Muslims have received
the most focus, especially Bangladeshi and Pakistani. Lewis
Philip writes:
Around half the British Muslim community are
Pakistani and Bangladeshi. These communities
developed in four phases: “first the pioneers, then what
is known as ‘chain migration’ of generally unskilled
male workers, followed by migration of wives and
children and finally the emergence of a British-born
generation (17).
The first immigrants found Britain a paradise comparing it
with their backward lands in Pakistan though they were working
in the poorest jobs but they found that their economic statues
was better than those in their country of origin during their visits
home. Hence they attracted many others from their home to
immigrate excessively to achieve such a better life and this was
the chain migration. Then comes the turn of wives and children
to join their fathers and to adopt Britain as their main country.
Today Britain has the second largest overseas Pakistani
population after Saudi Arabia. Matthew Hickley wrote in the
Daily Mail:
At least 3.7% of children born in England and
Wales in 2005 where fully blooded (as apposed to
mixed race) Pakistanis, meaning that by 2031 when
the UK is expected to peak in population at 71
million, there could be in excess of 2,630,000
British Pakistanis equating to 3.7% of the total
population(4).
Most of the immigrants including the Pakistani in Britain
helped in rebuilding it after its destruction in the Second World
War. So Britain and its natives owe a lot for these immigrants
who participated in achieving the current progress Britain has.
For Pan, Christoph and Beate Sibylle Pfeil define minority as:
A community compactly or dispersedly settled on the
territory of a state; a community which is smaller in
number than the rest of the population of a state; and
whose members are citizens of that state; They should
have ethnic, linguistic or cultural features different from
those of the rest of the population; and its members are
guided by the will to safeguard these features (15).
Although the Pakistani in Britain have huge numbers but
they are considered a minority and their huge number often paid
great attention from the British society. Duncan Gardham writes
in the Daily Telegraph on 13 May 2009:
At least one million people of Pakistani origin now
live in Britain, according to the government in
Islamabad. With 3.7 per cent of children born in
England and Wales in 2005 having Pakistani
parents, it is estimated that the population could
increase to more than 2.6 million by 2031(2).
Nowadays the Muslims in general and the Pakistani
immigrants in particular are accused of most of the terrorist
attacks or any kind of violent actions that occur in Britain or any
other western country. The Pakistani immigrants are often the
first suspects and sadly they are sometimes the actual
committers of these actions. Anatol Lieven on The Times on
December 17th, 2008 published a report entitled Why Britons
Get Caught in the Pakistan Web accusing the Pakistani of being
the direct threat to Britain nowadays:
The direct terrorist threat to Britain comes above all
from members of the Muslim minority in Britain.
These are mainly of Pakistani origin, and retain close
links to their relatives in Pakistan; so of course the
threat to Britain has an especially Pakistani cast (1).
However there is a lot of exaggeration from the western
governments and the western media too because not all the
Pakistani people who live in Britain are terrorists. The British
government treated all the Pakistani as terrorists. BBC News
declares on 24 April 2009 "All 12 men arrested over a suspected
bomb plot in the UK have now been released without charge by
police. Eleven - all Pakistani nationals - have been transferred to
UK Border Agency custody and face possible deportation" (No
Charges After Anti-terror Raid: 2). Many people including the
researcher would like to inquire about the state of the Pakistani
Muslims in Britain. They are supposed to be British citizens and
Britain is their main country. Yet they do violent actions
including murder and destruction for their supposed home, what
are the main reasons which lead British citizens like some
Pakistani to destroy their supposed home? Do they really feel
that this is their home or they do not have this feeling of
loyalty? Do they feel assimilation or alienation inside their
adopted country? The answers for these questions may give
explanation to the British Pakistani' violent reaction against
their new country. Although the researcher does not try to find
an excuse for any violent action or terrorist attacks. All human
beings are against murder, killing and destruction. And it's so
miserable to see a place destroyed and innocent people killed in
a bombing action or in a gun shot. No body and no religion
approve killing innocent people and devastation. Islam does not
allow killing innocent people or destroying any place:
Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not
transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. (2:190)
‫اَّللِ الهذِينَ يُقَا ِتلُونَ ُك ْم َو َال ت َ ْعتَد ُوا ِإن ه‬
‫سبِي ِل ه‬
َ‫اَّللَ َال ي ُِح ْال ُم ْعتَدِين‬
َ ‫َوقَا ِتلُوا ِفي‬
.)190( ‫سورة البقرة‬
This is the main Law in Islam, Not to attack any body
unless being attacked. Killing innocent people who did nothing
is not a feature of the Islamic instruction. On the contrary, Islam
calls for peace and mercy among all nations. The Islamic
greeting is mainly to give peace to anyone you meet "Peace Be
Upon You".The first Aya in the Holy Qur'an is a marvelous
proof on the Islamic Mercy:
"In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful"(1:1)
.)1( ‫" بسم هللا الرألمن الرأليم" سورة الفاتحة‬
In brief Islam denies the terrorist attacks and the killing
actions that occurs in the name of Islam and Muslims who do
these actions are deceived by false instructions about Islam. The
Pakistani Muslims immigrants who made many violent actions
in Britain misunderstood Islam and its laws. They do not
understand their religion. However there are other causes which
motivated them to be subject for this wrong perception. These
motivations gave the opportunity for wrong thoughts to control
some of the Pakistani British minorities to become radical in
their faith and lead them to destroy everything around them
including their adopted home.
There is much evidence that these causes are the racial
discrimination, prejudice and underestimation from the White
British citizens. The Pakistani minorities in Britain suffer from
racial prejudice and severe discrimination in almost every part
of their life from the very moment they reached Britain.
Alienation and isolation were and still are the feelings which
they practice in their everyday life. Although they did their best
to assimilate and make much effort to participate in the modern
technological revolution the British has, but the British natives
forgot their collaboration with them in building their modern
civilization and deny their rights as being British individuals:
During 2001 the lives of Britain’s Muslims came
under unprecedented scrutiny and examination. First,
following the disturbances in the northern mill towns
over the spring and summer and then, of course, after
11 September. Much of this scrutiny has focused on
the extent to which Muslims have integrated into
British society. It has led to assertions that Muslims
are isolationist and failing to integrate; that they are
living parallel lives to those in the wider community
(Institute 1: 71).
The Pakistani Muslims who live in Britain suffered from
severer treatment after the events of the 9th September. They are
exposed to violent actions in streets and in supermarkets:
Following 11 September Muslims and those perceived to
be Muslim have faced unprecedented levels of attacks
and violence. The law has been changed to protect
Muslims against “religiously aggravated” offences, and
there are also signs that the political will to confront
religiously motivated violence is present. However,
implementation of anti-terrorism legislation has created a
growing perception in Muslim communities that they are
being stopped, questioned and searched not on the basis
of evidence but the on the basis of “looking Muslim(
Institue1:73).
These actions are sufficient to intensify the feeling of
insecurity, alienation and isolation that the Muslims' citizens
have in Britain. Anthony Browne states "It is an uncomfortable
fact that we have to face up to: mass immigration without
integration leads to social fragmentation"(5).In the eyes of many
whites, the arrivals of coloured ethnicity were causing shortages
in resources and eventually began to take their jobs after the
demand for unskilled labour began to subside. The government
facilitated the immigration process but did not care to provide
them with enough houses, and then there was a housing
problem. Beside the white British's dominating feeling of
supremacy and mastership over the undeveloped people who
come from their previous colonies. Journalists Mike and Trevor
Phillips point out in their book Windrush: the Irresistible Rise of
Multi-Racial Britain (1998) that:
Natives of the British Isles saw themselves as being at then
head of the hierarchy of the British nations [and] the idea
which underpinned this role and held the whole structure
together was a belief in the racial supremacy of whites
born in Britain… [and] the British had a destiny to rule
over ‘lesser races’. (5)
The previous British imperial background often controlled
the mental perception of the British natives .They still live in the
glorious of that imperial period considering the immigrants from
their previous colonies as their slaves .They have feelings of
primacy and mastership over the Third World nations even when
some of them became British citizens .They can not accept
equality with them. Nations which claim the longing for the
application of equality and freedom converted the Asians "them"
to deconstructive force and classified them as non-important
persons who do not deserve to get their human rights as British
citizens. Joel Kovel in his book White Racism: A psychohistory
(1984) maintains: "the nation that pushed the idea of freedom and
equality to the highest point yet attained was also the nation that
pulled the idea of degradation and dehumanization to the lowest
level ever sounded to pure nothingness"(139).The British soon
began to mistreat these minorities especially the Pakistani
because of their large numbers, their low economic statues and
because the Pakistani immigrants were so conservative in keeping
their Pakistani values which are completely different from the
British ones. They neglected learning the English Language and
kept on speaking their Urdu Language. They also brought their
national Pakistani costume 'the salwar kameez and the sari which
looked so weird and backward from the White British's view. The
Pakistani Immigrants also continued to breed seven and eight
children at least. These children could not have the same liberty
and independence that the British children have which were
something disgusting for the British natives. Jessica Jacobson in
her essay Perceptions of Britishness comments on this point
saying:
Many of the early Pakistani migrants to Britain have
been the most reluctant to attach a British identity to
themselves. The main reason for this attitude stems from
their history with colonial Britain, where attaching a
British identity would ultimately mean accepting to be
subjects of the British. With the effects of globalisation,
Pakistani’s are also worried about losing their traditions,
customs and values and hence hold onto the security of
their close knit society with a hesitance in accepting
anything ‘British’. Further to this, by emphasising that
Britishness comprises common biological roots, a
common language and an allegiance to the Crown;
parliamentarians have easily excluded certain migrants.
Such narrow views of being ‘British’ still prevail and
hence do not make the integration of Pakistanis into
British society any easier (181).
These conservative behaviours from the Pakistani
community in Britain have clashed with the British values and
were enough for the British natives to underestimate them and
deny them their Britishness. Wellhengama Jones said in his
book Ethnic Minorities in English Law (2000) that:
In 1975, Margaret Thatcher entered the immigration
debate where she described new migrants as ‘dole
cheaters’ and ‘undesirable elements’. This was the same
rhetoric of Enoch Powell which had seemed to have gained
new ideological ground in social and political discourses.
The uprisings in Liverpool and Brixton were a reaction to
Britain’s racism and instead of identifying and addressing
the real factors for the escalation of inner city disturbances,
politicians resurrected anti-immigration arguments. Thus
the Improvement of race relations was linked to restrictions
on immigration (17).
That was the general way of thinking about the
immigrants from most of the British natives. The Pakistani
minority then suffered discrimination. Many studies which
cared about this minority proved that they were exposed to
racial prejudice everywhere. The Open Institute Society in
England made a careful study about the different kinds of abuse
that the Muslims in general were exposed to in Britain and
found that the Pakistani and Bangladeshi are the most isolated
minority among other Muslims minorities. This study found the
abuse in education, housing, healthcare, employment, media
depiction…etc.
Statistics collected on the basis of ethnicity reveal
particular disadvantage and racial abuse experienced by the
Muslim Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in relation to
housing included that: Around one-third of Pakistani and
Bangladeshi households live in unfit properties in the private
sector, compared to around 13 percent of Black Caribbean and
six percent of White and Indian households, over a quarter of
Bangladeshi and 20 percent of Pakistani households are
overcrowded compared with eight percent of Indian, seven
percent of Black Caribbean and two percent of White
households. 64 percent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households
live in areas where the housing was mainly built before 1919,
compared with 39 percent of Indian, seven percent of Black
Caribbean and two percent of White households and around
thirty percent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households live in
“poor neighbourhoods” compared to 18 percent of Black
Caribbean, 12 percent of Indian and six percent of White
households. Finally they found that more than half of Pakistani
and Bangladeshi households are in the ten percent mostdeprived wards in England (Institute 2:105).
In education too the condition is awful .There are no
education statistics available on the basis of religious affiliation.
However, statistics collected on the basis of ethnic origin reveal
that pupils from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities
perform less well than other pupils at all stages of compulsory
education. Both communities are over-represented among pupils
with the poorest qualifications. In 2000 only 29 percent of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils gained five or more GCSE
grades A*-C. This is the lowest of any ethnic group and far
below the national average of 49 percent (Institute 2: 5). Weller
Feldman and Purdam in their study Religious Discrimination in
England and Wales: Home Office Research Study 220 (2001)
also found that "Two-thirds of Muslim organisations reported
unfair treatment resulting from school policies and practices and
in institutions of higher education" (Vii). For the young Muslim
Pakistani minorities living in Britain, the education system is
the earliest and most significant point of contact with the wider
community. The messages that the education system provides in
respecting and accommodating their needs will be a significant
influence on their attitude to integration and participation in
society.
The vast majority of Muslims continue to be educated in
non-Muslim State schools. The Arabic language, which many
Muslim pupils learn outside school, could be offered as a
foreign language option alongside modern European languages.
For many Muslims, the need to integrate education about Islam
into the general schooling process is the most urgent task for the
government in relation to young Muslims, as many after-school
mosque classes have not delivered. At present, young people
complete their education knowing that they are Muslims but
with little understanding of Islam. Without adequate education,
young Muslims are ill-equipped to engage in debate and
dialogue with other groups. The worst is that they will be a good
prey to receive the wrong thoughts about Islam from the
terroristic organisations.
At the same time, inequalities in health outcomes between
different minority groups suggest that health service providers
fail to reach minority communities or to meet their needs.
Pakistani and Bangladeshi are one and half times more likely to
suffer from ill health compared to white people. Infant mortality
is a staggering 100 percent higher for Pakistani mothers
compared to white mothers. They are also more likely to suffer
from coronary heart disease than any other group. 20 percent of
Muslims report a long-standing illness, compared with 16
percent for Hindus and Sikhs (Institute 3: 37).
Minority Pakistani participation in the labour market
shows that Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims are consistently
the most disadvantaged group, with lower rates of economic
activity and employment and higher rates of unemployment
than other ethnic minority groups. In relation to differences in
earning levels, Bangladeshi and Pakistani men were the most
disadvantaged group. Just over a quarter of white households
have incomes at or below the national average in comparison
with four-fifths of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households and
two-fifths of other ethnic minority households(Institute 2: 40).
Stopping and searching Muslim youths because they
look like “fundamentalists;” when a social worker
assesses a Muslim couple for adoption and judges them
to be unsuitable as “fundamentalists” because they pray
five times a day; (Institute 1:95).
The western media used to distort the Islamic faith in
most of its forms. There are five terrestrial channels in the
United Kingdom, BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel
5. BBC channels are governed by its Royal Charter, which
partly comprises a Licence Agreement. Independent
Broadcasting is governed by the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and
1996. There have recently been a series of programmes on
terrestrial television about Islam and Muslim communities.
Over the summer of 2001, the BBC ran a season of programmes
on Islam. These include a programme following pilgrims on
Hajj, a history of Islam and a programme on Islamophobia. In
2002, Channel 4 ran a season of programmes on Muslims in
Britain. Commenting on the Channel 4 season, one Muslim
group argued that “attempts were made to allude to the diversity
of British Muslims and to challenge some fixed views about
Islam, but the series focused on extremism, segregation and
corruption, the hijab and difference” and that the persistent
focus on difference promoted the idea that being Muslim and
British is conflictual, that the two are hermetically sealed and
are therefore incompatible identities( Institute 1: 132).
It is often too strange to see and hear the western media
describing the Palestinian fighters as terrorists, and does not do
the same with the brutal Israelii who kill children and women
and burn and destroy the houses in Palestine. To name the
victims as terrorist and the criminals as defenders deeply reflect
the general policy that the western media embraces. Then we
should not be astonished if they concentrated on the bad side of
Muslims and neglect the good ones.
One indirect effect of the disadvantage and discrimination
experienced by Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities
is that they live in areas with the highest levels of crime and
lack the financial means to protect themselves against crime.
Studies of the experience of crime and policing focus on racial
and ethnic rather than religious identities. The British Crime
survey in 2000 reveals that the Pakistani and Bangladeshi were
more likely than any other group to be victims of household
crime and racially motivated crime. Not surprisingly, they also
reported the highest levels of anxiety about crimes such as
burglary and robbery (Institute 1:109).
Even participation in public life was nearly barred from
the Pakistani Muslim minority if not banned from all the other
Muslim minorities. Muslim figures in public life remain the
exception rather than the rule. There are two Muslim Members
of Parliament, five peers in the House of Lords and one Member
of the European Parliament. These are: MP Khalid Mahmood,
MP Mohammed Sarwar, Lord Ahmed, Baroness Uddin, Lord
Patel, Lord Ali, Lord Bhatia and MEP Bashir Khanbhai. Of
course no one of them is from a Pakistani origin (Institute
1:134).
All these kinds of discriminations lead the Pakistani
minorities to live in isolation from the British society; the first
generation of the Pakistani immigrants has been forced to live in
secluded. They wrongly chose to isolate themselves in closed
communities away from the British natives thinking that this
isolation would be a comfortable solution. They formed whole
Pakistani communities in Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham
and Glasgow and many other cities and towns (Paul Moss
2).There was a national identity crisis that prevailed in the
whole country which called into question the meaning of the
word “Britishness” What is Britishness? The immigrants are
questioning their true identity, are they British citizens or
Pakistani? Or are they multicultural? Britain's experience of the
identity crisis was confirmed by the former General Secretary of
the National Council for Civil Liberties, Sarah Spencer in her
essay the Impact of Immigration Policy on Race Relations
(1998):
Post-war immigration to Britain has, it appears, contributed
to a national identity crisis. Having lost its imperial,
military, economic and sporting prowess, Britain is no
longer confident of its role and cultural identity. Some
British, or more accurately, English people, doubting
whether their culture is resilient enough to survive
perceived dilution by other cultures, feel threatened by
immigrants who may have different customs and values
and do not, in Lord Tebbit’s terms, adopt England’s cricket
team as their own(83).
Lord Tebbit suggested a questionnaire about loyalty to
Britain by questioning the different ethnic groups if they would
support the British national team if they play with the country
they came from. For him the ‘cricket test’ would determine
Britishness. This was, according to Tebbit, “not a test of
Britishness, but a test of integration” (What is Britishness
Anyway? 1). This crisis leads both the immigrants and the native
into confusion. There was a second phase when the relation was
turned into hatred and resentment then violent actions began.
This phase was when the Second generation grew up on the idea
of a complete Britishness. They faced this humiliation and
underestimation; they refused such feelings and began to revolt.
They studied history and found that Britain previously captured
their lands and their treasures and that their fathers helped to
build the modern technological structure. Consequently they
have complete rights to practice their Britishness freely as the
natives do. This new generation divided into three trends:
First, a small but significant minority have become
radicalised in their interpretation of Islam. Second, a far
larger number have retained their Muslim identity and
faith but have not seen this as an obstacle to contributing
and integrating positively into mainstream British
society. This latter group “accepts the hybrid nature of
living in a pluralistic environment and try to make sense
of this without losing sight of their Islamic principles.
Here, there is a belief that Islam can actually flourish in
new forms through an enriching mutual, two-way
engagement with the West, both at the level of values and
cultural exchange. The third group are a large and
significant number that are born into Muslim
communities but do not identify themselves as Muslims
in any significant way (Institute 1:77).
The second generation of the Pakistani now acts worse
than their fathers who accepted lowliness without protest or
complaint. The second generation mentality was recharged with
the hostility and violence from the British resentment. The
second generations are victims of the British natives who do not
see them as equal. They are victims of their parents who
accepted such kind of life for them and for their families as
well. John Derbyshire wrote in his article “The Island Race
…Riots:
Many of these young boscos say “why shouldn’t we be
here? The English came to our parents’ countries
without being asked, and lorded it over them, and
insulted them, and milked their colonies, and looted
their historical relics, for 200 years. Well, now it’s
payback time (1).
The ill-treatment turned into a racial prejudice based on
colour, religion, a feeling of supremacy and superiority from the
British natives. Many problems appeared like the identity crisis,
multiculturalism and ethnicity. The far right British National
Party (BNP) has honed their racist rhetoric into an anti-Muslim
message. Their “Boycott Asian Businesses” campaign leaflet
tells its readers not to boycott businesses owned by Chinese or
Hindus, “only Muslims as it’s their community we need to
pressure”. Other BNP leaflets and publications constantly refer
to alleged Muslim thuggery, seeing racial tensions as “mainly
Muslim-on-white.” They have a campaign “to keep Britain free
of Islam" (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: 13). David Blunkett,
Britain’s Home Secretary, in an interview with John Kampfner
to the New Statement Magazine states that the Britain has
become:
Like a coiled spring” where the tensions and frustrations
could spill over into “the disintegration of community
relations and social cohesion,” with such widespread
vigilantism that Britain could “tip into a situation we
could not control( 22).
He made the statement the same day that the far-right
British National Party, which wants to repatriate these ethnic
minorities from Britain to their land of ethnic origin, won
another local seat by-election, beating the government’s Labour
party into second place. The BNP now has five local seats
across Britain, up from zero this time last year, the highest
position it has ever held in a country normally very wary of
fascism. Mr. Blunkett’s warning shows just how dangerous it is
to ignore the clear democratic will and impose mass
immigration on a people that really don’t want it. He in effect
admitted that the policies of promoting legal mass Third World
immigration while refusing to take action necessary to stem
illegal mass. Third World immigration is bringing Britain,
normally one of the most stable democracies in the world, to the
verge of anarchy. Nowadays the British society is divided into
two parts. The first part exemplified in the Left Wing Party who
asks for the forced deportation of the immigrants and the second
party which sees the deportation as against peoples' human
rights forgetting that in the battle between the British public and
the human rights lobby, it is Britain’s five million ethnic
minorities, and two million innocent Muslims who are the real
losers. But they discovered later that not only the minority are
the losers, but the whole British community. The explosion of
the society already occurred and it coincided with the chain of
bombings in London, Madrid and the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon 2001. Bruce Crumley writes:
The concern across Europe is we'll soon be facing the same
kind of threat Britain has been fighting for several years
now," explains a French counterterrorism official, referring
to Pakistani communities within the U.K. whose cohesion
and relative insulation have inadvertently created niches
for virulent extremist activity well hidden from outside
eyes. "What this means is growing numbers of tightly knit
Pakistani immigrants around Europe who maintain close
and frequent contact with people back home. Against that
background, the eventuality of surging radicalism in
Pakistan spreading to Pakistani communities in Europe is
virtually a given (8).
Some of these young men who found themselves illtreated and humiliated in spite of being British citizens were
victims for the wrong thoughts. They became radical and joined
Islamic extremism.They decided to exclude those who excluded
them before. The terrorist Organizations used their anger on the
mistreatment of the western nations and convinced them that
they deserve death, killing and destruction as punishment for
their inappropriate behaviors. Although these destructive
thoughts are completely wrong but the western way of treating
these people is the main cause for motivating them to embrace
these radical thoughts. Gurbux Singh, chairman of the
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) in Britain, said to the
BBC:
Many of us agree that Britain is a modern multi-racial
society, and welcome that. Yet, at the same time we think
racism is on the increase. Ethnic minority respondents were
more likely to feel they were the victims of racial
discrimination than whites, showing very clearly the
differences in their experiences of living in Britain to the
majority of the population (1).
In Radical Islam Rising (2005) Quintan Wiktorowicz
asks why rational individuals would join a high-risk
organization such as al-Muhajiroun, a radical Islamist
movement based in the UK. Joining entails high risk because
members are “targets of stigma, harassment, retaliation, and
even more extreme sanctions such as loss of a job, injury, or
death” (90). Nowadays the condition of the Pakistani
immigrants became worse because the British natives and the
government do not separate between the good citizens and those
who joined radicalism. They treat all the Pakistani Muslims as
terrorists:
In the context of responding to reports on riots involving
predominantly second generation, English-speaking
Muslims, linking the riots to immigration caused
considerable offence to many in the British Muslim
communities. One report on the riots warned that the “way
forward is not to criminalise Asian youths protecting their
communities but to launch a thorough independent
investigation into the events leading up to the unrest.” In
fact, many of those involved have been charged with
serious riot offence and been given long custodial
sentences. The “Fair Justice for All” campaign was
launched in Bradford in July 2002, as an expression of
shock at the length of sentences given to Muslims involved
in the riots(N.M.Ahmed et al:5).
The fact will remain that a single national identity for
Britain is impossible to define. The British citizens should
confess that their country contains many minorities but they all
share one identity which is their Britishness. According to Sara
Spencer “Identity implies a distinct, homogenous, common
culture, marked by common values, shared understandings and
loyalties. Like individuals, a nation does not have one identity
but many. Nevertheless, the sense of national anxiety is real”
(84).
Part II
Minority Literature
Immigrant writers who have high sensitive soul for the
minority details of everyday life reflect these problems in their
writings. Minority literature is the literature which was written
by these immigrants' writers. The literary products of these
minorities are supposed to reflect their life inside their new
country. Their stories often come from real-life situations, and
their characters are inspired by people they knew and lived with,
their parents, uncles, aunts, relations from back home. The
literary production of these minority writers is the minority
literature or ethnic group literature. Migrant literature often
focuses on the social contexts in the migrants' country of origin
which prompt them to leave, on the experience of migration
itself, on the mixed reception which they may receive in the
country of arrival, on experiences of racism and hostility, and
on the sense of rootlessness and the search for identity which
can result from displacement and cultural diversity.
Drama is often distinguished as one of the most important
and effective kinds of literature because it is often performed on
stages which permit to spread its ultimate goals to a wide
numbers of spectators. From Plato and Aristotle to the
Pantomime and the Opera nowadays, drama motivates the
audience to think and change if they can. Oscar G Brockett
asserts this fact in his book History of the Theatre (2007) saying
that. "Drama is a literary form designed for public presentation,
drama often relates to society. Some theorists have argued that,
as an art reflecting social concerns for a group audience, drama
is particularly suited to stimulate social change"(20). Through
drama, people meet characters they can identify with, and
sometimes they find solutions for their own problems, a person
can often understand situations they could not otherwise
understand in real life. It should reflect peoples’ suffering and
depict a real picture of reality.
The importance of minority drama in the immigrants’
situation has more specific features. It registers the suffering of
immigrants and depicts their life inside their supposed home. It
represents the lives and ideas of various people groups, and
inscribes difference and interrogates systems of exclusion. For
Matthew Sherman "the literature of the immigrants to Britain
shows how they dealt with their encounters with British society
in their attempt to retake that, which was taken by the imperial
power"(6). It chronicles the joys, pleasures, sorrows, challenges,
and aspirations commonly experienced by those minorities. The
drama provides vicarious life experiences through which they
can better understand themselves and the fellow humans. Mark
Stein, author of Black British Literature (2004) states in his
introduction that “black British literature not only deals with the
situation of those who came from former colonies and their
descendents, but also with the society which they discovered
and continue to shape and with those societies left behind"(xxi).
Further, it allows them to shed racial and ethnic stereotypes, to
recognize cultural differences and, if necessary, to adjust their
own way of thinking. It often appears as a semiautobiographical work for their authors. Ethnic minority drama
performs-in the same way mainstream literature does-the dual
functions which Roman poet and critic Horace mentions in his
classical work Epistle to the Poisons (20BC) delighting the
reader while giving advice:
Instruction to convey and give delight,
Or both at once to compass, Poets write..
He who instruction and delight can blend,
Please with his fancy, with his moral mend(347).
The British Pakistani drama reflects the suffering of the
Pakistani community in Britain and depicts much of the
prejudice and discrimination that they were subject to in their
life in Britain. It draws on their agonies and challenges in
England. The minority Pakistani drama is a mirror of the feeling
of underestimation that they faced in employment, housing,
education, health caring, in streets and with their neighbours.
The racial discrimination that the immigrants went through their
life should often portray in its variable forms. It traces the
Pakistani immigrants' history in England. Lydia Lindsey speaks
about the literature of the immigrants in her article The Split-
Labour Phenomenon: Its Impact on West Indian Workers as a
Marginal Working Class in Birmingham, England(1993) that it
shows the low economic statues that these immigrants faced
saying that:
These writings give voice to the emergence of a splitlabor market in post-war British society upon the arrival
of West Indian workers. This market phenomenon places
British workers on a higher level than the West Indians.
The racial antagonism toward West Indians stems from
capital and labor issues in this split-labor situation. Due
to the antagonism that these workers encounter, they
have been forced into a marginal working class, which
tends to be characterized as suffering from economic
insecurity, unemployment, and underemployment(83).
Migrant, immigrant, intercultural, multicultural or
minority literature today is considered a category of literature by
authors who write from a perspective refracted by at least two
cultures, national identities, or languages. Sasa Stanisic wrote
How You see Us, On Three Myths about Migrant Writing on
October 5, 2007 declaring :
An “immigrant background” has become a symptom of
today’s world, a world suffering from a persistent pattern of
hyperactivity, as well as from impulsiveness and anger.
Wars, social erosion, and even environmental issues are
creating a chronic condition of permanent diaspora and
migration for which no political cure is available, for it can
be delivered neither in the cough syrup called
fundamentalism nor in the pill called democracy(1).
Unfortunately, because of the marginalization of
minority texts by Western culture, many minority authors have
found it difficult during their careers to achieve the two-fold
purpose of their writing. Wanting to move their works toward
the forefront of society in order to disseminate their message of
societal reform to a larger audience encompassing European
Americans, minority authors have found that they must risk a
portion of their own unique identity. An unwillingness to do so,
in fact, has the potential to lead to complete hopelessness for
any form of societal revolution capable of ending the
overshadowing of minorities by the dominant culture.
Minority authors - writers representing ethnic groups
proportionally smaller than the dominant Western culture are
often cast into the shadows by the dominant culture occupying
the forefront. Consequently, their voices are often stifled when
they are denied a central position in the literary establishment.
As Abdul Jan Mohamed and David Lloyd, the authors of The
Nature and Context of Minority Discourse (1990) explain"
many minority texts are deemed 'inadequate' or
'underdeveloped' by the dominant culture"(55). With such
stigmas as these attached to their works, minority authors stand
little chance of being deemed successful and readily accepted by
a large and influential audience. Denise Heinze explains in his
book The Dilemma of: Double Consciousness(1993) that
literature is an actual institution in society with the purpose of
"generating a group's world views or ideologies"(4). Heinze's
statement clarifies that the author encounters much difficulty in
meeting success when the ideologies presented in a particular
literary work contradict society's status quo. He states:
Moreover, many members of the dominant culture
hold positions of editor, publisher, and critic,
meaning that numerous minority authors struggle
even to see their words put in print. Unless minority
viewpoint coincides with the dominant culture's
ideology, minority texts will continue to be tossed
aside as inadequate and unrefined (3) .
Forced to channel their energy toward meeting the literary
standards upheld by western culture as a result of their double
consciousness, minority authors obviously have to undermine
their own minority identity in the process. There are evidences
of the struggles faced by minority authors in regard to their
experience with literary critics. Authors are forced to write
according to a structure derived from Western culture. A refusal
to adhere to western structure severely diminishes the minority's
hope of receiving critical acclaim. However, their literary
accomplishments have illustrated that their sacrifice has yielded
great rewards. The work of prominent minority authors has
evidently conveyed a message contributing to significant
changes having the potential to achieve these authors' dreams of
societal reform. Hanif Kureishi and Ayub Khan's last success is
a perfect proof of this fact. Jonathan Tadashi Naito in his
dissertation The Post Imperial Imagination :The Emergence of a
Transnational Literary Space from Samuel Beckett to Hanif
Kureishi 2008 states:
The literary context of the Asian writers emergence reveals
another difference that separate writers like Meera syle and
Hanif Kureishi from their black and British Asian
predecessors. They did not have to face the challenge of
having to articulate a position for ethnic writing within the
category of the English writer like their previous because of
the so-called Rushdie affairs in 1988-1989 the years just prior
to the publications of Kureishi's writing(93).
The success of minority authors has contributed to more
than just a resolution of the problem of the marginalization of
minority culture. It has also brought minority authors a great
deal of prestige that has given them access to the inner workings
of the literary establishment. For example, minority author such
as Ruksana Ahmed(1960-) has founded Kali theatre in 1990
with Rita Wolf to encourage, support and promote new writing
by Asian (Institute4:2).These minority individuals have the
power to see that minority literature is published and
disseminated to a large sector of the population. In addition,
these individuals, able to recognize the cultural heritage that
makes these authors' pieces of writing so rich, will ensure that
this identity is preserved rather than substituted for Western
style.
Part III:
The Pakistani Drama in Britain
The British Pakistani drama combines the disadvantages
of the Pakistani community in Britain and the racial prejudice
they suffer from. Most of the British Pakistani playwrights are
engaged in reflecting the immigrant experiences and in
depicting the crisis that their families went through. They
exhibit the suffering of their community in an alien society that
scorns them and refuses to admit their Britishness. The
alienation feeling which they suffer destroys their life inside
their supposed home. They feel loss and desperate. Problems of
assimilation and dissimilation within families and individuals
are main themes in their writings. Hanif Kureishi (1954-),
Rukhsana Ahmed(1960-) ,Ayub Khan-Din(1961-), ,Yasmin
Whittaker-Khan (1970-), Azma Dar (1976-) are all British
Pakistani playwrights who enrich the British theatres and
screens with their works which try to display the Pakistani
community in Britain. Each one of these authors writes from a
different perspective on the Pakistani life in England. They
present the cruelty of the British natives’ treatment to the
Pakistani community in particular. Each one of them
exemplifies the problem of the Pakistani community from his
own personal experience. They transmit their thoughts across
two cultures and their defectiveness.
Hanif Kureishi and Ayub Khan-Din are particular
examples. They are so distinguished among the others because
they concentrate on the current state of the second generation of
the Pakistani immigrants and the difference between the first
and the second generation of these immigrants. They try to
depict how each generation reacted to the British natives'
treatment and the development their life had to pass through in
their newly adopted country. Khan-Din and Kureishi also
present not only the generational gaps but also the mixed race
families' loss and crisis inside the British society. Most of their
works are autobiographical works. They depend on real
situations and characters they met. But most of the other
Pakistani writers are engaged in displaying other themes away
from the generational gaps and the fathers' fight to raise their
children.
Azma Dar was born in Ashford and grew up in Pinner in
1976. Her writings stimulate debate through drama that is both
challenging and innovative and explore the social, cultural and
political perspectives of Asian immigrants. Her work is usually
inspired by the people she meets, the odd stories they have to
tell and the darkness, hope, and absurdity of the human spirit.
Azma Dar is establishing a growing reputation for tackling
difficult and often taboo subjects within the Asian community in
Britain.
Her play Paper Thin (2006) explores the world of illegal
immigration and arranged marriages in Britain and the lost
dreams that the Pakistani immigrants suffer from in England.
The work is billed as a comedy, albeit a dark one, and delves
into the hearts and minds of a variety of colourful characters, all
of whom hope that they can improve their lives by exploiting a
system that has locked them into a vicious cycle of deception
and duplicity. It does not sound like a bundle of laughs but it
does include a character called Javed who thinks he is Elvis
Presley and a lusty landlady called Laila who has a flourishing
sideline in arranging marriages of convenience. Mushtaq's
student visa is about to run out but he's desperate to stay in
London so he can support his family back home. Working three
jobs he saves enough money to pay Laila, his lusty landlady,
who has a flourishing business in arranging marriages of
convenience. But Mushtaq's dreams of a perfect life with a
perfect wife are shattered by the reality of greed as Laila's
cunning plans unfold. Azma Dar said about that play to Amit
Roy on the Telegraph India :
Paper marriages' are sometimes a last resort, she
explains. People are desperate to get visas "simply to
feed their families back home. I first became interested
in the issues of immigration and dodgy marriages about
eight or nine years ago when I met several people who
had gone through with paper, Marriages, mostly
Pakistanis who had married British citizens in order to
obtain visas. Since then, along with many genuine
cases, I’ve also come across a mixture of naughty
immigrants, fake students, self-imposed asylum
seekers, holidaymakers still enjoying short breaks of a
few years. I was fascinated by the attraction that Britain
has for foreigners, and I’ve tried in the play to explore
the themes of dreams, loneliness and love and to
question our moral and political views on race and
immigration, which I feel might not be as clear and
straightforward as we first think ( 1).
Christine van Emst says "Azma Dar's daringly dark new
comedy Paper Thin explores the complexities of immigration
and the lengths one man is prepared to go to fulfill his
dreams"(5). Using the dynamics of a deeply unhappy family as
a forum of hostility, Azma Dar seeks to explore the sociopolitical dilemmas that Muslims in Britain have been compelled
to confront as a result of the obliteration of the World Trade
Centre and the subsequent 'war on terror' in her play
Chaos(2005). In the play The Wembley based Rizvi family
have spent the last 20 years enduring an existence of
antagonistic tolerance of each other. Husband and wife are
emotionally poles apart and their relationship has reached a
point of no return. Mr. Rizvi, an oily politico-wannabe dreams
of becoming a local councilor for Wembley. But his plans do
not progress successfully. Hell bent on his own self promotion.
Mr. Rizvi’s dreams of a united world are thrown into turmoil by
events following 9/11.
Azma Dar deliberately delves into the world of secret
unmentionables that exist in so many Asian families. She
unleashes the demons ultimately allowing resolution to occur.
Salim and Babar are convincing stereotypes that deliver the
author's astute observations well. The play is a refreshing
change to laugh with the characters as opposed to at them;
Aunty Moona who skillfully steers this shift is a lovable
character that prevents the Rizvis from totally falling apart.
Azma Dar's script delivers a unique perspective that positively
shines under such intense scrutiny. The play was performed on
Kali theatre in 2005. Although Azma Dar examines the dark
side of family life; she does so in a comedic vein. Dar's humour
is unique in that she steers away from what is now the rather
dull common denominator of mainstream British-Asian drama.
Yasmin Whittaker-Khan (1970-) born a Muslim to
Pakistani parents and then adopted by an English family, also
wrote a play which caused great controversy during its
performance on Birmingham Rep theatre because it was
displayed after the theatre was forced to cancel another play by
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti(1965-) called Behzti(2004). Angry Sikhs
protested against the play Behzti- Punjabi for dishonour - a
black comedy depicting rape and murder in a Sikh temple. Sikhs
said the play was grossly insulting to their faith. The
demonstrators eventually stormed the Birmingham Rep,
throwing missiles and breaking windows. Behzti was cancelled
and its female playwright, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, went into
hiding after receiving death threats. The theatre then chose to
present Bells(2005) by Yasmin Whittaker-Khan to declare that
it has an apparent programme for supporting these young
writers. Bells expose the secret world of the "mujra", or
courtesan house, an established tradition in Pakistan now taking
root in Britain. A butcher’s shop by day and a brothel by night,
Bells is a private club where Aiesha and Pepsi dance the night
away while dreaming of escape from their servitude. The club
has all the sparkle of Bollywood. But the glitz and glamour are
tarnished by the pain and degradation of secret lives.It shows
how Muslim girls find themselves trapped, and exposes the
hypocrisy of the otherwise religious men who visit them. The
play ends with a controversial question, Is love possible in a
place where flesh is bought and sold? Yasmin Whittaker says to
Nigel Reynolds about her play after the riots of Behzti :
There was no comparison between portraying sexual
abuse and murder in a holy place and showing the low
life of a brothel. I hope that it will be safe. The theatre
has thought about it and they do think it is safe. The play
is provocative. I don't mind if there are peaceful protests
although I can't see why there should be(12).
The tradition of courtesan houses in Pakistan is rooted back
for centuries. It is a subject of fierce debate as to whether they
are harmless entertainment venues, where young women sing
and dance for men, or brothels. She says the Pakistan film
industry has glamorized mujras as harmless. Girls sing and
dance and then money is thrown at them on stage to buy their
favours. Yet She wants to expose the misery that goes on within
them. Yasmin Whittaker Khan said to the Daily Mail the same
day:
In Pakistan, sometimes girls are kidnapped, or they have
arrived there after divorce or misfortune, or they can be
born into the club," Whittaker Khan said. "The girls
might pray five times a day, but in between they are
bought like chattels", she added. I've met guys who've
been to the clubs. They go on religious festivals like Eid,
they venture out as a treat, on birthdays and on stag
nights. Everybody who goes to them, the men as well, are
victims(5).
Yasmin Whittaker also clarifies for the Daily Mail that the
British media misrepresented her play. They presented it as a
play about one of the Muslims defects while Yasmin s' final aim
was completely different. Bells was described as "a play about
Muslim brothels" - sensationalist shorthand that placed the
focus on religion over and above the desperate circumstances of
the women, which is what I was trying to convey"(1). Kali
Theatre presented the two plays Bells and Chaos at the same
time claiming that the two plays are by Pakistani writers with
strikingly different perspectives on Asian life in the UK today.
The theatres also reported that the two Bells and Chaos contrast
and complete each other and provide an opportunity to see some
excellent examples of the Pakistani immigrant experiences in
Britain(Institute 4:1).
Rukhsana Ahmed (1960- ) who was born in Pakistan is
now living in South London. She has been a professional writer
for many years and was co-founder and until recently Artistic
Director of the Kali Theatre Company. She is another British
Pakistani playwright concerned with the representation of the
Muslim woman in the British media. Most of her plays are a
representation of the Muslim women in the British society and
how they face the cruelty and injustice of this society. Her play
Black Shalwar(1999) tells the story of Sultana, a feisty
prostitute, who falls in love and surrenders her independence to
a dreamer who persuades her to give up her lucrative post in
Ambala Cantonment and move to metropolitan Delhi. Soon, he
turns to mysticism and she begins to lose her own grip on
reality. She is jolted awake when she discovers that the
charming Shankar whose courting has comforted her loneliest
moments has been sleeping with her best friend too. But the
female character in her play The Gate-Keeper's Wife (1996) is
Annette who is bored with her childless middle class existence
as a postcolonial memsahib takes up supervising feeding times
at the zoo on a voluntary basis only to be stumped by Tara, the
thieving gate-keeper's wife. Tara claims that Annette's favourite
cheetah, Heera is a saint who will not eat if Tara's children go
hungry. In a moment of epiphany she is forced to confront the
unhappiness that is consuming her marriage. Ruksana Ahmed is
also so occupied with presenting the brutality of the British
government and natives to the former colonized Asian nations.
In her play Recall (1989), the characters personify this
cruelty through an innocent Asian man and his English wife
who faces the wrath of a rioting mob that attack and burn down
their curry restaurant because a black man is suspected of
murdering a white. The couple flees to Newcastle to start all
over again. The painful memory of the nightmarish attack is
relived by their daughter who assembles family history from
photographs and newspaper cuttings. Her play The Man who
Refused To Be God (1994) tells the story of the Anglo-Indian
philosopher Krishnamurti's tortured affair with Rosalind
Williams, the wife of his compatriot and business manager,
Rajagopal. All three are old friends caught in a triangle because
of their affiliation with a curious cult, Theosophy. Krishna
rejects the role of Messiah imposed upon him by mother, sheds
celibacy and begins a spiritual quest that leaves his dearest
friends and allies wondering if he is a saint or a sinner.
One of her masterpieces which deserved Awarded Arts
Council Commissions and Options Award is Prayer Mats And
Tin Cans (2001). It exemplifies two young girls, an Italian and a
Pakistani who become friends a story of generational conflict
and culture shock set in a climate of redundancies and change.
River On Fire (2000) which was Runner up for International
Susan Smith Blackburn Award 2002, about love for work.
Rukhsana's concentration on woman representation in the
media has motivated her to work on a research paper which uses
semiotics as a methodology to analyze how Muslim women’s
bodies are represented in the Western media. The paper traces
the history of media representation of Muslim women’s bodies
beginning from photography to advertisement in the West. The
historical lens shows that representation of Muslim women in
the Western media has its roots in the progression that started
from the “discovery” of Orientalism. This “finding” of the
Other succeeded through the Colonial era, and has found
renewed expression in the post the 9th September period. The
paper analyzes visual representations of these women within
multiple contexts of art forms, advertisements, and video
documentary. First, meaning of the Other: What does the body
signify? Second, meaning for different groups: What
implication does the body have? Third, meaning by who: What
is imposed on the body? At the end, the paper emphasizes the
importance of problematizing the meaning making process of
viewing body as symbol. This paper was published in Ohio
University, USA on February 3, 2006 under the title When Body
Becomes Symbol: Problematizing Media Representation of
Muslim Women(Rukhsana:1).
While Yasmin Whittaker Khan concentrates on the
general defects of the Pakistani community whether in Britain
or in Pakistan, Azma Dar explores the general condition of her
community after the events of the 9th September. At the same
time Rukhsana Ahmed is the supporter of the Muslims' women
rights in the western society and the exhibitor of their problems
in the British society. As for Hanif Kureishi and Ayub Khan,
they specialized in penetrating problems of assimilation and
mixture inside the British society as well as the dilemmas of the
immigrants' families who raise their children in this alien
society. They concentrate on the consequences of the alienation
feeling and how it destroys individuals and families. The
alienation of a community that is rejected and humiliated
although they have complete rights as British citizens. They also
concentrate on race relations and the inner life of the characters
within mixed race families and how the younger generation,
caught up in an identity crisis, and is perpetually in conflict with
the elders. There are tensions in all immigrant communities
arising out of a fear that children, born and brought up in
Britain, are losing their cultural roots and bringing home habits
which are at odds with their own traditional values.
Kureishi and Khan-Din
racial prejudice and cultural
Asians in modern England.
postcolonial British society
draw attention to the problem of
displacement among non-white
Their dark comic critiques of
illustrate the confluence and
conflicts of ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and class. With
London's hedonistic drug and music subculture as a recurring
milieu, Khan-Din and Kureishi's dramas are permeated with
references to pop culture trends, fashions, movies, and music, as
well as other literary and cultural markers. Their multicultural
perspective and casts of disparate, unconventional characters
underscore the sociopolitical biases and personal ambiguities
that shape one's identity in the modern western world.
Ayub Khan-Din, the 38-year-old playwright is originally
from Salford, England. He is the eighth of ten children to a
Pakistani father and a British mother. With one brother four
years his senior and another three years his junior, Khan-Din
admits
I wasn't part of the older children or younger children. I
lived in my own world and spent a lot of time
daydreaming. It paid off in the end. Strangely enough,
throughout his childhood, and well into teenage years,
Khan-Din had severe difficulty reading and
writing. With such poor linguistic skills, it was
impossible for anyone to believe that his daydreaming
would ever really pay off( Wolf Matt:25).
In his two plays to date, Ayub Khan-Din has depicted
the struggles of individuals to come to terms with their
conflicting cultural legacies. His highly acclaimed East Is East
(1997), successfully adapted by Khan-Din himself for the screen
in 1999, focuses on a mixed-race Anglo-Pakistani family living
in a working class neighborhood of Salford in the 1970s at the
time of the India-Pakistan conflict and Enoch Powell’s policy of
repatriation. His second work, Last Dance at Dum Dum (1999),
which was less successfully received, centers on a group of
elderly Anglo-Indians living in the decaying colonial house of
Dum Dum in Calcutta in the 1980s. The two mixed groups in
Din’s plays become obvious targets of racists and nationalists,
British in East is East and Hindu in Last Dance at Dum Dum,
but also suffer from the precarious balance that their hyphenated
identity entails.
East Is East is decidedly autobiographical. When all the
historical events which form the play background were
happening, "I was living in a Parka" Khan-Din claimed in A
Quick Chat With Ayub Khan-Din (olden:1), thus identifying
with the youngest character of the play, Satjid, who is
inseparable from this item of clothing. In the same interview,
the playwright maintained that the characters of the parents
were modeled directly on his own parents and that the main
issues and relationships were all very similar to his background.
Such autobiographical claims not only lend authenticity to the
story, but also provide the author with a shield from criticism:
I'm sure people will have some criticism about how I
portray my father. But at the end of the day, I'm
portraying my father; he's not a Pakistani everyman. To a
certain extent, this is a man who abandoned his culture
and married an English woman, and then decided that his
children should marry Pakistanis. So you know, there
was huge hypocrisy there. I made a point of not going to
any Q&A sessions after the play because I didn't want to
have to start justifying what I'd written. It was a personal
story. I wasn't writing about any specific community, I
was writing about my father(olden:1).
The play portrays the conflicts between George Khan, an
autocratic Pakistani father who believes that he can transplant
the traditions of his mother country to Britain, his English wife
and their seven children who, having been raised in the West,
reject their father’s belief that they will find their happiness in
the social, religious and cultural conventions of the East. The
children consider themselves as English, not as 'Pakistani, and
have no intention of marrying within their father’s ethnic group.
The text reaches its dramatic climax when Khan arranges the
marriages of two of his sons without telling them. This further
tears his wife between devotion to her husband and the
commitment to her children’s happiness. Thus, through its plot
development, the play addresses issues which are still strongly
felt in the British Pakistani contemporary society such as
arranged marriages, the status of women and gender difference,
the conflict between Christian and Muslim beliefs and the
challenges to both coming from the forces of secularization.
Paradoxically, George Khan, the first not to follow his own
orthodox principles, claims, in the words of cultural studies
scholar Paul Gilroy in his book Against Race: Imagining
Political Culture Beyond the Color Line (2000).
Identity not 'as an ongoing process of self-making
and social interaction', but as 'a thing to be possessed
and displayed'. Identity becomes 'a silent sign that
closes down the possibility of communication across
the gulf between one heavily defended island of
particularity and its equally well fortified neighbors,
between one national encampment and others(103).
Last Dance at Dum Dum returns to the problems of
people torn between their past traditions and their present
cultural and historical settings, though the action shifts from
1970s Salford to 1980s Calcutta when Hindu fundamentalism
was taking hold of Indian society. The characters of the play are
a group of elderly and lonely Anglo-Indians living in a decaying
colonial house, a locale which mirrors their physical and
spiritual condition. Permanently plagued by financial problems,
the tenants are increasingly unable to pay their rent to Mr.
Chakravatty, the landlord and Hindu extremist who is planning
to evict them from his property to turn it into a holy site.
Chakravatty claims that Lord Krishna himself stumbled upon a
rock in the garden and he thus wants to build a temple for the
god. With eviction looming upon them, the Anglo-Indians
decide to sublet a room to a wealthy British woman, Lydia, and
to organize a last dance which will remind them of their
glorious imperial days. Their actions prove to be of little solace
for them. Their first decision brings them more tension than
money as they feel resentful towards the British for their present
plight and take this out on Lydia. As for the dance, it never
takes place as Chakravatty provokes a riot against his tenants.
Ultimately, however, the fundamentalist landlord becomes a
victim of his own behaviour as the mob turns against him as
well. Last Dance at Dum Dum is almost unanimously
considered a disappointing second play. In spite of its irony and
witty moments, the plot is sometimes confusing and
inconsequential. In addition, while the text is potentially
challenging in its attempt to portray a group of people rejected
by two cultures, the characterizations of the Anglo-Indians has
been exposed as relying too much on the stereotypes typical of
colonial British fiction such as hysteria and powerlessness.
Although it is through different events and settings, Last
Dance at Dum Dum(2000) confronts the same themes as East is
East. In both plays, characters struggle to find a balance
between two cultures to neither of which they fully belong. Both
plays present the dangers of losing one’s identity and tradition
through hybridity, but stress that separation is not a viable
solution. Ayub Khan-Din recognises, to follow Paul Gilroy’s
formulation in Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the
Allure of Race(2004) that identity, far from being a fixed
category, can become a problem in itself(40). In his two texts,
the playwright has dramatized the difficulties and tensions that
arise when 'people seek to calculate how tacit belonging to a
group or community can be transformed into more active styles
of solidarity, when they debate where the boundaries around a
group should be constituted and how – if at all – they should be
enforced.
Hanif Kureishi is one of the best-known British-Asian
writers working for the stage and, more recently, for the screen.
He has also acquired a reputation for his fiction. As his career
has progressed, he has placed an increasing emphasis on his
own ethnic background and on the difficulties and the
possibilities created by the clash and fusion of cultural and
religious traditions. Kureishi is well regarded for his perceptive
examinations of race, class, and sexuality in postcolonial
Britain. He was born in London on 5 December 1954 and raised
in Bromley, Kent. His mother was English; his father, the son of
a doctor, was a lieutenant colonel in the Indian army who
immigrated to England after the partition of the Subcontinent in
1947. The father had ambitions as a novelist but failed to obtain
a publisher for any of his works.
Kureishi's introduction to the theater came when he was
eighteen, when he submitted a short play to the Royal Court
Theatre and was invited to meet its literary manager, Donald
Howarth. While majoring in philosophy at King's College of the
University of London, he worked at the theater selling programs
and reading unsolicited scripts for Howarth; he also supported
himself by writing pornography under the pseudonym Antonia
French. He chose to study philosophy because he believed that
the disciplines that were more popular with the students of his
day, psychology and sociology, were too crudely scientific in
their explanation of human behavior. His antipathy toward the
social sciences was no doubt influenced by his predilection for
social realism, which was influenced, in turn, by his father's
interest in the novel and his own avid reading of French and
Russian fiction.
Starting out in the early 1980s in fringe theatre, Kureishi
was writer in residence at the Royal Court and later worked at
the National Theatre (he returned to the stage with his first
original play for 16 years, 'Sleep with Me', in 1999). Kureishi is
also described as pre-eminently a writer of Zeitgeist, whose
plays, screenplays, novels and stories have dramatised social
changes over recent decades, and the evolution of a multi-racial,
and a multi-cultural Britain. He has certainly helped bring the
British Asian experience into the mainstream, and is its most
successful British-born author. Kureishi's early writings have
been seen as 'condition of England' works dealing with issues of
diverse ethnicity, sexuality and politics, while more recent ones
focus on the minutiae of personal relationships. However, he is
anything but earnest and 'issues based'. His writing is always
engaging and satirical, littered with pop culture references, with
a fine sense of farce. As befits his theatre background, Kureishi
is skilled at dialogue and creating believable characters. His
highly commercial writing career has been characterized by
restlessly moving between genres, as much as he does between
cultures. He became well known after his screenplay for the
Oscar-nominated 1985 film My Beautiful Launderette, then
wrote Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and London Kills Me (1991),
which he directed. Hence he turned many of his novels, short
stories, and plays into screenplays, he showed another talent in
this art because he was nominated for many awards for his
screenplays including the Oscar for the best screenplay for My
Beautiful Launderette in 1987. He became well known after this
nomination. He also has got prizes for his screenplays The
Buddha of Suburbia(1986), Venus(2006) and, My Son the
Fanatic(1998). Kureishi is conspicuously a London writer, his
works being set in its moneyed milieus as well as its squats,
housing estates and comfortable leafy suburbs; his city may be
grimy and dilapidated but is also exciting and vibrant.
Kureishi made the 'condition of Britain' his early
subject, specifically the social divisions and conflicts of the
1980s. Yet this was incidental to the entertainment value of My
Beautiful Launderette (originally conceived as a Godfather-like
epic but scaled down), a low budget London-based film with
gangster and thriller elements, replete with one-liners and
satirical asides. Its depiction of racism, gang violence, drug
dealing, and gay sex was accompanied by an oblique look at the
times through its Asian entrepreneurs. Omar takes over the
running of his uncle's dilapidated launderette, turning it into a
neon-lit success - assisted by his white gay lover, a former
skinhead racist.
Kureishi is a cogent commentator on issues of ethnicity,
politics, and anti-racism, having written powerful articles over
the years such as 'Bradford' (1986), describing a visit to the city
in the wake of its race controversy. In Dreaming and Scheming:
Reflections on Writing and Politics (2002), he articulates his
own experience of racial prejudice as a person of mixed race.
But he also questions the forces at work within Asian/Muslim
communities,
especially
the
impact
of
religious
fundamentalism. This conflict between Islamic and Western
values comes out powerfully in his 1995 novel The Black
Album, brought to a head by the Rushdie affair. Shahid, a young
writer sexually involved with his college tutor, is introduced by
her to the world of 'raves' and recreational drug taking. He is
forced to choose between Western secular values and the
Islamic values of his friends. It ends with Muslim students
burning a copy of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses(1989)
and the firebombing of a bookshop.
Kureishi's concern as a British-Asian writer with those
who are on the margins of society determined the nature of his
first significant play, The King and Me (1980). It is about a
married couple, Bill and Marie, who fill their empty lives with
the worship of Elvis Presley; Marie spends every afternoon
dancing with Elvis in her imagination. The plot of the play
concerns their preparations for an Elvis show, part quiz and part
impersonation, in which Bill is to compete to try to win a trip to
Memphis for them.
Outskirts: A Play in Twelve Scenes Set over Twelve Years
(1981) takes a bleak view of postindustrial Britain. Two friends,
Bob and Del, meet regularly--initially as boys--at the
"bombsite," an area of wasteland where they talk candidly about
their lives and try to buy drugs. They are desperate to leave
south London. Bob, unable to obtain employment, has turned to
neofascist groups to provide his life with meaning. His mother
is waiting at home to beat him with a golf club for doing so;
nevertheless, she has his best interests at heart. The same cannot
be said for Del's father, who gets vicarious satisfaction from
forcing Del to reveal details of his sexual activities with his
girlfriend.
Borderline (1981), Kureishi's first significant play written
from a British-Asian perspective, concerns two generations of
Indian immigrants to Britain. Amjad, a member of the older
generation, has suffered racism at the hands of his neighbors,
but he holds onto his idealistic fantasies about English justice.
He also holds onto traditional Asian culture and wants to marry
his daughter, Amina, to a wealthy businessman, Farouk. In 1981
Hanif Kureishi was voted most promising playwright of the year
by the London theater critics for his Borderline and Outskirts.
Another member of the older generation, Anil, complains that
"England's a cemetery" and, although he is living with an
Englishwoman, alleges that Englishwomen are "stuck-up,"
"cold," "racist," and "common." Meanwhile, his wife and
children are waiting in India for him to send for them. A
younger-generation Asian, Ravi, comes to stay with Anil; he
believes that he will be able to get rich in England, but one of
the first things he notices on his arrival in the country is the dole
queue, or welfare line.
Two of the younger-generation characters, Amina and
Haroon, are lovers who secretly meet in back of her father's
restaurant, in parking lots, and in other out-of-the-way places. In
such spaces, with Haroon, Amina can be a different person from
the one her father imagines; she can become, in her own words,
a "terrible person," candid about sex and employing a frank
English vocabulary. Haroon becomes associated in Amina's
mind with the risky places where they meet, and it comes as a
shock to her when he breaks off their relationship to go to a
university outside London because he wants what he had earlier
dismissed as the white lie and whitewashed history. After her
breakup with Haroon, Amina becomes active in the Asian
Youth Front. At the end of the play she urges the Youth Front
members to burn down the hall in which the neofascists are
meeting.
Kureishi's ethnic background and suburban upbringing in
London are reflected in Birds of Passage(1983), which concerns
the impact of the economic recession on a lower-middle-class
family and their friends in Sydenham. Economic reality is
brought home to David by the loss of his job and the failure of
his brother and sister-in-law's business. David's daughter, who
has a totally different worldview from that of her parents, works
as a prostitute to get money to better herself. The most
unsympathetic character in the play is David's upwardly mobile
former lodger, Asif, an entrepreneur who looks down on the
majority of his fellow British Asians. Ultimately, David is
forced to sell his house to Asif: British imperialism over Asians
has symbolically come full circle:
Most English don't realize that the immigrants who came
here are the scum of Pakistan: the sweepers, the peasants,
the drivers. They've never seen toilets. They've given us
all a bad reputation because they don't know how to
behave(Act II, Scene I:200).
Characters in Kureishi's later work for the screen--My
Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1988),
and London Kills Me (1991) - are more independent-minded
than in the plays written for the stage, and their social and
family circumstances are more complex. In My Beautiful
Laundrette, for example, Tania is a development of Amina in
Borderline. She is as sexually assertive as Amina and openly
flirts with Johnny, her cousin Omar's white, neofascist gay
lover. While Amina escapes the arranged marriage with Farouk
through her father's sudden death, Tania runs away. Tania
openly acknowledges her father's relationship with Rachel, a
white girl, and revels in her mother's disapproval of her flirting
with Johnny. Kureishi's later work for the stage and most of his
work for the screen confronts the challenges of the new
pluralism. The simple oppositions of Asian/British,
traditional/modern, exploiter/exploited, victim/villain, and
home/exile become complex and blurred. His works suggest that
values have to be worked out through negotiation of the
conflicts created by love and desire and by the clash and fusion
of cultural and religious traditions. His most controversial
screenplay My Son the Fanatic (2002) based on a short story
published in his collection Love in a Blue Time( 1997). Syd
Field defines Screenplay in his book Screenplay: The
Foundations of Screenwriting(1994) as:
A screenplay is a story told with pictures , dialogue and
description and placed within the context of dramatic
structure.. They have a beginning, middle, and an end…
What makes this adapted screenplay so good? And what’s
the best way to go about adapting a novel, play, magazine
article, or newspaper story into a screenplay? There are
many ways, of course. When you adapt a novel or any
source material into a screenplay, you must consider your
work an original screenplay based on other material (20).
As Syd Field says, Hanif Kureishi turned his short story
into a screenplay which achieved great success. My Son the
Fanatic shows the life of an immigrant from Pakistan. The
underlying theme of this drama is the struggle the Asian
immigrants face in an alien society which refuses their presence.
The father brought the family from Pakistan to make a better
life. He did his best to help his family integrate into English
culture hoping that his son could make something of himself.
His dreams are realized with the engagement of his son to the
daughter of the Chief Inspector of the police. Then, inexplicably
it seems, all his efforts fail when his son breaks off the
relationship, drops out of university and joins a radical religious
group in an effort to regain his lost Indian culture. There is a
sharp contrast in the way Parvez and his son Farid deal with the
sense of belonging and being a part of society. With all the
compromises and loses Parvez suffers in his migration; he
appears to take them as a part of his experience and adventure of
life. He mentions how better his life has been in comparison to
having stayed back. He refuses to acknowledge the cold
behavior of the local British. His son Farid on the other hand
seems to have considerable anger and is not disillusioned by the
British cold behavior. He finds the society constraining, limiting
and degrading and feels to be a victim in his country.
Lots of critics see that My Son the Fanatic and East is
East are complementary stories which deal with two different
kinds of Pakistani families in Britain. Both of them concentrate
on the problem faced by the second generation of the
immigrants and how they deal with the alienation and
assimilation dilemmas that they suffer in England. They expose
the identity crisis that is widely spread among the Pakistani
immigrants. Both Khan-Din and Kureishi prove through the two
dramas that multiculturalism is a myth and that immigrants' life
is destroyed inside the British society due to the underestimation
of the natives for their rights as British citizens. Both dramas
were turned into films and the actor who played the role of the
father in East is East was Om Puri, the amazing Indian actor
who has also been seen as Parvez the father in My Son the
Fanatic, may be because he is an Indian actor whose personal
features bear a resemblance to the real Pakistani fathers (George
Khan and Parvez). The two dramas also reflect the harmonic
mentality that gathers Kureishi and Khan-Din and give an
absolute proof on the suffering and struggle of the Pakistani
community in England. The next chapter is totally dedicated to
East is East focusing upon the effect of culture collision on both
the father and his children and the consequences of such a
collision.
Chapter II
The Display of Culture Collision in East is East
East is East is a perfect representation of the effect of
culture collision upon the Pakistani immigrants to England. Ayub
Khan-Din wrote this play about his own life, his childhood and
his own family. Consequently this play belongs to the genre of
autobiographical writing. Ben Brantly says to The New York
Times "It is clearly autobiographical, though its author has, quite
reasonably, allotted his fictional family three fewer children than
its real-life prototype of 10"(7).
Autobiographical writing refers to the literary product of
someone who writes about his own life and his own experience.
Martin Danahay’s A Community of One: Masculine
Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(1993), defines autobiography as "a form that creates autonomy
by reducing the social horizon to the interplay of a self and an
other"(14). Primary, personal communications may have been
obtained from oral interviews or may have been written by the
ones depicted, in letters, journals, diaries, or written
autobiographies. Autobiographical stories can be told in many
forms. They can be historical, spiritual, philosophical, poetical,
narrative, descriptive, and/or explanatory in nature.
Autobiographical writing of oneself or others are driven,
created, and built out of understanding and empathy with the
characters. Storytellers can create scenes with emotional impact
after they have listened to and understood the characters in their
historical, cultural, and social contexts. Autobiographical
storytellers incorporate words and communication styles of
the historic characters, which give the stories uniqueness, color,
authenticity, and intensity. Further, the dramatic actions of the
stories come through conflict and desire in characters.
Autobiographical stories can take many forms. They need not be
exclusively written as factual, historic, prose, or non-fictional
accounts of characters’ lives. They can include virtually any
written or verbal form, non-fiction or fiction, prose or poetry.
Self-biographies, self-definitions, self-representations, self-
revelations and so forth can be produced in many forms
(Danahay :14-16).
Ayub Khan-Din chose to begin the play from his
childhood so he set his play in 1970 in Salford to declare that
this play is about his own life. Although he wrote it as a trial to
understand the motivations of the first generation of the
immigrants personified in his father's character which the play
seems to be mostly centered around. He himself belongs to the
second generation and personified himself in the play with the
youngest boy Sajid. Edward Guthmann confirmed that in his
critical review about East is East "Writer Ayub Khan-Din sets
his tale in 1971, when the first wave of Indian and Pakistani
immigrants was rearing its children in England and trying,
mostly in vain, to retain a sense of its native cultures" (12).
Ayub Kan-Din admits that when he wrote East is East, he
decided to delve into the complexities and the mental problems
he faced during his childhood. Ayub Khan-Din's decision was a
serious decision and a strong desire to solve his own
complexities and to go on the rest of his life without intricacies.
He depicted the struggles of individuals to come to terms with
their conflicting cultural legacies. Graham Young says:
This play is such a remarkably authentic period
piece it deserved a special Oscar award of its own.
It tells the hilarious story of what happens when
two cultures collide within one family. George
Khan - 'Genghis' to his seven children thinks
they'll be respectable Pakistani" (19).
Ayub Khan-Din confirms that he was searching inside
himself when he was writing this play saying in an interview
with Mark Olden in Black's private members' club in London
that "There are indeed many funny moments in East Is East but
ultimately it is a work about self-discovery and bonding"(olden
2).The main reasons for writing such an autobiographical play
were stated by Ayub Khan-Din himself in the introduction to the
play. At the age of sixteen, Khan-Din left school and worked at
Lee's Salon, where he went on to work as a hairdresser in
Manchester. Khan-Din's inspiration to become an actor stemmed
from David Niven's autobiography entitled The Moon's a
Balloon(1976), in which Niven writes about his own decision to
pursue a career in acting after having served many years in the
army. Indeed, Ayub Khan-Din also transitioned into the acting
profession. His on-screen credits include My Beautiful
Laundrette( 1985)and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1988 ).
Although Ayub Khan-Din wasn't working in the traditional
sense per se, he was in process of creating what would later
become his ticket to success, East is East. The play is based on
Ayub Khan-Din's own life and experiences growing up in a
bicultural, working-class background.
Ayub Khan-Din's mother passed away because of
Alzheimer soon after he graduated from the Mountview Drama
School. As a tribute to her and in an attempt to understand his
past, he decided to write East is East as a trial to chronicle his
past events in order not to be lost along years like his mother's
memories. He also wrote it to find logical reasons for his father's
treatment of them. Most probably he desired to think of an
acceptable excuse for his father's cruelty with him and his
brothers during their childhood. He said "The more I looked at
the life we led, the more it made me question my father's
motives"(East is East, ix):
This was our Pakistani life; this is how we existed
outside Salford. A life none of my friends knew or
could understand...I think in [East is East] I came as
close as possible to understanding my father's
motivation in the way he tried to bring us up(Mark
Olden 1).
East is East was seen as a very unique play because it
strongly displays two clashes-the international clash and the
family clash-proposing that the whole world is a big family that
affected the life of the small family. Lyn Gardner wrote:
It's 13 years since Ayub Khan-Din's play about family life
in Salford's Asian community had its world premiere at the
Rep, but this story of the culture clash between generations
remains a fresh, funny account of changing values and the
need to make your own place in the world. Fish-and-chip
shop owner George Khan wants his seven children to be
brought up with traditional values. But his children have
other ideas. It's hard, though, to make a stand in 1971 in
northern England, and soon father and his offspring are at
war (37).
When the play was first released it provoked much
controversy in most of the newspapers and magazines. Most of
the critics saw it as a big hit in the British life which exposes so
many facts and confronts the whole society with them. Ben
Brantly states:
This play can definitely seem forced in its big moments
of insight, but in between those revelations, the
production pulls you right into the jumbled, fretful flow
of one family's daily life. Think of a hipper, more
ambivalent variation on ''Life With Father'' or ''Cheaper
by the Dozen,'' laced with social dissonance, and you'll
get the idea. A critical hit in London at the Royal Court
Theater, this warmhearted, bumpy work is overly shaped
by the ordering rhythms ,right down to a climactic scene
in which a plucky mother tells off a bigwig who insults
her children. The play's strength is in its sense of the cozy
disorder of an oversize, ethnically mixed and emotionally
muddled family in close quarters (7).
East is East was awarded the Writer's Guild Award for Best
West End Play in 1997 as well as and Ayub Khan-Din was
awarded the Best New Writer and John Whiting Award in the
same year. Ayub Khan-Din has received harsh criticism from
more traditional members of Asian society for what they believe
to be a somewhat derogatory depiction of Pakistani culture. In
response to such comments, he claims: "I'm sure some Pakistani
will find the character offensive, but it's a fairly accurate
portrayal of the man and the times we lived in. He was not a
Pakistani "Everyman"; he was my father"(East is East, xi).
Ayub Khan-Din later produced it as a screenplay for Miramax
films and it won the Audience Award for first Film at the
Galway Film Festival 1999. Additionally, another piece, Last
Dance at Dum Dum (1999) started stage performances in mid1999. Notes On Falling Leaves(2004), his latest work has
received mixed reviews, but the overall consensus of critics is
that East is East remains his most solid and compelling play. He
said in the introduction of the play that:
I started to write East is East for various reasons, the
main one being that my mother had just been
diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and suddenly, as
the disease progressed ,it felt like whole section of my
life began to disappear with her memory .At the same
time the neighbourhood I grew up in, Ordsall in
Salford, w as being demolished and the whole
community was about to be broken up. I wanted to
capture the spirit of the area and the people I grew up
with; to discover how that world had influenced the
way my father and mother brought us up .one other
important consideration ,particular to me at the time,
was that I wanted to create a decent part for my self .I
was fed up seeing the crap stereotypical roles dished
out to Asian actors :you either ran the corner shop or
were a victim of skinheads "I had no idea after leaving
drama school that I would suddenly be stamped with an
invisible mark that said BLACK ACTOR! So while
more of my contemporaries went off to rep, I had the
added disadvantage of trying to find a company that
enforced integrated casting-I didn't work for a year! "So
it was for all these reasons that I sat and started to write
East is East (East is East ix).
The entire play centers on the problems encountered in
bicultural families and raises important issues concerning
whether two very different cultures can coexist or collide along
the way. Shazia Ahmed wrote for The American Theatre Journal
"Can the traditions of the East cohabit with the freedom of the
West?" (54). Additionally, the play has strong historical
relevance because it takes place during a very turbulent time in
Indian history. The year is 1971 and Bangladesh's attempt to
gain freedom and talks of Enoch Powell are always in the
air. With so many relevant ideas and themes, the play raises
extremely important questions in regards to whether two
opposing groups of people can coexist or whether Rudyard
Kipling's quote from his marvelous poem the Ballad of East and
West (1889), from which the play borrows it's name, holds true
that, "East is east and west is west and never the twain shall
meet"(1:1).
East is East, is Ayub Khan-Din's most well-known and
best received work. It explores the trials and tribulations of
George and Ella Khan as they raise seven rebellious and
rambunctious children. George, the children's Pakistani father is
adamant that his children wed other Pakistani; while Ella,
George's British wife prefer her children to marry whomever
they choose. The central paradox that the Khan children grapple
with is the fact that their own father has married someone
outside his race. As critic Les Gutman eloquently states:
The play's weight... arises from the complex bundle of
contradictions that George represents. He is a devout
Muslim, proud of his Pakistani heritage and culture. He
anguishes over the current fighting between India and
Pakistan ...and longs for the family he left behind. He is
firm in his intent to rear his children as Pakistani
Muslims which prompts the controversies central to the
play (1).
Indeed, it is George's own insecurities about his lifestyle
and decisions that lead him to place unbearable pressure on his
family. Edward Guthmann summarizes George's crisis with his
children to San Francisco Chronicle saying: "East is East is very
funny and understands the complexity and contradictions of
relationships between children and parents. That's why it
appeals to so many people"( East Rises Above its Comedy :1).
In 1971 working class Salford, England's disintegration is the
watchword of the day a humiliated Pakistan is torn in half by
civil war, and George Khan brings about the slow-motion
explosion of his own family. Having left India in 1936, Khan
has taken an English wife Ella, and produced six sons and a
daughter. His days are divided between the fish-and-chip shop
and the mosque which anchors his life as a Muslim. A dream of
Pakistan serves as consolation for the frustrations of his English
life (while in the background, the real Pakistan - a country
created only in 1949, and which Khan may well have never
visited - lies humiliated by the breakaway of Bangladesh,
ongoing internal corruption, and military defeats in Kashmir).
George and Ella have been married for nearly twenty-five
years and she is his second wife. 'Mrs. Khan's number one as
George calls his first wife, lives in Pakistan and is always
referred to when George is upset with Ella. George and Ella
own and run a fish and chips shop, the wages from which are
barely enough to support their family. Within the family itself
are his six boys, Nazir, Tariq, Abdul, Maneer, Saleem and Sajid
and one girl, Meenah. Ayub Khan-Din's characterizations of the
Khan children are particularly interesting. On one hand, he
cannot develop them thoroughly, so in a sense they are
stereotyped. On the other hand, he does provide his audience
with just enough information to understand each character's
underlying personality.
Ayub Khan-Din says "this play shouldn't be just one son's
story but the story of a whole family (East is East:viii). The
eldest son, Nazir, who provides the inciting incident in the
narrative by bolting out of his arranged marriage ceremony, is
later banished from the family and works with his male lover
and boss at ‘Beau Chapeau’ a fashionable hat boutique in
Eccles. The second son, the charming and rebellious and the
most strong-willed son Tariq, conducts clandestine marathon
kissing sessions with the granddaughter of the neighbourhood
racist and loves the nightlife of music, drinking, dancing and
women. The third, Abdul, is the family man. He works at a car
repair shop with working-class British buddies who amiably call
him ‘Gunga Din’. The fourth is Maneer. The fifth, Saleem,
masquerades as a college student majoring in engineering,
when, in fact, he takes art classes where he gains the skills of
drawing and sculpting remarkably life-like male and female
genitalia. The sixth child, the girl Meenah, a spunky, self-aware,
rude-tongued tomboy, hates to wear the traditional ‘Shalwar
Kameez’. The story is often conveyed from the point-of-view of
Sajid, the seventh and youngest child. Ayub khan-Din presents
him through his parka hood.
The first scenes expose his recovery from a circumcision
forced on him by his father. The parka fits him like a protective
foreskin, and he often hides out in a womb-like back shed,
forcing his parents to speak to him through a vaginal hole in the
door. The wife and all the children tend to negotiate their
cultural and individual freedoms by concealing forbidden
activities. They ultimately stand up to their dominating husband
and father. The tension, conflict, comedy, and violence escalate
when George decides to bend his children to his will, secure
their paths as Muslims, and shore up his own questionable
position in the Muslim Pakistani community by secretly
arranging an unsuitable double marriage for his sons Tariq and
Abdul.
There are variety of issues and themes that Ayub Khan-Din
explores throughout his play. Most of them can be classified as
social, historical, or symbolic in nature. Among these themes are
culture
differences,
racism,
immigrants'
problems,
unemployment, juvenile rebellion, mixed marriages, living in
diaspora, race relations and violence. It shows most of these
themes with a kind of humanistic dimension that makes East is
East so special. It shows how oppression and tyranny could be
the products of racial prejudice and ethnic discrimination. East
is East is a special depiction of the unfair and injustice from
nations to nations, from groups to groups and from individuals
to other individuals. It displays many kinds of conflicts: culture
conflict, generational chasm, family conflicts and even the
individual conflict. It reflects most of the kinds of collisions
from the international to the individual collision, the collision
between the East and the West, the Pakistani and the British,
and families' collision. Even the collision inside the human
nature is displayed. Loretta Collins Klobah says in her paper
about East is East (2003) published in the South Asian Popular:
East is East certainly posits the question what
happens when East and West do meet within the
same family/nation? However, just as the poem
initials lines suggest the seemingly alienness,
incompatibility or geographical remoteness of the
two regions and cultures, the play reinforces the
notion that within the plural British nation, an
essential polarity exists between East and West (91).
It concentrates on two main conflicts, the first one is the
culture conflict or culture collision between the Pakistani culture
which symbolizes the eastern culture and the British culture that
symbolizes the western culture. The second conflict is the
fathers' sons' conflict or the generational chasm. Ayub Khan
displays the second clash as a result of the fist one. The dynamic
of how the family works is captured in the irreverent opening
scene: a Catholic parade is making its way through the rainy
terraced streets, the Khan children are proudly carrying banners
and crucifixes and throwing confetti when their mother warns
them that their father has returned from the mosque and is
watching the parade. Ella whisks them down a back street
before joining her smiling, unsuspecting husband, and the end
run concludes with the children resuming the fun at the front of
the parade. It is a funny and memorable opening, and a good
indicator of the degree of levity to come:
We open at the crucified image of Christ on the
cross. Slowly we pan down the pole that holds the cross
aloft to reveal Meenah. Maneer and Saleem are carrying
on their shoulders a papier-mâché model. In front of them
Sajid in his Parka besides him is Aunt Annie.
Ella: Annie ,Annie(Annie sees her)It is George .he 's back
early from the mosque
Annie Runs through the procession warning the children
Annie :Red alert,red Alret
Meenah with the cross,Sajid,Saleem and Maneer,with the
holy Sepulchre,run from the procession,down the alleyway
behind the shop.Abdul and Tariq,with the banner of the
Sacred heart follow them (3).
Ayub Khan-Din proves his talent in this play when he put
completely two different civilizations within one family.
George, the husband, is a traditional Pakistani man symbolizing
the eastern culture. While Ella, the wife, symbolizing the
western culture. The two cultures lived peacefully for over
twenty years until the second generation grew up and began to
rebel. Khan tries to prove that cultures can coexist without
collision and the continuity of the relation between Ella and
George proves this principle. Cultural chasm can be bridged by
pure love. George Khan, a Pakistani man immigrated to Britain
twenty five years before leaving his Pakistani wife and two
daughters behind him in Pakistan. Like most of the eastern
immigrants that were occupied by the British ,he considers
Britain, the formally great Empire, as a paradise that will
embrace them and help them to achieve most of their dreams.
In order to achieve his dreams, George married an English
woman, Ella, whose British name on legal documents has
enabled him to own his house and business. During that time biracial marriages were looked down upon. Khan-Din confirms
this view in the introduction to East is East saying:
This was not a time of mixed race marriages, which
were barely acceptable in the middle class salons of
London. Anywhere else in Britain a white woman with
a black man would be considered a prostitute. It must
have been very hard for them, the hatred and bigotry
they would have faced. But what I realized after
looking at them from an adult perspective is what an
incredibly strong relation it created (viii).
In order to achieve his dream he lived with his British
wife among the English natives when most of the Pakistani
immigrants used to isolate themselves away from the British
natives in a town or a village forming Pakistani' communities to
insure non English speaking inside household and to keep their
Urdu language among their children. George didn't intend to
separate himself from the new culture from his early beginning
in England but on the contrary, he mixed himself inside it trying
to mingle his culture with theirs.
George and Ella lived calmly for twenty five years
breeding his seven children, six sons and a daughter. When his
children have grown up, George has grasped the real truth. He
realized that along those years of having the British citizenship,
neither he nor his children are accepted or will be accepted as
British. The British natives see the Pakistani as disgusting. They
should not live among them. George is married to an English
woman, owns a shop, his children learn in English schools, and
they all have the British citizenship. However, the British
natives deny their citizenship and their existence among them.
Although having the citizenship at any country offers
fundamental rights that cannot be denied by any one". Persons
who have citizenship have rights to practise their own religion
either alone or in a company with others"(Chapter 2
fundamental rights and freedoms, article 1). They also enjoy
freedom of expression and information as long as it doesn't
threaten the security of the realm, moreover all citizen are
allowed freedom of assembly, freedom to demonstrate, freedom
of association and freedom of worship. Those are the main
rights stated within the British constitution as mentioned in The
Ambiguous of Citizenship 2003 (Preuss:18).Yet the truth is none
of the immigrants or the minorities have these rights neither
from the government nor from their fellow natives. In East is
East the natives even Scorn Ella and deny her right to choose
whoever she wants to marry because he is a colored man.
George states all these facts for Sajid, the youngest boy who
personifies Khan himself:
George : You see puther ,this country not like our people's
see I have been here since 1937,I try to make a
good life for my family . Your mother is a good
woman, but she not understands ,son. I love my
family, but all time I have trouble with people
they not like I marry your mother always
calling your mother bad name. That why I try
to show you Pakistani way to live. Is good way.
All my family love each other see, Bradford,
Pakistan, all same (85).
The natives refuse the immigrants' life inside their English
society, some of them call for repatriation of immigrants, and
they mock at their colour, their rituals, their clothes and their
traditions. They see them as backward and underdeveloped
though they have been living among them for years, but they
still have the previous arrogance of the imperialist who enslaved
these nations and scorn them. The relation between the natives
and the immigrants who came to England during its
reconstruction after the two World Wars to help the natives to
achieve their recent progress is supposed to be based on
integration and dialogue between two civilizations mixed
together in one place, become one unit and help each other. The
British who call for freedom everywhere in the world do not
apply what they call for but on the contrary they refuse to
integrate with them and chose to collide and create culture
conflict.
Mr. Moorhouse in East is East personifies racism and
ethnic discrimination. He opposes integration and coexistence
between the minorities and the natives. He is a symbol of the
previous arrogance of the imperialist. He participates in Enoch
Powell Party which asks for repatriation of the immigrants. The
British don't need the immigrants any more, they already helped
them to reconstruct Britain and now have no importance, so they
should leave their homes regardless of the fact that these
immigrants deserted their original home many years ago and
find it difficult to return :
Tariq comes, then Saleem, Maneer, Meenah, Sajid and Ella.
They all pile into a brightly painted mini-bus which is
decorated with tinsel, silver paper and ribbons.
Across the street, standing on the doorstep watching, is Mr.
Moorhouse, in his late fifties, and a look of distaste on his
face, beside him stands his granddaughter Stella
Moorhouse, a pretty girl of eighteen. She watches Tariq
Khan intently.
Mr. Moorhouse: Look at that, a piccaninny's …..'
Picnic
Stella says nothing, but we can see that she finds this
upsetting. She catches Tariq attention and gives him a
little smile. Mr. Moorhouse sees it.
Mr. Moorhouse: Who are you …. grinning at?
Stella : No one granddad….they just look funny
that's all(10-11).
Mr. Moorhouse mocks at their clothes and sees their rituals
as something idiot and underdeveloped. This rejection that
George faced and is still facing is the main reason for his brutal
behavior with his children. The feeling of alienation he faced
during his life in England turns him into a monster with his
children and his wife. The main problem of culture clash seems
to be rooted in the minds of the first generation of the natives,
the natives, who lived during the former great empire and saw
Britain enslaving most of the occupied nations and capture most
of their treasures, are still living in these glorious imperial days.
The first generations refuse any dialogue between the
immigrants' culture and theirs; they reject integration and
mixture with them. They treat the immigrants so pitilessly and
that treatment led them to the current state of identity crisis,
alienation and loss. George himself turned into fundamentalism
and extremism but with his children, he could not dare to deal
fanatically with the British natives as Farid does in My Son the
Fanatic:
George is walking back from his shopping trip past the dock
gates near Monmouth Street. He has two bags. Mr.
Moorhouse is standing, handling out leaflets, advertising a
rally with Enoch Powell on the front. Earnest is also there.
Mr. Moorhouse: come and hear Enoch speak! half seven at
Salford Town Hall
He sees George walking past with his bags.
Mr. Moorhouse: There's one of them now look, packed his
bags ready(82).
Most of the second generations of the British natives are
in contrast with their fathers. They did not live in the imperial
period and they have nothing of its memory so they see the
immigrants as a part of their unity, and they make friendships
with them and even have love affairs with them. Earnest is
Sajid's friend and he respects the Khan's customs and traditions'
and admires them mostly. He even says the Islamic greeting to
them:
Earnest is sat on the corner as George walks up to
the Shop door
Earnest : Salaam-alacum Mr. Khan.
George :Waalacum-Salaam(145).
Stella is in love with Tariq and refuses any kind of
differences based on color or race. She does not see him as
Pakistani boy but from her view he is only a British citizen like
her:
Tariq gives Stella a quick kiss as she buries her
head in his chest
Stella: oh luv, we're just like Romeo and Juliet. I'll
never let the color of your dad come between us.
It's not fair cause I love Curry an' all(80).
Annie, Stella's friend understands the first generation's
prejudice against the Pakistani. She warns Stella of the
circumstances of her relation with a Pakistani boy. Stella who is
in love with Tariq does not think there is any difference between
them because of his colour or his race and she declares that she
can challenge her granddad in order not to scarify her happiness
with Tariq. So the racial prejudice of the first generation can
lead to pain and frustration to the second generation:
Annie: Your granddad 'll drop a bullock if he finds out
that you are courting a Paki.
Stella: I don't care anymore; Tariq's the only bit of
happiness I have got. So me granddad can go 'nd
fucking himself (21).
Ayub Khan-Din depicts a perfect scene that presents the
brutal treatment of the first generation and its horrible effect on
the second generation. Sajid is terrified from his father after
watching him beating his mother and Abdul and threatening to
burn and kill them all if they disobey his orders. He saw his
father in a monstrous moment which he could not imagine.
Earnest's granddad too promises to kill him for playing football
with one of the immigrants and breaking his window. Earnest
and Sajid also represent the second generation of immigrants
who refuse the first generation's treatment and thoughts:
Sajid : Alright Earnest, what you are doing
here?
Earnest: Your Meenah put our window through
and me granddad's said he's gonna kill us
Sajid : So's me dad, he's gonna burn us all to
Death when we're asleep.
Earnest : Do you think they 'll do it?
Sajid : Me dad will(97).
Ayub Khan-Din skillfully presents the young generation of
Sajid and his fried Earnest as the seed of hope for the tolerance
and peace he wishes to see later. The young generation does not
see any differences between them and the immigrants; they are
all British and nothing else. That is the hope that Ayub khan-Din
aims at. The injustice and oppression George faced in Britain
has turned him to an ogre and a tyrant, prone to violent
outbursts. He maniacally obligates his children to wear the
Pakistani body inside the British culture forgetting that his
children have already been brought up and raised on the western
values.
Roger Ebert says in his review of East is East " written
for the Sunday Times on 21 April 2000 "what George is fighting
in Britain of 1971 is the seduction of his children by the secular
religion of pop music and fashion(7).Indeed the discos, pop
music, fashion world and pop art do lure the sons away to
English society.He might feel guilty for taking the decision of
immigration into a country that rejects their race and for
marrying a woman from this culture, a woman who can't raise
his children on their traditions and religion. Ayub Khan-Din
says in the introduction to the play:
The more I looked at the life we led, the more it made
me question my father's motives. Why was he so insistent
about stamping out any spark of independence he saw in
his children? I think part of his problem always seemed
slightly embarrassed by us in the company of his family,
who had settled over here. Perhaps it was a sense of guilt
that this was he left his first for (xi).
That is what Ayub Khan-Din thinks of his father's motives
and that's what he confirmed in the dialogue of the play. George
confesses that to the Mullah in the mosque:
George: Sometimes I think….may be…may be I
wrong coming England .leave family an'
wife in a Pakistan…
The Mullah says nothing (41).
George felt that he contradicted himself from the first
moment he reached England. Uncertain of his place within the
British society, he is also unsure of his status within the
Pakistani community, which won't fully accept him until his
children marry from it. Stuart Klawans says to the Nation "The
harder he presses them to accept his arrangements, the more the
children chase after outsiders since the children are fully English
whatever Powell says"(36).For these reasons he wants to change
his children's way of living. He wants them to marry Pakistani
wives, to live in Pakistani communities and to practice the
Islamic rituals. But the fact is completely on the contrary. KhanDin displays the contradiction from the very beginning. The
opening sequence is a perfect translation of the contradiction
that George and his children live in:
A Christian parade replete with Virgin Mary icons
winds its way down a tight, terraced Manchester
Street. In its midst is the six Anglo-Asian children: the
Khan family. As their English mother looks on, their
Pakistani chip-shop owning dad, George, makes his
way back from the mosque. The news of his arrival
sparks a mini-stampede and his children sharply
disperse, rather than face his wrath(1).
This scene reflects the big dilemma of this family; the
father who is coming from the mosque, the children who
practice Christianity behind their dad's back and the English
mum who is trying forever to reconcile her husband's rigid ways
with the needs of her six children and solve this generational
chasm to satisfy both sides:
Suddenly we see Ella running along beside the
procession trying to catch Annie's attention.
Ella : Annie, Annie.
Annie sees her
Ella : It's George; he is back from the mosque
Annie runs through the procession warning the
Khan's children
Annie: Red Alert! Red alert! red alert
Meenah with the cross, Sajid, Saleem and Maneer,
with the Holy Sepulcher, run from the procession,
down the Alleyway behind the shop Abdul and Tariq,
with the banner of the Sacred Heart, follow them with
Stella and Peggy. Earnest sees them and bolts after them(3).
The contradiction began so early in the play and continues
to be harder and harder with the development of the play. As
Loretta Collins Klobah says in South Asian Popular " While
East is East challenges racialist aspects of British society,it also
highlights these primary sources of intergenerational conflict in
Pakistani Muslim Culture"(100).The supposed Muslims children
are paying homage to Jesus and do the Christian rituals instead
of the Muslims'. While their father is coming from the mosque
which proves that he is a devoted Muslim who practice the
rituals of his religion well. The children don't feel that they want
to practice Islam. Molly Sackler got the main point of the play
describing its main dilemma :
The marriage has created a perplexing situation for the
Khan children. They are sausage- munching, soccerplaying, disco-dancing English children in Pakistani
bodies, coming of age in an England that reviles them
even as it is erotically fascinated by them. George wants
to sidestep this confusion by making his children attend a
mosque and forcing them into arranged marriages with
suitable Pakistani mates, but to do so he must ignore his
own choice of an English wife and their English life. We
reach the end with the defeat of George's will, and Ella as
the stalwart Angel of the House. It is inevitable that the
issue of marriage dogs and shapes East is East. As ugly
as things get, and they are hideous by the end(2).
George wants his children to have more respectful
treatment than what he has received in the British society. He
doesn't want to see them rejected and mistreated or to feel
isolated as he did. The only way to achieve this from his point of
view is to stick to the Pakistani traditions, practice the Islamic
rituals and marry Pakistani women. His longing to be fully
accepted motivates him to carry out these actions even if his
children refuse them. But his children who have been raised on
English values have become Pakistani bodies in English souls.
They are similar to most of the youth who seek the party that
gives them more freedom. George himself previously chose
what his children are choosing now. When he was a young man,
he immigrated to a place which could give him more freedom
than what he had in his original country. His children also do the
same. They prefer the English values which let them do
whatever they want, not the Pakistani culture which imposes
difficult traditions and customs upon them. Tariq is considered
the most courageous son because he is the only one facing his
father with his tyranny and oppression. Neither Nazir nor any
other one could face George with these facts:
Tariq
: look dad, all we want is for you to listen to
what me and Abdul have to say
George : Abdul not behave like this ,is all you and that
baster Nazir !filling him bloody head.
Tariq : It's not just me; we're all fed up with being
told what to do and where to go .
George: I warning you, Mr. not bringing you up to give
me no Respect .Pakistani son always shows
respect
Tariq: Dad, I'm not Pakistani, I was born here, I
speak English not Urdu.
George: Son, you not understand 'cause you not listen to
me; I trying to show you good way to live .You
not English, English people never accepting
you. In Islam, everyone equal see no black
man, or white man. Only Muslim .I special
community.
Tariq : I'm not saying it's not ,Dad I just think I've got
a right to choose who I get married to.
George :You want choose like Nazir, han? Loose
everything. You want bloody English girl?
They not good, they go with other men,
drink alcohol ,no look after.
Tariq: Well if Pakistani women are so great, why
did you marry me mam (121).
Tariq has realized his father's hypocrisy. He confronts his
father with the fact that in spite of his marriage to a British
woman, he obliges them to marry Pakistani. Tariq also declares
that he is not Pakistani, for him he is only a British boy. George
declares to his son that English people would not treat him as a
British citizen while the Pakistani society could accept him if
they mingle themselves with them. George wants his children to
listen to him all the time without giving them the same right to
be heard. The previous conversation ended with George
threatening to kill his son with a knife. Om Puri commented on
this scene blaming George for not interacting with his children
in the same modernized way he brought them up with saying :
His own son asks him. And he doesn't have an answer.
He picks up a knife. Though -- it's not as if he couldn't
justify it. Thinking on his behalf -- and this is me,
thinking on his behalf -- damn it, he could have said,
"Listen, my son, you know when I came to England, I
was alone, I had nobody. This woman fell in love with
me; I fell in love with her. Suddenly I thought to myself,
George, go ahead. Get married. It's practical. You will be
accepted in this society. How long are you going to hide
here, hide there, be an illegal immigrant? You will get
acceptance in this society and that's how you will stay
here. But you, my son -- your situation is not the same.
You were born British. Your mom is British. Don't
compare yourself with me. But George is too limited to
express himself (qtd Sragow 2).
Om Puri understands that if there was a dialogue between
the father and his children, there would be more mutual love
between them. There is no conversation or dialogue between the
East and the West, between the British natives and the Pakistani
minorities, and there is no dialogue between George and his
children. Absence of dialogue is the main reason for the modern
crisis between the East and the West. Professor Abd El-Aziz
Shebeel,the General Manager of the Department of Religion and
Civilizations' Dialogue Studies said to A Ahram Newspaper on
18 June 2008 after the termination of the Egyptian Tunisian
Symposium in Egypt that:
There is a deep and complicated crisis in the relation
between the East and the West due to the Muslims' feeling
of the historical injustice. Moreover the absence of dialogue
between the two parts in spite of the different attempts to
make mutual relations between them. In addition to the
different interlacements of politics which exerted pressure
and prevented the sedate (logical)thinking in the
reconciliation between the two sides especially after the
events of September 11th which in turn led to the aggressive
reactions that appeared during the recent years(10).
‫إن العبقيية بييين العييالم االسييبمى والغييرب تميير ب زميية عميقيية ومركبيية نتيجيية‬
‫إألسيياس العييرب والمسييلمين بظلييم تيياريخيف فضييب عيين ضييياب أدوات التفيياهم بييين‬
‫العالمين رضم محاوالت ربا الصلة بينهما ولعل السياسة بتنابكاتها المتنوعة شكلك‬
‫عامييل ةييغا وألالييك دون التفكييير الرصييين فييي كيفييية رأب الصييدع بييين الطييرفين‬
‫ سبتمبر التي تسببك فيي ردود األفعياع العنيفية التيي تجليك‬11 ‫خصوصا بعد أألداث‬
.)10( ‫في السنوات األخيرة‬
The absence of dialogue and conversation that The Khan's
family suffers lead them to collide at the cross road of the
children's life. Ikhlaq Din states:
[T]he underlying cause of generational tension is the lack
of communication and understanding on the part of
parents has led to a breakdown in communication
between the generations. Real feelings are often hidden
from parents (and elders) where they do not talk to
parents about anything of personal importance (157 ).
George's main problem is the lack of dialogue between
him and his children. They fear facing him with their thoughts
and dreams and he doesn't try to listen to them or understand
their motives and desires. Om Puri states:
The children see the world through their parents' eyes
initially, when they're tiny tots. Once they start going to
school, and then to college, they widen their horizons. They
have a lot of energy and vitality in them; they are more
open to change. They grasp other cultures. They get
influenced by lots of other outside things, whereas parents
stop growing after a point. So the roles are reversed. Now
parents are supposed to be looking through their children's
eyes, because the children are young men and women now.
That's when they all should have a meeting point. But
George Khan can't get there. He doesn't listen to his
children, which is a mistake(Sragow 5).
The children don't understand George's view. Some of them
see themselves as British not Pakistani while the others realize
that they are not accepted as British. Tariq is completely
convinced that he is a British citizen; Maneer understands that
they are not. It makes no difference with Saleem what they
really are and the same is applied to Meenah. Still they have to
accept their dual identity:
Meenah takes a look at Saleem's sketch.
Meenah : Not bad that…what is it a fuckin'
Zeppelin?
Peggy : Shut it Paki!
Meenah :Do you want dropping?
Tariq :who are you calling Paki?
Peggy : It's what you are ,innit?
Saleem:I thought we were Anglo-Indian?
Meenah : We 're Eurasian!
Saleem :Sounds more romantic than Paki,I suppose
Tariq ;We 're English
Maneer: We 're not!No one round here thinks we are
English .We 're the Paki who run the chippy
Tariq: If you want to be Pakistani why don't you fuck
off to Bradford and take me dad with you
All the other children laugh at this .Maneer just
Stands and stares at Tariq ;he has tears in his
eyes
Maneer: being a Pakistani is more than Bradford,
Tariq : But you just hate me dad too much to see
it(44).
The dialogue reflects the feeling of loss inside the children
that is not realized it yet. There is an identity crisis hidden in
their thoughts. They lost their identity and can not understand it.
The children do not know how to deal with being two things at
once–dutiful and unruly, English and Pakistani. The Khan
children are caught between the traditional dogmatism of their
Pakistani father and laissez-faire attitude of their British mother
and face difficulty to become fully British citizens. However,
George tries to save them but in a completely wrong method. He
is also unable to comprehend his children’s rejection of their
tradition. A well-arranged marriage for them seems like the
perfect remedy to him. In his mind, it is the antidote to their
disconnection with their roots; he turned into a tyrant who
obligates them to do whatever he sees right even if they refuse
it. He arranges marriage for the oldest son Nazir without asking
for his complete agreement but Nazir flees during the wedding
party leaving his father to face the shame and grief:
George goes towards Nazir ,Nazir backs away from
George ;he pulls off his turban and diadem and let them
fall to the ground, the tears leaving along black line
from the kohl on his eyes
George: Sit down, no do this.
Nazir :I'm sorry, dad
George grabs Nazir and slaps him .Beat .Men move in.
Nazir suddenly bolts for the door, knocking over a table
as he does. A scream goes up from the Brides family.
people starts to shout. Ella runs for Nazir but he is too
quick and is out of the door before she can get him.
George cries out to him
George: Naziiiiiir!
Nazir bursts through the doors of the hall; wind and rain
come into the hall from the open doors. A terrible
silence. Every one looks at George; we see how deeply
humiliated George is .He runs towards the open doors,
holding the tinsel veil Nazir threw to the ground(13-14).
Nazir's escape from the wedding party looks as if he is
escaping from the Pakistani culture and traditions, he refuses
being a Pakistani citizen. Ayub Khan-Din depicts the attitude
towards arranged marriages and criticizes it in a distinguished
way. Honor killings still take place in Britain, paralyzed by
strikes when a woman of one ethnic group elopes with a man
from another or when they refuse to marry from Pakistani brides
or grooms and this could lead him or her to be sentenced with
death and eventually murdered. There are many cases of
Pakistani women who change their names and live hidden from
their families fearing honor killing. In East is East George
sentenced Nazir with death from his view. He evicts him from
home and removes his photo from the wall considering him
dead forever. But East Is East is definitely on the side of
personal freedom and against the constraints of a narrow
fundamentalism:
On the wall we see the photographs of Ella and George and
surrounding them in order of age, are the pictures of the
children. There is a blank space where Nazir's has been
removed(16).
George ought to think well after Nazir's escape. He
should try to understand his motivations but he did not and he
decides to repeat the attempt with Tariq and Abdul. He
continues to obligate them to do whatever he wants whether
they agree or not, it's not important for him otherwise he will
beat them black and blue. They carry out his orders by force.
George has become radical in his treatment with them. He
obligates them to wear, to eat, even to cut their hair according to
the Pakistani traditions. He hates every thing British including
the food, clothes and the music. He prevents them from eating
western food but they eat bacon and sausages while he is out of
the house:
Meenah: …. ell Maneer, watch what you are doing!
Maneer: It stinks of brunt bacon in here, me dad'll smell it a
mile off (35).
The children are prevented to eat British food but they do
whatever they want behind their dad's back. His tyranny now
includes everything in his children life. He also takes them to
the mosque by force and obligate them to pray and hear the
Qur'an while they do not speak Arabic. Mr. Khan turns into a
tyranny that obligates his family to do whatever he wants
because he owns the economic power. This is similar to the
western powers like The United States of America and Britain
who obligates most of the undeveloped nations to do whatever
they want because they support them economically:
Meenah chases Sajid who has the football. She
sees the Mosque van too. She runs into the
house
Meenah : Mosque van is here
They both dash off towards the house.
George :you bloody children hide again!
The Mullah is banging on the door. George
arrives ,Earnest looks on.
George: Open the door baster!
The front door opens and Saleem is standing there.
George grabs him, clips him round the head and
Pulls him out. He is followed by Meenah who tries
to pass George as he grabs Saleem but to no avail.
George grabs her as well
Meenah: I was just coming, Dad .I were just getting me
veil, see
George: You think I bloody daft? Where Sajid(22).
Sajid hides under his bed refusing to go to the mosque.
Most of the children reject doing the rituals of Islam except
Abdul who enjoys doing them. The children diverge between
accepting their religion and their customs and refusing them.
George should leave them to choose whatever they want. He
should not oblige them because with his obligation, he turned
himself into an autocrat and a tyrant and his children hate him.
Ayub Khan-Din comments on this scene to Aleks Sierzon:
Our life as Pakistani only happened when we had to go to
a mosque. And that was annoying because we missed
Blue Peter. We didn’t speak Urdu or Punjabi, and the guy
teaching us didn’t speak English, so we just sat there and
he tried to teach us Arabic. We thought: ‘What are we
doing here?’ ” Some in the Asian community criticized
East is East because the wife-beating scene showed
Pakistani in a bad light. “That incident was based on my
Dad, who sometimes communicated through violence.
Those things happened. My responsibility is to what I
write, not to any community(1).
George did not even tell his children that he is going to
marry them like Nazir.He takes them to Bradford. He sees the
pictures of the brides and decides that they are beautiful, though
they are not,without asking them for their openion or even
telling them.He controls everything in their life exactly as the
British western prejudice controlled eveything in his life
including his marriage,his job and his colour. George is
completely wrong in his doings:
Mr Shah now hands overphotographs of his daughters.He
passes them along to Gerorge.As they go along the lineof
men,they are unsure what to say about these ugly looking
daughters of Mr Shah.So they just say Soni(beautiful).
George :Beautiful,Yes,very beautiful
All,Oh yes,very beautiful,yes,yes
Mullah:So my friends,are you agreed-Abdul will marry
Nushaaba and Tariq will marry Nigget (58).
George does not realize that this doing will put his
children in cross road with him. Tariq, the most rebellious son,
sees himself as a British boy nothing else, will act exactly as
Nazir. When Tariq knows about his father's arrangements, he
declares his rejection to his Islamic blood. He announces that he
is British and does not care about Pakistan or Islam. He refuses
his father with all his thoughts and traditions:
Tariq :I do not believe this. I'm not marrying a …..
Paki….Who the fuck does he think he is.
He starts to drag things out and scatters them about the
room ,he pulls the watches with the Arabic Writing, and
stamps on them. Maneer and the others starts to Panic
(90).
Perhaps it is a matter of belonging for George. Perhaps he
misses his country and his people. He already confesses that his
immigration to Britain was a wrong decision from the very
beginning. "May be I wrong coming to England"(41).
Immigration to a country totally different in its norms, traditions
and cultures from the original country may be something very
difficult to deal with. The Pakistani culture and traditions are
deeply strict and sever on the contrary with the British culture
and traditions which permits drinking wine, practicing
prostitution, liberty in most of the life sides. So to keep the
Pakistani customs inside a liberal society like England needs a
lot of effort that only few individuals can do well.
Although George is a devoted Muslim but he has some
wrong doings which is completely denied by Islam. Beating his
wife and ill treating her is rejected in Islam. When George sees
the world around him collapsing, he resorts to draconian
measures. He is losing the control and respect of his family
whom he is trying, with his best intentions, to bring up in an
Islamic way, a tradition he sees as the only choice, where all are
equal, a 'special community' which he expects his children to
continue. They see themselves as British, not Pakistani and they
get increasingly frustrated with their father's attempt to mould
them in his image. He did not try to use dialogue with his family
or try to explain his motives ,he just uses violence and obligates
them without explanation. In taking the decision of Sajid's
circumcision ,he aught to try to explain the importance of boys'
circumcision in Islam. He just screams "I tell you Mrs. Is my
house an I bloody controlling (31). Also obligating his sons and
beating them to obey his orders and to marry from Pakistani
girls is also refused and denied in Islam.
Some critics blamed George for the oppression of his
children considering all Muslims as dictatorships like him.
William Arnold, a movie critic said when he first saw the film
"it's a good movie, if perhaps a bit too earthy and hard-edged for
its own good. The script is alternately funny and chilling -- and
rather daring in its criticism of Muslim authoritarianism"(5).
Anyone who does not know anything about Islam would hate it
if he sees George treating his wife and his children in this cruel
way. Nobody may comprehend that this is a defect in George's
character and not in his religion. But the refusal of George's bad
actions is declared by The Holy Qur'an:
O ye who believe! It is not lawful for you forcibly to inherit
the women (of your deceased kinsmen), nor (that) ye should
put constraint upon them that ye may take away a part of
that which ye have given them, unless they be guilty of
flagrant lewdness. But consort with them in kindness, for if
ye hate them it may happen that ye hate a thing wherein
Allah hath placed much good(4:19).
Islam indicates not to hit wives unless they disobey their
husbands and if a husband hit his wife, he mustn't beat to a pulp.
So George does not apply the instruction of Islam well. KhanDin perfectly shows that the Muslims who live among the
western nations should be real Muslims who carry out the
instruction of Islam well. They should be perfect representatives
of Islam, but actually most of the Muslims who live abroad are
bad representatives of Islam. They carry out several actions that
show Islam as a brutal religion which does not care about
human rights. Fundamentalism which hides behind the mask of
Islam is a fatal representation of Islam. Terrorists who kill
people in the name of Islam are not real Muslims because if they
understand Islam well, they would have comprehended the
Qur'an:
There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is
henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejects the false
deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm hand hold
which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower (1:256).
‫ِين قَد تهبَيهنَ الر ْشدُ ِمنَ ْالغَي ِ فَ َم ْن يَ ْكفُ ْر بِ ه‬
ُ ‫الطا‬
‫ت َويُؤْ ِمن بِاَّللِ فَ َق ِد‬
ِ ‫ضو‬
ِ ‫"الَ إِ ْك َرا َ فِي الد‬
ٌ)256:‫ع ِليم "(البقرة‬
َ ‫س ِمي ٌع‬
َ ُ‫صا َ لَ َها َواَّلل‬
َ ‫ا ْست َْم‬
َ ‫ى الَ ان ِف‬
َ َ‫سكَ بِ ْالعُ ْر َوةِ ْال ُو ْق‬
And the other statement which means that if our prophet
(PBUH) were severe, stern or violent, there would not be any
people believing in Islam:
It was by the mercy of Allah that thou wast lenient
with them (O Muhammad), for if thou hadst been
stern and fierce of heart they would have dispersed
from round about thee. So pardon them and ask
forgiveness for them and consult with them upon the
conduct of affairs. And when thou art resolved, then
put thy trust in Allah. Lo! Allah loveth those who put
their trust (in Him)(2:159).
ًّ َ‫"فَ ِب َما َرألْ َم ٍة ِمنَ اَّللِ لِنكَ لَ ُه ْم َولَ ْو ُكنكَ ف‬
ْ‫ظ ْالقَ ْل ِ الَنفَضوا‬
َ ‫ض ِلي‬
َ ‫ظا‬
َ‫ع َ ْمك‬
ُ ‫ِم ْن َأل ْولِكَ فَاع‬
َ ‫ع ْن ُه ْم َوا ْست َ ْغ ِف ْر لَ ُه ْم َوشَا ِو ْر ُه ْم ِفي األ َ ْم ِر فَإِذَا‬
َ ‫ْف‬
)159: ‫علَى اَّللِ إِ هن اَّللَ ي ُِح ْال ُمت ََو ِكلِينَ "(اع عمران‬
َ ‫فَت ََو هك ْل‬
The Qur'an indicates that Muslims shouldn't force anyone
to practice the Islamic rituals. George who obligates his children
to marry Pakistani wives is a very bad representation of Islam.
He is another fanatic man who hides behind the mask of being a
devoted Muslim while a devoted Muslim would understand the
Qur'an and the instructions of our Prophet thoroughly. George's
children are victims of their father who is in turn a victim of a
society that suffers from racial discrimination. Although the
severe treatment of his western fellow is the main reason for his
bad actions but he should not act like this with his children
anyway. He should leave them to choose on their own or at least
he should let them pass through the experience, and they might
succeed to convince their western fellows that they are
inseparable part of them. Bernhard Reitze says in the European
Journal of English Studies in 2003 that:
East is East examines an immigrant experience during an
era of immigration backlash in Britain and emerging
forms of cultural hybridity, accommodation and
resistance within one Pakistani British Family. The story
drives the readers towards the inevitable containment not
only of a based-on-real father who under certain
pressures, bosses his children around ,refuses to listen to
them or care about their quests for happiness, and
indulges in domestic abuse against children and wife, but
also the containment of a certain kind of Pakistani
Muslim subject position in Britain. That is exactly the
kind of interpretation that Khan-Din offers (39).
George is not completely a bad Muslim; but the British
society is responsible for his condition. He was not a bad father
before and this is the first time he hit his wife. On the contrary,
they lived happily for twenty five years and till now they still
have love moments. Om Puri describes George confirming his
innocence saying:
George has not been like this all his life. He's been warm
to his children. He's brought them up, and been a hard-
working man. He's not self-indulgent. He doesn't drink, he
doesn't go around after other women.
In that sense, he is very simple. The film begins at a joyous
moment. The family is happy. The father is proud that his
eldest son is getting married. But when that eldest son runs
away from a traditional marriage ceremony in front of the
entire community -- that is a big blow to him. He is totally
scared, because he feels that all his sons are going to do the
same. He goes and shares this dilemma with the priest in
his mosque, because he is genuinely worried about his
children. That's when he decides to rule with the fist. When
he hits Ella, his wife -- I think this is the first time he
actually hit her. He may have had disagreements or
arguments with her. He may have left the home in a fit. He
may have broken a glass. But he never, before this, hit her
personally. Because they also have so many wonderful
moments ( Sragow:2).
George appears as a good father in several situations. He
promises Sajid to get him a watch if he agrees to the
circumcision. He got him a watch that tells the date in Arabic:
George Starts putting a new watch on Sajid's wrist.
George: You see puther, is very special watch. It tells
you date in Arabic(34).
He gets a barber chair for Ella as a present. Though he
often threats her to get Mrs. Khan number one from Pakistan , it
seems that he does that to make her feel jealous. George is not
an aggressive man all the time. Ayub Khan-Din asserts this view
speaking about his real father saying "I remember him when I
was younger being playful with us, but all that changed by the
age of ten(East is East:viii).He just wants his children to be
respected and well treated inside a community that really
appreciate them whatever this community is a British or a
Pakistani one.
George: Come ,I buy you a present from market. For you my
love.
Ella: It's an old barber's chair you daft tute (45).
Indeed George is marginalized in his children' life. The
British life style along with their British mother dominate their
personality and puts his traditions and religion in a minor and
subordinate place. Indeed the children do not see themselves as
Pakistani. They just consider their father the only Pakistani
individual among them. They know nothing about the Pakistani
culture except from his talking. They do not even speak Urdu or
Arabic. Even when they go to Bradford in their usual visits, they
do not understand a word from the Pakistani children and they
treat each other as aliens. They are treated as British among the
Pakistani and as Pakistani among the British. The children do
not understand these facts yet, perhaps when they grow older
among the British society ,they would face such a truth, that is
what George hates to see his children face later. They do not
realize this fact yet. All what he seeks mean nothing for them.
Loretta Collins Klobah about East is East :
George Khan can only be recuperated back into the
Family through the grace of his British wife, once she
gained or revealed her ascender in the power of structure
of the family. After it is clear that her children would not
accept George's bullying or forced conversations, no
matter how idyllically he portrays Islamic belief in
equality and community of man, he is allotted at least his
half cup of tea, a marginalized place in family (92).
The roles of women deserve more exploration. Khan-Din
is more concerned with depicting the dilemmas faced by his
female characters. His principal female character, Ella,
challenges many of the societal roles that have been relegated to
women. Ella is an interesting character. She curses and insults
her husband and children, yet she is extremely vigilant of her
family and sacrifices a lot in order to hold it together. She loved
George Khan and married him in a period such a marriage was
seen as a shameful relationship. Mixed race marriage from a
man belongs to a previous imperial colony was considered a sin,
Ella and George faced many problems but to live for twenty five
years breeding seven children and still have love emotions prove
Ella's strength and deep love for George. She continues her life
and faces every problem courageously. Diane Parkes says to
Birmingham Evening Mail on September 25 2009 :
Ella - a woman torn between love for her husband George
and for her children. Ella is definitely trying to keep the
peace but it is very difficult .She is put in a very difficult
position because she loves her husband but she also
loves her children so she is being pulled both ways.
She understands her husband and his deep Islamic faith but
she also understands her children and their desire to make
their own paths in life (7).
In his representation of women, Ayub Khan-Din compels
his readers to consider the roles they played in order to hold the
family together. Ella, the much put-upon wife, tries to balance
her respect for her husband of twenty-five years with her belief
that her children should have a choice in how they live their
lives. For Ella, the dual cultures within her family force her to
compromise her thoughts and beliefs heavily. David Barbour
comments on her character to the Entertainment Design in
September 1999 saying "Ella acts as a buffer between George
and their rebellious offspring "(6).Despite her lack of refinement
in behavior, Ella is a loyal wife and mother. However, many
problems arise in trying to satisfy her husband's wishes as well
as her children's. Throughout the play, Ella always feels as
though she must choose between the happiness of her children
and the happiness of her husband, since both seem to be
mutually exclusive and in contradiction all the time. J.D
Atkinson described her, through the British Theatre Guide
reviews when the play was first displayed at Theatre Royal on 5
October,2005 that "she is caught in the cultural crossfire"(1).
Although she has a western culture but she carries out
completely different customs and traditions from hers. She
married a colored man, bred seven children, and accepted living
as a Pakistani wife. Ella understood that her society is a racial
one. It did not accept her marriage and treats her children as
aliens. She wants her son to look polite in the doctor's clinic in
order not to appear as a backward Pakistani:
Ella (to Sajid):Hey you get your feet off that bed with your
shoes on
Doctor :It does not matter, Mrs. Khan.
Ella: Does to me doctor. I'm not having my children accused of
bad manners. People are a lot quicker to point the finger if
they see they are a bit foreign(34).
Ella understands her society well, perhaps that's why she
finds an excuse for George's wrong doings. However, there is a
cultural gulf between the couple all the time but she tries to
neglect it because of her love to George. She suffers scorn and
underestimation from her fellow natives because of this
marriage. When her children grew up, most of them have chosen
her culture however she didn't try to attract them to her side,
they chose it themselves. George accuses her of being the main
reason for their perverted choice because she is English. Ella is
innocent because from her first agreement on marrying a
Pakistani man, she was submitted to live as Pakistani women do.
She didn't object to Nazir's marriage or to obligate her children
to obey his orders. She always tries to reconcile two different
civilizations. She deserves her description by the bright light
Film Journal as "the stalwart angel of the house"( Sackler :30):
George: I tell you Mrs. Is my house an I bloody
controlling
Ella : Your house, is it? Whose frigging name's
on the rent Book.
George: May be your house Mrs. but my bloody
shop money pay bloody rent (32).
George is so cruel with her most of the time considering
his marriage from her as the main reason for his entire problems.
In fact he sees her Britishness that neither he nor his children
can have as the main reason for his failure in the British society.
He imagines that if he had married a Pakistani woman and lived
among his fellow Pakistani men in a Pakistani community in a
town like Bradford, he would not have faced all these scorn and
humiliation. Ayub Khan-Din says about his mother's real
character:
His relationship with my mother varied with whatever
problem he was having with any of the children and as
there were ten of us, there was always someone he was
having problem with. She always seemed to be right in the
middle of it, her loyalty torn between her husband and her
children. Always trying to take our side when she could,
but knowing she would inevitably bear the brunt of his
anger (East is East :ix).
He always threatens her to bring his first wife from
Pakistan because she does not obey his orders. He sees the
Pakistani wives as better than the British though Ella helped him
a lot during their life together and is always so faithful to him.
Ali Nobil speaking about the play to the Third Text saying "East
is East is extremely generous towards everyone except
unattractive women"(49).He also beats her monstrously, but she
is still in love with him and is not ready to scarify her life with
him. Among all these storms they make love happily forgetting
all their problems. At the end of the play, she should have
departed with her children and leave him alone but on the
contrary she blames Tariq and Saleem for cursing their father. In
the last scene she forgot what has happened and lived peacefully
again which indicates that cultures can coexist together in spite
of the collision between them. Cultures should integrate and
exchange ideas and thoughts:
Ella : Just pack it in the lot of you. You get me
bleeding nerves. I can't do anything to please you.
If it's not you it's your dad .If it's not your dad it's
you. You are nothing but bleeding trouble .And
you (indicating Saleem)Pablo Picasso. That
bastard you're talking about is my husband, and
whatever you might think of he's still your father.
So if I hear anther Foulmouthed word out of
anyone I'll have you (145).
Molly Sackler says to Bright Light Film Journal about
Ella's character:
While East Is East seems intent on social critique, it is peopled
with stereotypical characters. Ella is a salt-of-the-earth type,
incongruous beside her dark, glossy husband and children with
her ever-present cig, pink lipstick, and dyed, done red hair.
When the family is beautifully, if reluctantly, resplendent in
Pakistani dress, she juts out among them in a dress, hat, and bag
— relics from the old Monty Python costume department. Linda
Bassett makes a compelling and sympathetic Ella out of these
recycled elements. Ella seems so sensible that we cannot
understand why she capitulates to her husband's increasingly
outrageous demands, giving up when it is no longer possible to
tease or coax him into reason. She is such an unlikely victim it
is shocking to see the extent to which she cooperates in her
family's devastation(1).
The only other character that Khan-Din develops is
Meenah. Due to such strong male influences, Meenah is
something of a tomboy. Although George tries to enhance
Meenah's Pakistani side, there are instances which attest to the
fact that Meenah simply does not 'fit' into George's ideals. Even
when she is first introduced, she is wearing a sari and it is
pointed out that it "makes her look like a sack of spuds" (East is
East 4).Sajid, the youngest of the Khan's, and Khan-Din's
representation of himself, is associated with the parka that he
constantly wears. The parka is supposed to be the boy's shield
from the harsh realities of the family, as well as the harsh
realities of the world. Alfred Hickling speaking to The
Guardian states:
Khan clan discuss the fact that their mixed parentage leaves
them in cultural limbo. I think we've got that point by now.
The choicest lines belong to George, the tyrannical
paterfamilias, whose speech is a marvelous slew of
profanities, tenses and euphemisms, such as the "tickletackle" belonging to his uncircumcised son, Sajid, who has
withdrawn from the world into a tatty green parka, which he
refuses to remove. The tickle is eventually tackled and Sajid
is compensated with a new watch - though, as his aunt points
out: "It's not much of a swap (5).
Although Sajid is the youngest member, he is certainly not
the most spoiled. He relies on his parka to protect him. He is
convinced inside himself that his family is unable to save him
from the world's cruelty which his Parka does. When they try to
take it off for the first time, he turns mad :
Tariq : I think it's time that coat come off , don't you
Meenah?
Tariq and Meenah start to try and remove Sajid's
coat.
Sajid goes mad trying to get away from them.
Sajid : Oooooch!No get off me .Mam ! Don't ,I 'll tell you a
secret if you leave me alone…me dad's got you and
Abdul engaged and you're gonna get married (89).
At the end of the play, Sajid makes a landmark decision to
discard his parka. The meaning behind this action can be
interpreted as his readiness to take on the complexities within
his lifestyle exactly as Ayub Khan-Din himself did when he
decided to write the play to face all his complexities to be able
to continue:
Sajid : Dad said he 'd burn the house down when we
were asleep
Abdul : well you don't have to worry about that, I
won't let him .Here.
Abdul proffers the Parka. Sajid looks at it.
Abdul : Do you want this or not?
Sajid : No
Abdul : Stick it in the Bin then.
Sajid takes the coast and goes over to the dustbin. He
lifts the lid, takes one last look at his coat and throws
it in (146-147).
Sajid personifies Ayub Khan-Din himself and his
sensitivity. He is afraid that his dad might really burn them, upset
with Abdul for shouting at him. He represents Ayub Khan-Din's
desire to find solutions for his intricacies, and with discarding his
parka, he discarded his fears from facing the life alone exactly as
Khan did when he wrote East is East to face his own intricacies
to continue his life in peace with himself.
The political atmosphere often has a very important role in
forming the characters of people allover the world. But during
that period politics played a very important role in the formation
of the immigrants' characters. He made politics as the echo which
affects the main events of the play. He sets his play in
1971. During this period, Bangladesh was trying to gain its
independence from Pakistan. In March 1971, the Pakistani army
committed genocide against the east Pakistani people. This
prompted the Bengali people wage a war for their own
independence. Because India helped Bangladesh do this, George
is always making negative comments about this throughout the
play:
Bangladesh war of independence had a big effect on our
household, because what happened in the house always
revolved around the TV news. In a way, it was almost as if
the disintegration of Pakistan was happening in our house at
the same time. It affected everything that was going on
(sragow:2).
George is sat alone in the darkened shop listening to the
radio
Radio: And so While the West Pakistani army have
the Upper hand by day, when night falls, the street
belongs to the Mukti Fauj guerrillas(147).
Terry Grimley comments on the political atmosphere that
prevails in the play in Cultural Classic Keeps its Edge saying:
The play pre-dates 9/11 by five years, so that the issues of
religious identity it touches on did not have the tension
around them which they would come to have later. The
political context here is the East -West Pakistan war,
resulting in the creation of Bangladesh, which George
Khan anxiously follows on television during the play (52).
Enoch Powell, This historical figure has a foreboding
presence throughout the play too. Although he is not an official
character, he is a major part of the historical atmosphere of the
play:
The TV is on ,we hear Enoch Powell talking about repatriation.
TV reporter :Blah ,blah, blah, repatriation
Tariq: There you go, we can have a whip
round and have Genghis repatriated (36).
Ayub Khan-Din presents the condition of the British
community during this period through his political background.
During the early 1970's this prominent politician and writer
launched attacks on the immigrants taking away British jobs. The
society then was suffering racial prejudice and discrimination
extremely. The ethnic communities were maltreated and
physically abused. Om Puri asserted this stating:
The atmosphere in the '70s was not as bright for Asians
in England as it is today. There were skinhead bands on
the streets. There were racial attacks and discrimination.
In Parliament, some of the opposition leaders were
talking about repatriation. So all these things would
create insecurity in a simple man like George Khan
(Sragow 2).
According to Om Puri's talk, the treatment of ethnic
minorities has become more respectful during the eightieth and
ninetieth. Minorities especially Muslims minorities everywhere
began to have much of their human rights, to get good jobs and
to participate seriously in most of the western fields.
Unfortunately, this condition changed into the worst in the
aftermath of September 11, the Madrid and London bombings.
Islam and Muslim values and patterns of social interaction have
increasingly been at the center of a debate concerning their
compatibility with western values. Most of the eastern citizens
especially the Muslims are badly treated and oppressed if not
jailed and dealt with as terrorists and criminals. Even the
diplomatic characters that have international diplomatic
immunity are mistreated. Dr Zahy Hawas, The Chairman of the
High Councilor of Archeology was stopped at Phoenix Airport
and accused of being a terrorist and was personally checked up
when he was invited to give a lecture about the ancient Egyptian
history just when they saw his passport as an Arab man. The
same thing was repeated with the Christian Pope Shenoda the
Third at Hethro airport on 30th of March 2009. (Alahram:1)
As for the social themes, the play presents an amusing but
often uncomfortable look at the clash of cultures from a mixed
marriage resulting in mixed-race children brought up in Western
society with mostly western values and aspirations. It hides
issues such as domestic violence, forced marriage and a few
racist comments by the children about their own father's culture.
But it's centered much upon bicultural families and the obstacles
that these families must surmount in order to maintain some
level of stability and contentment within them. The cultural
differences within the Khan household present various problems
for all of its members especially when the parts in collision are
completely different in most of their habits and traditions beside
that they are related through a historical background of slavery
through occupation.
Khan-Din originally intended East is East to be performed
as a stage play. It opened first at the London Royal Court
Theater in 1997 and in The Manhattan Theater Club in
1999. Scott Elliot, the artistic chief and director of the
Manhattan Theater Club states to David Barbour "It's
unbelievably original when you read it; you think "What is
this?' And then you find out most of it is true, so that really
increases your interest(6).David Barbour continues stating "You
just know where this play is coming from-the warmth and heart
and love and rage that are in this family"(6). Khan-Din asserts
that his play is full of hidden feelings which can appear only
through humor and sarcastic situations. He echoes these
sentiments in regards to the play:
The anger is there. But you can get your message across
much stronger, I think, through humor and showing
humanity. That's the only way an audience is going to
come in. And if you're not going to get an audience, at
the end of the day, your play is a dead duck (olden 3).
The humor in East is East strongly reflects the bitterness of
the immigrants life. East is East makes an obvious target of the
cartoonish racist neighbour who, like the right wing politician he
idolizes, wants all immigrants to be repatriated. On the other
hand, we have the most visibly dissatisfied son, Tariq, reacting to
the news of his impending arranged marriage by screaming, "I'm
not marrying a fucking Paki"(120). Tariq deals with his father's
obdurate traditionalism and the surrounding prejudice by taking a
dyed-blonde girlfriend and sneaking out to discos as his alter ego,
Tony. But if Tariq is old enough to marry whomever and
whenever he pleases, he is certainly old enough to be taken to
task for his bigoted outbursts instead of being merely told to calm
down.
Ayub Khan-Din's play is sold out in all productions in both
London, New York and in 2008 it reached China and
Japan. Additionally, Khan-Din was awarded the Writer's Guild
Award for Best New Writer as well as Best West End Play. In
1999, East is East was distributed to Miramax Films and was
directed by Damien O'Donnell. The cast included Linda Bassett
as Ella and Om Puri as George. Despite a few criticisms, the
film received overall positive reviews. During the first week of
its release in Britain, the film grossed one million dollars at the
box office-pulling ahead of the box-office smash The Sixth
Sense. Later in 1999, Khan-Din was nominated for best
screenplay at the Evening Standard Awards, one of London's
most distinguished honors. East is East received the award for
the best film of 1999. Indeed, Khan-Din's progress as a writer is
best reflected in his plays. However, equally admirable, is his
ability to present his complicated life as understandable pieces both for his audiences as well as for himself. Antonio Romero
says "there's no other word to capture the achievement of East is
East, in which writer Ayub Khan-Din turns the pain of his
immigrant upbringing into comic and dramatic gold"(10).
Ali Jaafar states to the Variety that East is East is going to
be alive again. BBC Films execs are prepping "West Is West" a
sequel to their 1999 hit East Is East about an immigrant
Pakistani family living in the northwest of England. "West is
West" updates the story as family patriarch George Khan, who
will once again be played by Om Puri, relocates his family back
to his native Pakistan. As with the original epic, Ayub Khan Din
has written the script(10).Lucy Powell in the Daily Telegraph
warned Iqbal Khan the new director of West is West saying
"You have to hold both audiences in your mind at once. It's
when the cultural specificity of the retelling is very real that the
story can become truly universal"(13).
Some critics criticized Ayub Khan's East is East accusing
the play of being weird and alien in its representation of the
immigrants, claiming that the immigrants life is not so bad as it
is depicted by Khan-din. Ali Nobil sees East is East as
completely a negative representation of the immigrants'
experience. He says in the Third Text September 1999:
I feel sorry that for Khan-Din East is so alien, so distant, so
well and truly East. His internalization of racism, resulting
from his own unfortunate personal experience, has clearly
produced in him a deep self-hatred. Quick to remind us of
his interview with Big Issue, that he is half –white, he
admits that all he knew of the Asian side was the repressive
stuff, in sharp contrast to the white side with which he
never had problems(49).
Ali Nobil is not objective in his opinion because East is
East presents the defects of both the East and the West and shows
what may happen when they encounter each other. It does not
show the defects of the eastern people only but the western as
well. It is a thrust at racism that cuts both ways; the shouting hate
of the jingoistic British and the bigotry of the Pakistani who set
up their homes among and with the English people that they
scorn. It intends to expose the ugliness of prejudice and its
consequences on its victims. Loretta Collins Klobah says about
the play in her essay South Asian Popular Culture that "the play
reinforces the notion that within the plural British nation, an
essential polarity exists between 'East and West'(100). East is
East also shows that while racial prejudice mars and divides us,
even within our own families, it pales in the shadow of the love
that unites all men, regardless of nation, colour, or creed. The on
going feelings of love between Ella and George makes the family
goes on, Ella did not desert George after their collision. Love is
able to cure any illness as long as it exists as Ben Brantly says
"You can sense the persistence of a love between two strangely
matched souls that continues to baffle their children"(7). Ella still
sees George as her husband, someone she will remain faithful and
loyal to till the end. The play ends on George and Ella having a
cup of tea together, a very British form of reconciliation. It is
presumed that all members of the family will be fine:
George switches the radio off. The door slowly opens
from the kitchen and Ella is standing there. He looks up at
her, tears in his eyes.
Ella: Do you want a cup of tea?
George :I have half a cup (148).
Defeated and cast out by his family, George is greeted
with "Salaam Alacum, Mr. Khan"(145)by Earnest, the
neighbour boy –an act restoring a small part of George's
shredded dignity. It suggests that future generations of
multicultural Britain, cultural tolerance and harmony will rule.
The final impression left of the British, then, is that one day the
liberal ethic of tolerance and pluralist framework of
multiculturalism might win out. It also gives the hope that the
intercultural dialogue might prevail one day.
Ayub Khan-Din wrote this play while thinking about his
fathers severe treatment to them.May be after finishing this
play,he realized all the difficulties that his farther faced during
his life in Britain and may be he found an excuse for his father's
severe treatment. Ayub Khan-Din says:
The more I looked at the life we led,the more it made me
question my father's motives.Why was he so insistent
about stamping out any spark of independence he saw in
his children…The more I looked at my parents ,the more
admiration I felt for them.It must have been very hard for
them,the hatred and bigotry they would have faced (East
is East:ix).
Ayub Khan-Din does not concentrate in East is East on
Khan's family as being doomed by racial discrimination for
being Muslim citizens first but as eastern individuals who came
from filthy and inferior countries. He doesn't concentrate on
Islam as the main reason for their exclusion. The following
drama My Son the Fanatic concentrates more on the western
exclusion of Muslim characters just for being Muslims.
Chapter III
Culture Collision in My Son the Fanatic
My Son the Fanatic explores the frustration of the
second generation of immigrants due to the racial prejudice they
faced during their growth in Britain. It perfectly depicts the
relationship between fathers and sons who live isolated from
each other in an ethnic minority seeking a new life and identity
in a country where much of the population does not accept them.
Through My Son the Fanatic the reader sees what the feeling of
alienation leads to. It seamlessly mixes the satiric, the romantic,
the political, and the sexual in a richly-layered fashion.Simon
Robb says to The Guardian:
It has been in print for less than 20 years, but Hanif
Kureishi's debut text remains an important time capsule
for teenage life in 1970s London, confronting racial
politics at a time when immigrants were treated as
intruders on British soil (24).
Susie Thomas points out in her book Hanif Kureishi
(2005) that "Kureishi is an Iconic Status; due to his immense
influence on other writers of the South Asian diaspora in
Britain"(1): her list includes Ayub Khan Din, Meera Syal (1962),Shyama Perera(1962-), and Monica Ali(1967-). Inspired by
Kureishi, all of these writers are notable for "breaking the mold
or defining ‘new ways of being British’. Kureishi is the first
Asian British writer to have actually been born in Britain, a
writer who does not speak from the margins but the centre"
(Thomas 1).One of the most revealing insights into Britain's
recent social history came early in My Son the Fanatic. Indeed
My Son the Fanatic is a vision made by Hanif Kureishi that
proves his talent as a writer who has a high sensitivity to the
dilemmas of his society.Rachel Donadio says:
Hanif Kureishi is the man who had the presence of mind to
poke around in English mosques in the late '80s and early
'90s, sensing that something might be stirring there,
explored the growing discontent, disenfranchisement and
radicalism of some young British Muslims. Not so many
people were paying attention back in 1995, when it first
appeared, but 10 years later, when bombings rocked
central London on July 7, the collective consciousness had
begun to catch up. Now even the monarchy has taken
notice (24).
Kureishi is not only talented in attacking his society's
weaknesses but he is also brave enough to confront these
weaknesses without fearing anything or anyone. He wrote about
Islamic Fanaticism and racial prejudice bravely. Boyd Tonkin
says to The Independent on 6th February 2009 that Hanif
Kureishi is:
One writer who has never shunned the risks of religion is
Hanif Kureishi, who in the months after the fatwa posted
landmark reports about the newly-audible Muslim youth of
Bradford and elsewhere that would feed into his fiction.
Kureishi underlines the crucial distinction between literary
works that scrutinise - or satirise - Muslims and those that
challenge the foundations of faith. "To portray a Muslim
character as being a thief or a criminal - that's certainly not a
blasphemy (5).
My Son the Fanatic is a prophesy of what could happen if
the British society persisted on excluding the immigrants. My
Son the Fanatic is so versatile because it deals with many
themes as James Berardinelli says "With about a half-dozen
subplots and secondary themes"(2). The following issues are
discussed with varying degrees of stress: religious fanaticism,
hypocrisy, the immigrant experience, bigotry, the struggle
between responsibility and the liberation of the self, the inherent
need that everyone has for tenderness, and the clash of cultures.
Plot lines include the struggle between a father who desires a
western lifestyle and a son who wants to return to his roots. My
Son the Fanatic is about a cab driver in Britain who faces
several dilemmas all at once: cultural strictures vs. personal
desires, religious fundamentalism vs. Western mores, and father
vs. son. It's just the kind of melting pot of topics that has marked
much of Kureishi's stories especially My Son the Fanatic. It's a
multi genre tale as it is a screenplay based on a short story.
The short story has achieved better success and fame when
it turned into the screenplay and a film in 1999 directed by
Udyan Prasad and Parvez was acted by the very famous Indian
actor Om Puri, the same actor who acted George khan in East is
East. The film had won many prizes like the British Independent
Film Awards which was given to Hanif Kureishi for the best
original screenplay, Brussels International Film Festival, Dinard
British Film Festival and Independent Spirit Awards in 1998.
Desson Howe says to Washington Post on July 2nd, 1999 "My
Son the Fanatic is an ambivalent mixture of drama and genteel
satire which depicts Asian diaspora in England, usually depicted
as the old world values of the immigrant parents versus the
capitalistic, anti-cultural impulses of their British-born children"
(6).
My Son the Fanatic adopts a similar approach in its
depiction of Britain 1990.The text challenges the understandings
of inter-generational conflicts in minority communities
especially regarding religion. Melanie Wright in Religion and
Film (2007) says that My Son the Fanatic:
[E]xplores the contractedness of culture and the dynamics of
fundamentalism. Whilst neither unsympathetic to religious
commitment, nor uncritical of liberalism and assimilation, it
ultimately prefers the kind of culture blending activities
associated with diaspora aesthetic (109).
My Son the Fanatic is built on incongruities and the
juxtaposition of fierce Islamic piety and amiable western
dissolution. David Edelstein states "The tensions give it a comic
tingle, but that comedy is rooted in melancholy and alienation.
The mix of tones is marvelously embodied in Parvez, a
charismatic, slightly ravaged character"(25). The story shows his
life to every one else , a taxi driver and his son Farid who is
supposed to study accounting. Parvez came to Britain twenty
years ago with his wife to enjoy the freedom and better economic
status of the British society. Parvez is the central character
through whom Hanif Kureishi shows all the dilemmas of the
immigrants in the British society.
Eric Wittmershaus "Parvez is in the middle of every
imaginable conflict atheist vs. religious, Anglo vs. Indo, liberal
vs. conservative, the confines of marriage vs. the liberation of an
affair. Obviously, being torn between forces"(18). That is why
Mark Stein says in his book Black British Literature (2004) that
"Hanif Kureishi could translate across divisions in My Son the
Fanatic”(114).Parvez came to Britain with a dream to be one of
the British civilized citizen, to change the miserable and poor life
he lived in Pakistan. His colonial background about the British
civilization fascinated him. His dream to be part of this developed
country made him try hard to achieve success and to mingle
himself and his family inside the British society. He tried to feel
one of the British unity. Parvez begins with a magnetic
confidence in his own foolishness. In the prologue, he can hardly
contain his delight that his son is set to marry the daughter of the
local chief inspector, a man whose revulsion for this dark-skinned
taxi driver with his cheap camera is manifest in every frozen halfsmile. The genial Parvez wants nothing more than to make it as
an Englishman, to the point of enduring a steady patter of racist
humiliations and drifting into a moral decay to the extent of
becoming a panderer. Nevertheless, he tells himself that his life
has a kind of integrity. Parvez from the very beginning lived
among the British natives away from the Pakistani collections in
towns like Bradford. He allowed his son to join British schools
and to stick to all western customs:
Parvez: how else we can belong here except by mixing
up all together? They accuse us of keeping
with each other.
Farid : Yes
Parvez : But I invited the English. Come-share my
food! And all the years I've lived here, not one
single Englishman has invited me to his
house….But I still make an effort(334).
Parvez has been running a taxi for 25 years. An inattentive
student in his youth, he held no special reverence for Islam.
Immigrating to England, as he explains it, "I said hello to work".
Work for Parvez means transporting anyone – including hookers
– to their destinations. Live and let live. He did his best in order
to feel that the British society accepts him and his family as
native citizens. Parvez seems to adore the British hedonism and
the freedom he found in the British society. He seems to be one
of those whom the researcher categorized in the Introduction as
rejecting the norms and customs of their original culture,
preferring more liberal cultures. Once he reached England he
forgot everything about his culture and his religion and indulged
in the pleasure of the British civilization. There is no sign
allover the text to his Islamic faith except when Farid announces
his Islamic radicalism. He even forgot the basic morals of Islam
and he did not take off his shoes while entering the mosque for
the first time in Britain. He announces his hatred to the Islamic
rituals to Bettina:
Parvez: my father used to send me for instruction with
Maulvi ,the religious man. But the teacher had
this bloody funny effect, whenever he started to
speak or read I would fall dead asleep….
Bettina: Yes
Parvez: He took a piece of string and tied it from the
ceiling to my hair-here. When I dropped off I
would wake up-like. After such treatment I
said goodbye permanently to the next life and
said hello to work (325).
That is what Parvez did since he came to Britain. He
forgot all his Islamic instructions and indulged in the pleasures
of the western society including drinking wine, eating bacon,
listening to Armstrong music, and dancing. In brief, he mingled
himself completely inside the western society without asking
himself whether practicing all these habits is good or just a
foolish imitation. But Parvez's attempts to melt with the British
society failed. He did his best but sadly collided with the British
racism and discrimination. Kureishi says in his essay The Road
Exactly (1997) "My fathers' generation came to Britain full of
hope and expectation. It would be an adventure, it would be
difficult but it would be worth it"(x). Sadly it was not even
worth. The natives refused to accept them or their families or to
give them their full rights. Parvez could achieve nothing but
being a taxi driver for twenty years in England. He confesses to
the German businessman Schitz that the British did not give him
a chance to be in the cricket team although he was one of the
best players:
Parvez: Mr. Schitz, here I had my first job in
England…Five years double shift, even seven
days a week. They would not put me in the
team.
Schitz :I wouldn't put you in the management team
either.
Parvez : Cricket team. We were the best players. I
could spin a little(305).
Billy Bragg says in his book The Progressive Patriot
(2007) "People expect to be judged on their ability, not their
background, and tend to judge others by the same criteria"(245).
But unfortunately Parvez faced the contrary. His dreams did not
come true because he faced refusal and exclusion from the
British natives. When Parvez went to the club with Schitz and
Bettina, the Comedian began to say jokes about Pakistanis and
Muslims. Because Parvez was the only colored man in the club,
white men tried to beat him:
Suddenly the spotlight is on Parvez's face, and the
comedian is telling Paki, Rushdie and Muslim jokes.
Parvez realizes that everyone is turning to look at him,
laughing and jeering. He is the only brown face
there…Bettina refuses to laugh and looks disgusted. A
white man has picked up a bread roll and is about to lob
it at Parvez. Bettina throws a glass of beer over him.
Everyone freezes. Bettina gets up. She takes Parvez's arm
and is about to walk out
Schitz: I like a plucky girl.
He ushers Parvez and Bettina out past the bouncers who
stand between them and the crowd. As they go he looks
at the hostile faces around him. And this is the celebrated
Northern culture? (319)
That is the life that Parvez used to live without complain.
Kureishi seems to depict events similar to most of the racial
incidents he faced during his life through Parvez and Farid. He
says in his essay Something Given "Even we had to get a car.
Most of the time it sat rusting outside the house, since it took
Father six attempts to get through the Driving Test. He became
convinced that he failed because of racial prejudice"(2). As
Parvez was prevented from joining cricket team because of his
dark skin, Kureishi the father too was hindered from getting a
driving license due to being Asian. Unfortunately, Parvez
considered this refusal as a part of his life adventures. He sees
that with all its defectives, life in Britain is better than life in
Pakistan. His wife Minoo faces him with this fact:
Parvez : Minny, how has Fizzy done so well?
Minoo : He was always greedy….for things.
Parvez : He was a greedy little boy.
Minoo: You are easily made happy and like things to
be always the same. That's why you never
made success
Parvez : Not a success
Minoo :Driving a taxi for twenty-five years is not –
Parvez : All right (298).
Parvez's eager efforts at assimilation into the British
society has given him nothing all over his life in Britain.
However he does not admit this fact and continues to deceive
himself pretending that he has all his rights as a British citizen.
It seems that most of the first generation of the immigrants used
to accept such abuse because they do not discuss it with each
other. Parvez and Fizzy speak with each other about other
problems but they do not refer to the prejudice they are exposed
to. Parvez is ashamed to admit his failure and his wrong
decision to come to this land "I never before cursed the day I
brought us to this country"(310). He is enthusiastically and
unconsciously westernized, in his desire to become Anglicized,
falls deep into the seedy side of English society with Bettina and
a group of prostitutes, led by a brash, coke-snorting German
businessman 'Schitz', often playing American jazz in his
basement while drinking whiskey.
Parvez does not mind only driving the prostitutes, but also
making friendship with them and recommending one of them
'Bettina' to one of his wealthy customers, Schitz. In fact Parvez
seems to escape into the night's life in order to forget his failure,
and the British refusal to his rights and not to hear racial words
during the day. He makes a friendship with Bettina. Bettina is a
prostitute, Parvez first met when she used his cab. The two
continue to meet and, predictably, develop a certain affinity;
they became close friends. They are both treated as outcasts in
their community, as social hangers-on relegated to undignified
"professions". They share the same feeling of explosion and
alienation inside their home. That is why they could understand
each other deeply:
Parvez: You know I likedBettina: What
Parvez: Our little talk-
Bettna: Several talks (289).
Parvez does not mind making a friendship with a whore
like Bettina. The brutality of the British society divested Parvez
from all his morals. When he first knew Bettina, he did not try
to dissuade her from practicing prostitution but it seems that he
adopted the principle of live and let the others live. He even
recommended her to one of his customers. He gradually
developed into a moral decay. But Kureishi presents Bettina
from Bernard Shaw's view. As in Mrs. Warren's Profession
(1991). Shaw asserts his view in Preface to Mrs. Warren's
Profession saying that "No normal woman would be a
professional prostitute if she could better herself by being
respectable, nor marry for money if she could afford to marry
for love"(vii). The affection between Bettina and Parvez comes
from the happy realization that in spite of their differences,
they're on the same team--and each has figured out what the
other is truly worth.
Parvez: I told a German about you. Richsmelling. New in town.
Bettina: Thanks very much. You'll want commission
next
Parvez: Am I later taking you home
Bettina: He's paid for an all-night job, but I think he's
looking a bite on the bright side
Parvez: I will wait then (289).
Annabelle Cone from Dartmouth College wrote a research
about Kureishi's works commenting on the love relation
between Parvez and Bettina. She sees that Parvez's resort to
Bettina comes from his lack of sentiment and passion due to the
hard life he lives in a racial society:
Kureishi most often uses middle-aged male characters—
native English, foreign born, or somewhere in between—to
bring out the importance of love in so many of his works.
The immigrant men often suffer from "liminal" malaise, at
home neither in England nor in their native country.' When
they seek refuge in the arms of white women, these women
always seem willing to listen to their confused dislocation.
In the "My Son the Fanatic," the father—again a father,
always the patriarchal figure in crisis-—turns to his
prostitute friend for help in understanding why his son has
turned away from him and "retroconverted" to a very
fundamentalist form of Islam (262).
Parvez gradually developed into a moral decay that will be
noticed by his wife and his son later. The tension between how
he regards himself and how the world regards him is
heartbreaking. He does not realize that he is humiliated and
scorned from the natives. He forgot that he is a Muslim and that
prostitution is completely forbidden in Islam. The relationship
between Parvez and Bettina later developed into a love
relationship. Indeed he found complete relief with her away
from his wife whose feeling of alienation in Britain destroyed
her life with her husband all over the long years they spent in
Britain. Many critics saw that My Son the Fanatic is about the
love relationship between Parvez and Bettina, between the
Muslim who forgot all the instruction of his religion and felt in
love with a prostitute. Hanif Kureishi himself confirms that view
to Arthur J Pais in an interview Love weighed More Than
Ideology:
I was interested in the twist of the father being more liberal
than the son as it is a reversal of what I normally write," says
Kureishi envisioned a man, Parvez, and a woman, Bettina,
talking about the man's son, in Parvez's taxi. The adored son
is behaving strangely and the father is getting worried. As
the couple begins talking, they enjoy each other's company.
But this is an illicit love, for she is a prostitute and he is
married. It is this kind of relationship the son would
disapprove strongly. As the love develops, so does the son's
ideological fervor. While the son joins a crusade against
prostitutes which turns violent, the father appreciates Bettina
for the person she is, and is grateful for the support she
provides him. I was particularly interested in the fact that the
lovers are so very different in age and background and yet
they find something in common which surprises them both
(2).
Parvez can no longer find his need of love and passion
with his wife Minoo. The feeling of alienation they faced in
Britain destroyed their marital life and left both of them feeling
alienated from the other. Minoo resorts to dream of her return to
her roots again while Parvez resorts to westernize himself in a
very wrong way:
Parvez: You can't go home, Minoo. It's not like that
now. This is our home.
Minoo: I hate this dirty place. The men brought us
here and then left us alone (382) .
Minoo hates Britain very much and sees it as a dirty place.
She does not feel it's her country after these years. She dreams
of going back to Pakistan again. Minoo cannot bear a little bit
sexual touch to her husband. She feels that her life in this
disgusting country has destroyed her emotionally and sexually.
She refuses to give him the sexual love he needs and sees him as
an animal that lives in a different world:
Parvez: Touch me then, here. Minee, Minee, can't youMinoo :Today I am exhausted.
Parvez :It must be exhausting, sitting here all day.
Minoo: Shut up ,clown
Suddenly he grabs her and viciously forces her into the
bed
Minoo: What are you doing, No, no leave me Parvez
you have become an animal…Don't ever do
that again !I will kill you (346-347).
Parvez became alienated inside his family. Bart Moore
Gilbert wrote a research about Hanif Kureishi saying:
"Ironically, Parvez's liberal ideals leaves him one of the most
bereft and isolated figure in Kureishi's work abandoned by both
his son and wife and alienated from former friends like
Fizzy"(6). However Parvez had the chance to find solace away
from his wife and son. His conversation with Bettina is
something very important for him and gives him much relief. As
his wife can not give him any emotion, it is natural that his
relationship with Bettina turns into a love relation.
Bettina :You know what I've always wanted to do?
(She puts her hand in his hair and tugs it, quit hard. He
winces and smiles).Does your wife do that?
Parvez: Why are you asking?
Bettina: It is something I can't help thinking about.
Parvez: She's too bloody ugly (359).
Parvez makes love with Bettina in this scene. He has
betrayed his wife because of her passive emotion towards him.
Roger Ebert writes "Parvez is not a rebel, just a realist who asks
himself, "Is this it for me? To sit behind the wheel of a cab for
the rest of my life and never a sexual touch?"(2) However when
he goes back home, he could not look at Minoo "Parvez looks at
Minoo guiltily"(359).But indeed that is what their life in Britain
leads them to, alienation inside one family. A husband and a
wife cannot live their normal martial life because alienation
distorted the wonderful passion between them. While Bettina
shares him his love and sense of loss in Britain. After all, both
Parvez and the call girl Bettina are playing by capitalism's rules,
trying to get a foothold in a society that closely guards access to
its more "proper" ladders to the top. Peter Rainer states:
The relationship that develops between them is so
acutely observed that what might seem odd instead
seems inevitable--Bettina shares Parvez's despairing,
triumphal sense of what their lives could be like.
Bewildered by what their country has become, they are
the true inheritors of England's dashed glories (20).
Parvez confesses that he did nothing in Britain and his
dream of the real Britishness did not come true. He feels it's so
late to achieve it by himself but his son might accomplish it for
both of them. He encourages his son to westernize himself too.
Indeed he feels happy for his son's love for music, cricket, and
the fashionable clothes and his excellence in his study:
Parvez: Cricket is excellent. Farid was captain….
At school he carried the prizes home.
Now at college he is top student of the
year (282).
He makes plans to his child in order to push him into a
real assimilation inside the British society. From Parvez's point
of view studying at English schools, practicing cricket,
swimming, football, watching video taps, wearing fashionable
clothes and finally marrying an English girl would help his son
to be fully accepted in the British society. Fizzy realizes that
such marriage would help Parvez a lot. "Your boy is taking you
up in the world-at last" (292). From Parvez's point of view, the
suitable bride who can help his son to delve into the British
society is a British girl with a father who can help his son to
have a job which facilitate his penetration into the British
society. These are the plans that Parvez has for his son. Parvez
feels that when these steps occur he will feel that his dreams of
doing well in England would have come true .
Parvez: Chief inspector, please inform me
absolutely In confidence: Farid is top
police material, isn't he? (283)
Farid too has been dipped in the western traditions
practicing them unconsciously. He presents a good example for
the successful young man who has a good future waiting for him
to be a good citizen, helpful to his family and his society. Indeed
Farid acts better than his father. Parvez has imitated the
degrading western customs while Farid has adapted the positive
aspects like practicing sports and excelling them, learning
music. In addition he used to be a top student at school and
college. This has been the case till he has discovered their real
situation in Britain. Farid exposes to Parvez that for a long
period he and his colleagues from the immigrants have been
living in confusion and darkness, they were all lost in drug
addiction. He revealed to Parvez that he and his colleagues have
done everything wrong till they burned the school. Farid shows
his father the other side of the immigrants' life that his father
does not recognize:
Parvez: We have come from a third world to
another…Those boys are selling drug.
Farid: I was at school with those lads, until they
burned it down.
Parvez: They did it? What will happen to them?
Farid: Some will die, or get snuffed. Many will go to
prison. The lucky ones stay here, and rot .I
was like them, going to hell in a hurry
Parvez : When
Farid : Before I learned there could be another
way…For months I was high and low at the
same time, lying on the floor in bloody terrible
places. I thought I could never get back
Parvez :Why did not you till me? How could such
thing happened?
Farid: Evil is all around. The brothers have given me
the strength to save myself. In the midst of
corruption there can be purity(344).
Parvez does not know anything about the day life of the
immigrants. He lives in the night's world and knows only what
he sees through the mirror of his taxi. Susie Thomas says in her
book Hanif Kureishi (2005) "[h]is humiliation at Manningham's
club is indicative of the hostility of the host culture, which
requires him to carry a wooden club for self protection at
work"(124). Farid can see what his father can not. He sees the
immigrants' life as soaked in discrimination and disgust as the
British society is soaked in sex and pornography. The western
prejudice and discrimination have destroyed the life of the
immigrants and has led them to become terrorists. Farid refuses
all what he used to do, gets rid of all his previous properties and
begins to be weird.
Parvez is contemplating a display of Farid's cricket and
swimming trophies on mantelpiece. Also a photograph of
him with a cricket team, holding a cup
Parvez: What is the problem here can I help you?
Farid puts the rest of the stuff in the car and the
Companion gives him a wad of money which he
immediately pockets.
Parvez: Where is that going? You used to love
making a terrible noise with these
instruments!
Farid: You said all the time that there are more
important things than stairway to Heaven. You
could not have been more right (300-301).
According to Susie Thomas "My Son the Fanatic is also the
first work to reverse the point of view from sons to fathers: not
teenagers rebelling against restrictive elders, but puritanical sons
rejecting the liberalism of their fathers"(119).Farid discovers
earlier than his father that whatever he does to prove that he is a
good British citizen would not intercede him to be fully
accepted as a British citizen. His success would make nothing
and the British society would not accept him anyway:
Farid :They say integrate, but they live in
pornography and filth, and tell us how
backward we are!....We have our own system.
It's useless to grovel to the whites!
Parvez : But I invited the English. Come-share my
food! And all the years I've lived here, not
one single Englishman has invited me to his
house….But I still make an effort.
Farid: Whatever we do here we will always be
inferior. They will never accept us as like t
hem. But I'm not inferior! Don't they
patronize and insult us? How many times
have they beaten you? (334)
Hanif Kureishi comments on Farid in his essay Sex and
Secularity (2002) saying: " the backgrounds to the lives of these
young people include colonialism-being made to feel inferior in
your own country. And then, in Britain, racism; again being
made to feel inferior in your own country"(1).Farid is one of
these young boys who studied history and discovered that
Britain made its current progress through exploiting the
treasures of their original countries during colonizations. They
also read about the brutality of the British in these colonies. Paul
Gilroy says:
Before the British people can adjust to the horrors of
their modern history and start to build a new national
identity from debris of their broken narcissism, they will
have to learn to appreciate the brutalities of colonial rule
enacted in their name and to their benefit, to understand
the damage it did to their political culture at home and
abroad, and to consider the extent of their country's
complex investment in the ethnic absolutism that has
sustained it (Postcolonial Melancholia 99).
Asians feel that they are at the bottom of the pile; more
likely to suffer from unemployment, poor housing,
discrimination and ill health. In a sense the immigrants dream
has not come true. Yet they can not go back home. Clearly this
affects people in different ways. It is constraining, limiting,
degrading, to be a victim in your own country. If you feel
excluded it might be tempting to exclude others. That is what
has tempted Farid to join Islamic extremism. He found complete
acceptance, purity and equality in his religion. Islam has all
these good qualities of equality, mercy and brotherhood. Islam
instructs all the people to respect each other and help each other
include non –Muslim citizens. Unfortunately Farid did not find
the good Muslim who can guide him and teach him the Islamic
instructions well. Farid with his rage over the western arrogance
and exclusion was a prey for radical groups who know nothing
about the mercy of Islam and nominate themselves as the sword
of Allah who should carry out His punishment on those who do
wrong doings and misdeeds. He says that "the brothers have
given me the strength to save myself"(313). These groups who
call themselves 'Brothers' and are called by the whole world
terrorists practice killing, bombing and destruction, behind the
name of Islam. However they do not belong to Islam because
Islam is the religion of peace and mercy. The Qur'an says:
Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out
clear from Error (2:256).
"‫"ال إكرا في الدين قد تبين الرشد من الغي‬.
(‫البقرة‬:256 )
Murdering people is absolutely not an Islamic instruction.
Terrorists who call themselves Muslims do not belong to Islam.
Unfortunately Farid's virulent hatred of a "society soaked in
sex"(333), his rage at racism, his desire for "belief, purity,
belonging to the past"(333), tips him into a moral maelstrom. He
embraced Islamic radicalism and as he previously was a top
student at school and college, now he would be a top
executioner too. Abbas Tahir states:
Young British Muslims are increasingly found to be in the
precarious position of experiencing competing challenges: at
the extremes, they are influenced by radical Islamic politics
emanating from outside the UK on the one hand and
negative developments to British multicultural citizenship at
home on the other. As a consequence, there is a contestation
between the forces of radicalization, secularization and
liberalization impacting on the lives of young British
Muslims. In the post-9/11 climate, British Muslims are at the
centre of questions about what it means to be British or
English (291).
Farid's character displays a sympathetic kind of
bewilderment with the figure of the British Muslim
fundamentalist, which it posits as a cipher of almost
incomprehensible radical otherness. This figure is more puzzling
for having been home- grown. Parvez experiences his son's
sudden change of behaviour. Initially he suspects drug
addiction, but he finds nothing merely empty spaces. Farid who
lived previously in clutter is now erased. Even music and art are
banished from the ascetic space. Soon the room was practically
bare. Even the walls bore marks where Farid's pictures have
been removed. Farid is literally emptying out his home in his
effort to reinvent himself. The revolution of Farid makes him
reject his white fiancée. She is so different from him and both
their cultures can not be mixed or meet "the strawberries can not
be put with keema"(313).
Farid: You might not have noticed-Madlaine is so
different.
Parvez: How?
Farid: Can you put keema with strawberries? In the
end our cultures….they cannot be mixed.
Parvez: Everything is mingling already together, this
thing and the other!
Farid: Some of us are wanting something more
besides muddle.
Parvez: What?
Farid: Belief, Purity, belonging to the past. I won't
bring up my children in this country (313).
We witness Farid's movement from potential integration in
his engagement to his white fiancée and his excellence at
western music and instruments to separatism and
fundamentalism. Ruavani Ranasinha states "Farid is cringing
embarrassed and repelled by his father's attempts to ingratiate
himself with Madeleine's snobbish middle class parents, and by
the latter's thinly veiled contempt and displeasure"(6). Farid
hates seeing his dad feel inferior before Fingerhut and toadying
him. He also senses how Fingerhut is annoyed to see his
daughter with Farid. He feels that these people disgust him and
his family and considers them unequal. Although Farid is in
love with her, yet his love would not make him accept
humiliation. Indeed Parvez felt inferior that is why he said to his
wife when she asked to go to the toilet twice "They would think
we are Bengalis"(283) as if being Bengalis is shameful.
Farid :But you are reminding me of something
disgusting! Surely you grasped how ashamed I
was ,seeing you toadying to Fingerhut. The girl is
Okay. But Fingerhut…Do you think his men
care about racial attacks? And couldn't you see
how much he hated his daughter being
with me, and how .repellent he found you? I never
want to see those people again(337).
Kureishi explains Parvez's character to Reed Johnson on
the Times saying "Being a 'Paki,' I've been scapegoated. I'm
very interested in figures who carry the disgust of the
society"(4). That is what Farid hates in his father, being rejected
and pretending the opposite. Farid confronts the insidious forms
of racism that his father is prepared to overlook. Susi Thomas
says in her book Hanif Kureishi (2005) that:
My Son the Fanatic recognizes the need for a better
philosophy than capitalist laissez-faire and having fun.
Skeptical liberalism can be fanatical in its denunciation of
fundamentalism. When Parvez tries to beat the fanaticism
out of his son. It is clear that liberalism needs not only to
question itself but also to rethink its relation to deeply held
religious beliefs(119).
Farid became extremely radical. Now he sees every
British thing as against him. He deserted and demonized
everything western. He does not see even the advantages of the
western culture. Then he begins to exclude those who excluded
him. Susie Thomas states:
If it becomes too difficult to hold disparate material
within, if this feels too mad or becomes a clash. One
way of coping would be too reject one entirely, perhaps
by forgetting it. Another way is to be at war with it
internally, trying to evacuate it, but never succeeding.
An attempt Farid makes. All he does is constantly
reinstating an electric tension between differencesdifferences that his father can bear and even enjoy, as
he listens to Louis Armstrong and speaks Urdu (121).
Parvez imitates the British culture in their bad habits and
his son can not see but the seedy side of the western culture. A
society soaked in sex "In the West everywhere there is
immorality"(350) from Farid's view. Even the means of
development in the British culture, he translates as symbols of
domination and imperialism. His fanatic look included
everything around him. He says to the Maulvi "That extremely
tall chimney on the left perfectly symbolizes the overblown egos
of nineteenth century British industrialists. It was built high so
the smoke from it would blow over the house of one of his
rivals"(349). The discrimination and racism has tortured the
immigrants to the extent that some of them do not see any good
qualities in the western society and sadly they want to revenge
for themselves and for their fathers who accepted humiliation
without protest. Kureishi says in his essay Sex and
Sexuality(2002):
Like the racist, the fundamentalist works only with
fantasy. There are those who consider the West to be
only materialistic and the East only religious .The
Fundamentalist's idea of the west, like the racist idea of
his victim, is immune to argument or contact with reality.
If the black person has been demonized by the white, in
turn the white is now being demonized by the militant
Muslim. These fighting couples ca not leave one another
alone(1).
Farid joined radicalism and finds what he needs among the
brothers who exploit his rage and convinced him to purify the
society from the filthy and pornography. Farid and his fellow
men 'the Brothers' have their decision, they will uproot the filth
from their towns, and they nominated themselves as the sword
of Allah that punishes the people who mistakes including the
Jews and the Christians:
Farid: Many lack belief and therefore reason. Papa,
the final Message is a complete guidance…This is the true alternative to empty living
from day to day….in the capitalist dominated
world we are suffering from!I am telling you,
the Jews and Christians will be routed! You
have taken the wrong side (338).
Farid now sees that all his father's behaviour is wrong and
against the rules of Islam. He refuses his father's grovel to the
whites. He faces his father with the fact that drinking wine,
gambling, eating pigs are violations to Islam. He asks his father
to save himself because Allah would punish him if he did not
regret and ask forgiveness:
Farid: Don't you know it's wrong to drink alcohol? It's
forbidden. Gambling too.
Parvez :I am a man.
Farid :you have the choice then to do good or evil.
Parvez :I may be weak and foolish, but please inform
me, am I really according to you, wicked?
Farid :If you break the law as stated then how can
wickedness not follow? you eat the pig in the
house…(334).
One of the main reasons for Farid's revolution is his
feeling that Parvez has accepted humiliation during his life in
Britain without protest or objection. Ikhlaq Din states that "
What was true of the older generation does not hold true for the
next generation of all young people"(156).The second
generation's anger is due to the degradation of the first
generation that considered such kind of prejudice as a part of
their lives' adventures and accepted it silently. Ikhlaq Din proves
this stating "However, for most rural Pakistanis, vilayat (Britain)
was considered as a great land, a ‘land of dreams’"(31).For
Farid, the West is synonymous with materialism and racism; for
Parvez, it offers everything his original country could not offer,
from old jazz records to a friendship with a hooker whose
profession, by necessity, transcends class boundaries. Parvez did
not get angry when the comedian said jokes about Muslims and
Pakistanis at the club or when the white men tried to abuse him.
Bettina and Schitz got angry for him but he did not give any
reaction. Kenneth Turan wrote for Chicago Tirbun on 24 June
1999 that "Parvez was the only one who didn't notice the crosscultural discomfort everyone else in the room is feeling"(2). But
the second generation refuses such kind of treatment and would
not remain silent like their fathers. They have decided not to be
inferior or a material of abuse any more. Janet Maslin says "[A]
comedian sneers at Parvez, when the taxi driver is reluctantly
made to visit a local nightclub. Farid grows increasingly
contemptuous of the sleaze that surrounds his father, and he isn't
shy about saying so" (14):
Farid :We have our own system. It is useless to
grovel to the whites
Parvez:Grovel!
Farid :It sickens me to see you lacking pride. Thing is,
You are too implicated in Western civilization.
Parvez :Implicated
Farid :Whatever we do here we will always be
inferior.They will never accept us as like
them.But I'm not inferior!Don't they Patronize
and insult us?How many times have they beaten
you?
Parvez : With my cricket bat I have always defended
without fear!
Farid :How can you say they 're not devils?
Parvez :Not everyone. I'm saying! Farid, this is not the
village but our home country, we have to get
along(335).
But if the father's way is wrong, the son's way is
dangerously out of touch, as it condemns before it understands.
Farid and the Brothers sentenced all the western citizens of
being devils and should be eliminated. Kureishi shows skillfully
through Farid's words the ways these groups of extremist think.
He shows through Farid how the leaders of these groups use the
wrath of the young generations and their desire to revenge from
those who humiliated their fathers and convince them to destroy
the countries they grow up in. Hanif comments on Farid's
character to Geoff Gardner in Nature of Keeping Awake :
I was also shocked by it because some of the things that they
said made your hair go white with a kind of terror. They
didn't like women, they didn't like gay people, they didn't
like this they didn't like that. They didn't like anything much.
It was kind of terrifying and rather moving because these
children were rather beautiful and intelligent. It seemed as if
life would offer them everything yet there they were
hemming themselves in with this terrible ideology. My Son
the Fanatic is partly about this story(2).
Indeed that is Farid who presents a big warning from
Hanif Kureishi to show that the situation of the immigrants is
about to explode and destroy everything existing on this land
and that is exactly what happened when extremism invaded the
West and young men began to explode everything including
themselves just to revenge from the bad treatment they have
faced in their supposed home. Joshua Klein writes:
Just as race relations in America will be forever affected
by slavery, so will race relations in Europe be
complicated by colonialism. One generation remembers
the subservient role it played in an awkwardly
maintained artificial class structure, while the next is
angrily fighting to reclaim its national identity (3).
Now Farid's rage encompasses everything including his
father, his fiancée and his society. His rage made him blind to
differentiate between the good and the bad. Everything in the
western culture is bad and all the people are immoral and
soaked in sex. In Fact Farid is not different from Alex ,the
Russian German who stabbed dr. Marwa El Sherbeny ,not only
the Muslims are the terrorists, Alex who was shouting ,you have
no right to live while stabbing dr .Marwa is another fanatic like
Farid but he is not a Muslim. Shela Ghose commented on the
image of young men like Farid in her dissertation writing:
Charles Hudson reporting the July 7, 2005 London terrorist
attacks, images of three bearded, swarthy men are
juxtaposed, identified by a reporter's voice as terrorists:
"Shoe bombers" Richard Reid and Sajid Badat, as well as
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Killer of reporter Daniel Pearl in
Pakistan. The Voice then states, "What do these men have in
common? A British Passport( 96 ).
Kureishi draw Farid's character many years before Richard
Reid , Sajid Badat and others appear. He intensified the idea that
these young boys were victims to the western discrimination
through the demonstration of the character of the Maulvi. The
trivial, hypocrite character that has a fatal influence upon these
young boy's mentality. Farid urges his father to agree to host a
Maulvi from Lahore at their home to instruct them about Islam.
Kureishi shows the character of this person as someone intruder
who exploit everybody he knows and uses his religious
personality to achieve his goals.
The religious man tries to motivate Farid to react against
the immorality of the West; of course he means a violent
reaction. Later he arranges them a demonstration where they
beat the whores in the streets and destroy everything. And at the
same time he seeks Parvez's help to stay at this country forever.
Boyd Tonkin in Fiction beyond belief (2009) says that the
Islamic characters in My Son the Fanatic:
Marked him out as a canary in the cultural mine, spotting
the drift towards the radicalisation of Muslim youth long
before policy-makers. In general, he thinks that the fatwa
has made it "more difficult for Muslims to be seen as kind,
compassionate, intelligent, free people. As propaganda, it's
brought nothing but opprobrium to Islam - which is a great
shame(5).
Farid tries to let them understand. He wants his
community to face the facts that they are unwelcomed on this
land. He tries to explain it to Fizzy but it seems that he is like
Parvez resisting comprehension:
Fizzy: Our last day there his mother made me promise to
look after him. You must cherish your father.
Farid: Fizzy uncle, have not we lost our way here
Fizzy: What, Some of us are doing real good.
Farid: Even so, we lack something inside(331).
A moment of explosion joined with violence occurs when
Farid and his fellow brothers including the Maulvi practice an
anti-prostitution demonstration. They go to the prostitutes' street
and beat them. They have decided to uproot prostitution as an
immoral job considering themselves the religious authority of
Allah on earth. Farid confronts Bettina during the demonstration
and he spits on her face. When Parvez watches his son spits in
Bettina's face ,the clash explodes between him and Farid
because Parvez has feelings of love and respect for Bettina
regardless of her immoral job. They have reached a cross road
point.
There is the anti-prostitution demonstration. People are
waving banners and shouting, the women stand in their
places swearing, cursing and brandishing fists….Parvez
catches sight through the melee of the Maulvi with Farid
next to him, next to them Rashid and all of them exchanging
insults with a group of prostitutes among them is
Bettina….suddenly she finds herself facing Farid and stops
short. The boy looks at her for a moment ,then with the
Maulvi's eyes on him, spits in her face. Incensed Parvez
barges his way through the crowd until he gets to her. He
wipes her face with his handkerchief (378).
Parvez grapes Farid home and there they face the reality.
It is a moment of collision, extremism versus hedonism. Hatred
for the arrogance and forged liberty of the West versus
acceptance of humiliation in exchange for enjoying the liberty.
Farid faces Parvez with his participation in immoral sexual work
and Parvez too confronts his son that extremism is not the
solution. Both of them have reached the climax of collision.
Parvez kicks Farid out of the house after he beats him severely.
Parvez starts to throw the Maulvi's
clothes, articles, everything into his suitcases.
Farid: If you shame me I'm going away too
Parvez: All right. I won't stand for extremity of antidemocratic and anti –Jewish rubbish. And he
eats too much
Farid: Only corrupt would say it is extreme to
want goodness
Parvez: But there is nothing of God in spitting on a
woman's face.
Farid: Why are you interested in dirty whores. Is it
because you do it to one of them, do not you?
It has been going on forParvez: You listen to the gossip of fools. We drive
the women and they pay to us.
Farid: It is all around, everyone says so.. it makes
Me feel sick to have such a father! I never
thought you are such a man .You are a pimp
who organizes sexual parties.
Parvez grabs him and starts to hit him around the head.
Farid falls backwards. Parvez is so angry, he grasps him
again and again and continues to whack him
Farid :You call me fanatic, dirty man, who is the
fanatic now?(380)
The international clash between the Pakistani culture and
the western culture has led to a family clash between a son and
his father. He decides to leave England and return to Pakistan.
The racial prejudice that Farid and the other Pakistani
immigrants face in Britain led them to collide with the society
that does not consider them members of its unity.
Discrimination turned a young man like Farid into a fanatic boy
and turned Parvez into an immoral man. Both of them are
fanatic in a different way or in contradictory directions that is
why the collision occurred between both of them.
This decision ends My Son the Fanatic with a truth that the
two cultures would not be able to continue with each other as
long as the British community does not accept then as a part of
its unity and as long as they continue their arrogance and
discrimination. Kureishi calls the British society to stop treating
the immigrants as aliens and dirt and to treat them as British not
Paki or else the young boys would be fanatic.
Patriarchal double standards are explored in the hypocrisy
of Parvez's fellow taxi driver Rashid too. He is not one of the
fundamentalists' group and previously seen groping the women
and wants to make love with one of them, she refuses and
insults him. He is seen later throwing and attacking them during
the demonstration. "At the head is the addict prostitutes who
points at Rashid and shouts out that he was fucking her only last
week.., furious Rashid breaking rank races forward and strikes
the addict knocking her to the floor"(378).
Parvez and Fizzy are childhood friends. They came to
Britain with each other and faced some dilemmas with each
others, but Parvez's aim was not money so he said 'Hello to
work' but Fizzy began to collect money and he succeeded.
Parvez is not nearly as successful as Fizzy who owns a trendy
restaurant and nightclub. This is a point Minoo makes
repeatedly to Parvez, even as she rubs his feet after 14 hours on
the job. Janet Maslin says that "Parvez feels daunted by the gap
between his own circumstances and those of Fizzy a boyhood
friend who is now a prosperous restaurateur. But Parvez does
not lust after money since he came to Britain"(14).He grovels
beyond respect and complete citizenship. But Fizzy's aim was
money from the very beginning.
Parvez's wife Minoo shares her son Farid his quest for
identity. They both have more rage and resentment upon the
western natives than Parvez. Both of them share the same
feeling of alienation. They both watch Parvez accurately and can
notice his lust behind the Western culture. In fact they dislike
seeing him humiliated without reacting. Minoo has realized that
The Fingerhut's scorn them and treat them in superiority.
Minoo : I want the toilet.
Parvez :Not again,they will think we are Bengalis
Minoo :They couldn't tell the difference between a
Pakistani and a Bengali.We are all(283).
That is why Minoo takes Farid's side in embracing Islamic
radicalism because she always longed for her original roots and
culture while hating the British civilization cursing the day she
came to Britain with Parvez.
Parvez :What types are these new friends?
Minoo: They are not like the bad English
stealing and drugging
Parvez :How long have you known this? I'm made
into ignoramus. Why?
Minoo: He has had many things to take in. What
world are you living in? You do not notice
us(313-314).
Minoo sees that Parvez lives in his own world. He refuses
to admit his humiliation and continues to make effort to feel a
British citizen. But Minoo and Farid lost hope forever and began
to search for an outlet. Minoo also feels that her life in Britain
with Parvez destroyed her. She feels that her marriage to Parvez
prevents her from achieving any personal success. She wished
she could have more freedom to work and succeed.
Minoo: If I'd been given your freedom…think what I
would have done…
Parvez: What such marvelous stuff then, bloody hell?
Minoo would have studied. I would have gone
Everywhere .And talked and talked.
Parvez: Talked-who the hell to?
Minoo: Anyone. And not stood here day after day
washing filthy trousers (299).
Parvez and Farid cling on to imaginary utopias. Parvez has
a vision of a tolerant Britain which is undermined by experience
(most directly by the club comedian singling him out for racist
abuse), while Farid similarly dreams of an equally imaginary
Pakistan, where pure Islamic values hold sway. Michael Brooke
states:
Their inability to reconcile their ideas both with each
other and with the outside world (and with wife/mother
Minoo, unwillingly trapped between the warring pair)
gives the drama an authentically tragic edge. The ending
is tantalisingly open - but there's little sign that it's
especially upbeat (2).
Kureishi is also professional in depicting the character of
the Maulvi. He shows him trivial, watching the cartoon and
eating excessively. He tries all the time to motivate the young
boys to make violent actions against the country of pornography
around them, and urges Parvez to help him with immigration
procedures knowing about his relation to the chief inspector
Fingerhut. Indeed the Maulvi considers Britain a paradise
comparing it with Pakistan. He wants to stay in Britain although
he sees it as a country of immorality and filth and he instigates
the children to destroy it. He states that they are treated badly in
Pakistan and in Britain as well.
Maulvi: I'm in need of some legal advices.. My work is
here. I will stay
Parvez: You are so patriotic about Pakistani. It is
always a sign of imminent departure.
Maulvi: Can you help me? In our country we are treated
badly and everywhere else we are what?
Paki(372).
The real fact that the character of the Maulvi provokes
much controversy is clear in the screenplay and the film. His
hypocrisy and his destructive intensions motivates the press to
question Kureishi about his depiction to this character so badly
to the extent that Kureishi was going to hit the reporter who
questioned. Trevor Doglas Smith says in his dissertation A
Funny Kind of Englishman (1999) that :
After the film's premier at Cannes Film Festival in 1997,
Kureishi asked reporters during the press conference to
focus on the love story, rather than on the social and
religious aspects of the film. After a reporter from the
Observer continued to question Kureishi on the subject,
Kureishi not only assaulted the man, but also threatened to
kill him. It seems that the reporter that attacked Kureishi
was phoning Bradford mosques in an attempt to create a
controversy around the film prior to its UK release.
Kureishi claimed that the reporter kept saying" The
mullahs won't like this film (93).
The Maulvi has come to Britain to motivate Farid and his
fellow young men to make violent actions against the natives.
He is the leader who put the plans to destroy the society they
live in. The press makes use of this character to arouse sedition
between Kureishi and the mullahs of mosques in Britain:
Farid: In the west everywhere there is immorality.
Maulvi : You take no action (350).
The Maulvi is an intruder on Parvez's life, however Parvez
does not dismiss him due to religious disagreement, nor even
due to financial one, but rather because of his intolerance of
others "I won't stand for extremity of anti-democratic and antiJewish rubbish"(386).Parvez sees that intolerance of the Maulvi,
Farid and their fellow men could destroy everything as the
western intolerance with the immigrants destroyed their life.
Parvez, the taxi driver, is constantly moving through all of
society. He can pick up a rich man, a politician, a hooker. He
sees the world through his rear-view mirror. Hanif cleverly
introduces the idea of the German businessman who hires him
and is a complete hedonist -- the opposite of the fundamentalist
son. The German businessman is the counterpart of the Maulvi
character. The Maulvi intensifies the exploitation of the young
children due to their over rage upon the western materialism
which is represented on the other part through Schitz, who owns
economical power to buy whatever he desires.
Neither
hedonism nor fundamentalism does he belong to, he has to find
his own path.
Fizzy is the epitome of the economic migrant. He's a hard
worker, he has an entrepreneurial spirit and he measures his life
in material terms. He's done well: He's got himself the fanciest
restaurant in town. But Fizzy is a businessman and in business
it's important to keep the right people on your side and not
offend certain segments of society. So when his best friend
Parvez comes into his restaurant with a girl who is known to be
a prostitute, he pushes them into a side room. There's a delicate
balancing act to be played here about respect and honor, about
how to treat your friends and at the same time take care of
business. Fizzy has a degree of envy for Parvez. Yes, he's a taxi
driver, but he has all these other interests, he's still a free spirit -he hasn't become enslaved to materialism in the way that Fizzy
has. What's unusual about Parvez as an immigrant is that
material success is no longer of prime importance to him. That's
why it is so crucial for Kureishi to show the audience his love
for jazz and blues. He does have the need, albeit instinctive, for
some spiritual and cultural connection. Christy Lemire says
about the characters in My Son the Fanatic "because they are
capable of kindness and anger, loyalty and prejudice at the same
time. Through them, the text presents a welcome reality--human
beings are flawed and contradictory"(1). Kureishi also says to
Tara Mack:
My son the fanatic fits into a new, race-conscious
Britain. It is a story about race and class and growing up, a
story with a bit of sex, a bit of scandal – and, quite
possibly, an ambiguous ending. "I wrote it . . . quite soon
after my children were born. My father had died and then I
had kids, twins, So I'd become a different kind of person,
and I suddenly saw that there was another perspective,
which was my becoming a father and becoming middleaged. I found that it was easier for me to get inside the
father's head than inside the son's head (16).
Kureishi's talent appears clearly through the critics ' views
about this drama. They varied deeply in understanding the main
theme of My Son the Fanatic. Every critic saw it from a
completely different point of view. Yazmin Ghonaim says :
In spite of its title, My Son the Fanatic does not focus on
the relationship between father and son. Rather, it uses the
close ties of these two characters to create in them an
urgency which tempts them to conquer each other's
ideologies. Parvez's own line of defense, "There are many
ways of being a good man" becomes the screenplay's
central premise: it serves to justify Parvez's liberation,
stripping him of culturally-based prejudice without
denying his foreign ethnicity. In this manner, My Son the
Fanatic stresses the difference between ethnic and
ideological diversity (2).
My Son the Fanatic shows only half of both the Islamic
and the western culture as well. Kureishi depicted the bad side
of both cultures. He also presented his character grasping the
bad characteristics of each others. Is Kureishi really giving us
the whole story? What is it about the Islamic faith that so
transfixes the previously westernized Farid? All we see is its
most hateful side, which is certainly not the whole of everyday
Muslim faith. Likewise, we never really see many sides to
Parvez's wife; did they ever really love each other, or was it a
marriage of duty? By not including the other characters'
viewpoints, Kureishi stacks the deck–Parvez is seen as he reacts
to his circumstances by beating up his son and dumping his
wife. But even by western standards, these aren't the most
responsible actions, and Parvez doesn't seem to learn anything
from them, though he does appear exhausted during the final
credits.Kureishi did not give the whole picture of Islam and the
West. He did not clear the essence of Islam although as a
Muslim he should do it. He also displayed the bad side of the
western values such as drinking wine, discrimination, arrogance
and prostitutes in the streets .Even when he westernized Parvez,
he presents him practice the bad habits not the good ones. Both
West and East have misconception about each other. Each party
should present itself clearly to the other to reach the intercultural
dialogue. The characters represented in the drama are not
representatives of each party. Alex Patterson:
Kureishi has toned down the polemics and concentrated
on creating rounded characters and balanced arguments.
The son may be a fanatic, but the writer is not: the
Westerners in My Son may be racist and decadent, but
the Muslims who oppose them are intolerant, selfrighteous and misogynistic (1).
Although Kureishi ultimately offers no solution to the
conflict between secular Western and hardline Islamic values,
he does at least acknowledge the validity and substance of the
underlying issues - and treats them in a notably balanced way.
Susie Thomas says "It is worth noting that Kureishi does not see
Muslim Fundamentalism as old faith clashing with modernity
but as a recent phenomenon, as recent as postmodernism and a
defense against it"(120). Several critics refer to the scene in
which the Maulvi is watching cartoons on televisions as a way
of mocking his superficiality or making him look childish. Dan
Clanton has another view wrote for the Journal of Religion and
Film on October 2000:
My Son the Fanatic portrays one of the most intense and
confusing conflicts between cultures today, between
Islamic tradition and Western values. The entire story tries
to establish a dichotomy between the values of Islam and
the values of the West. We know that Parvez was raised as
a Muslim, yet he seems to find a liberating freedom in his
new cultural surroundings. It seems equally obvious that
Minoo and Farid find a dangerous and often licentious
freedom in the West. The inter-familial conflict is evident
right from the beginning of the story when Farid sells his
guitar. This act is in explicit contrast to Parvez's almost
guilty pleasure of listening to early blues and soul albums
in the basement, almost as if he's afraid to admit his taste
for Western music out in the open(25).
Peter Kobel comments in an interview with Hanif Kureishi
about My Son the Fanatic claiming that this screenplay is about
unconventional
relationship:
love
story
and
unconventional
parental
[A]n unconventional love story about a Pakistani
immigrant who strays from wife and status quo when he
falls in love with a young white prostitute. Deliberately
subverting expectations from the get-go, the tale also turns
the tables on the traditional scenario of repressive father
versus freedom-loving son. "In the old days, I would have
written it from the son 's point of view," Mr. Kureishi ,
dressed in a Sundance sweatshirt and jeans, says, as he
reins in his wayward son by fastening him back in his
stroller "but instead I wrote it from the father's point of
view(20).
Hanif Kureishi wrote My Son the Fanatic as a reaction to
Salman Rushdie's Novel The Satanic Versus and the sentence of
death that was announced against him by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Although Hanif did not clarify whether he is with or against
Rushdie's novel but he admits that this novel has motivated him
to write My Son the Fanatic. Hanif Kureishi says to Geoff
Gardner:
After the fatwa against Rushdie I took some interest in
fundamentalism because it fascinated me that these guys
wanted to kill writers. It never occurred to me that writers
were so important that people wanted to kill them or burn
their books. It really woke a lot of us up as to what books
were about(5).
Hanif was not satisfied to deal with these young boys on his
writings through the media reports only. He had a deep desire to
be acquainted with them closely and to recognize their thoughts
and dreams. He tells Geoff Gardner that he went to these boys
and conversed them.
So I went to see some of these young fundamentalists who
were active in colleges near me. It was very interesting to see
how they repudiated the West. They felt that they had been
dumped in the West by their parents, who were immigrants,
in a place where they weren't really wanted. You could see
that fundamentalism was a good way for them of finding an
identity, finding a place and sealing themselves off from the
rest of society. I was also shocked by it because some of the
things that they said made your hair go white with a kind of
terror. They didn't like women, they didn't like gay people,
they didn't like this they didn't like that. They didn't like
anything much. It was kind of terrifying and rather moving
because these children were rather beautiful and intelligent. It
seemed as if life would offer them everything yet there they
were hemming themselves in with this terrible ideology. My
Son the Fanatic is partly about this story(5).
Kureishi felt the dilemma of the young immigrants' boys
earlier because he suffered this dilemma earlier during his
upbringing in the British society. Matt Wolf comments on
Kureishi saying "Born to an Indian father and English mother in
London and raised in suburban Bromley, Kureishi sensed early
on the casual racism that surrounded his family"(12).Kureishi's
previous words seem very important because they show how
these boys were really seeing a western country like Britain.
Kureishi has dialogued them and recognized their real tragedy.
He realized the main reasons for their believing in a radical
belief. He felt anger boiling inside their hearts that wants to be
released. He understood that such criminal organizations found
these children fantastic weapons to achieve them their
destructive goals. Then he depicted Farid's character depending
on the real characters he met during this visit. Wesley Morris in
the Examiner comments on My Son the Fanatic saying:
The drama also makes a sagacious distinction between the
perception of the personal and the political: Bettina considers
herself a sex worker, wearing that wig to make the line
between the two less fine. Parvez's friendship with her
signals some cultural restlessness on his behalf. But "My Son
the Fanatic" doesn't feign hope in racial harmony - cultures
mix, here, only in the marketplace. And that lack of cultural
fidelity can topple a family - Farid replaces his disappointing
dad with a more convincing fanatical leader who, as it turns
out, wants the same things for his family as Parvez. What
Kureishi, one of the most nuanced essayists of the diasporic
experience, seems to have found in that overlap between
personal politics and everybody's politics is a deeply
comfortable, introspective way of saying, "Thank you,
Pakistan( 3).
That is the reason Kureishi deals with the Pakistani
immigrants from the religious perspective in My Son the
Fanatic. He shows the collision as a result of the Islamic rituals
which are in great contrast with the western hedonism. He
shows Parvez as an anti Islamic Muslim while Farid is a blind
zealot. Kureishi expected that there is going to be troubles
concerning the compatibility of the Islamic instruction against
the western excessive liberty. It was seen by most of the critics
as a talent and high sensitivity from Kureishi to feel this
upcoming dilemma.
My Son the Fanatic has been related by many critics with
East is East because both dramas were written by two Pakistani
British writers who passed the experience of being immigrants
and who suffered racial discrimination and prejudice during
their life in Britain. Bernhard Reitz says in a research paper
about My Son the Fanatic published for the European Journal of
English Studies that "Like Hanif Kureishi, Ayub Khan-Din is
the offspring of a mixed marriage –both have fathers who had
immigrated from Pakistan; both have British mothers"(39).
Indeed there are many other similarities between East is East
and My Son the Fanatic which make them twin dramas. Both
dramas concentrate on the generational chasm between fathers
and sons because of culture differences and racial prejudice.
Both writers presented the father-son clash as a result of the
culture clash. They concentrated on the difficulty of raising a
second generation of children in a second home completely
different in its norms, culture and traditions from the original
home and the problems faced by both the first generation and
the second generation.
In East is East, the father George is the character that has
received the culture shock or the wake up call. He has
discovered that whatever they do, neither he nor his children
would be accepted as British citizens. Consequently he plans to
obligate his children to return to their original traditions through
living among Pakistani communities and marrying from
Pakistani girls. The children are the liberal who prefer the
western way of life and refuse admitting their eastern and
Muslim roots. But in My Son the Fanatic, the picture is totally
reversed, the father is the liberal man who enjoys the freedom of
the British culture and finds in this freedom a solace for the bad
treatment he faces there. While his son is the rebel who has
realized the fact that they are rejected in the British community
and they would never be welcomed. The son deserts his old
habits and embraces Islamic extremism and returns to his roots
to find relief and solace in his original religion and culture. Janet
Maslin says that "My Son the Fanatic, stars hilariously in the
version of East Is East"(14).
Though both the fathers are absolutely in contradiction but
they share the same idea that their children' marriage would
improve their life. Parvez thinks that his son's marriage from a
British girl would help him to become a real British citizen.
While George who lost this hope sees that his children should
marry from Pakistani girls to avoid the feeling of alienation he
faced and to feel welcomed not rejected among the Pakistanis.
The children are different from each other. Farid rejects
marrying the white girl and looks for the Pakistani who would
understand his traditions and cultures, while most of George's
children refuse marrying from Pakistanis and prefer the British
girls. But all the sons in the two dramas flee from their brides in
or after the engagements. George and Parvez both plan their
children' life. They do not give them the chance to choose for
themselves. Both of them resort to violence to obligate their
children to do what they wish. Gorge hits his children and his
wife to carry out his orders and so does Parvez.
George has realized the reality of the British natives and is
certain that the society would never accept his children as real
British citizens. Parvez on the contrary has not realized this fact
yet. He has hope that if his son marries a British girl, he would
be acknowledged as a total British citizen. This end was not
achieved by George in East is East in spite of marrying a
British woman, the rejection continued even increased.
Both George and Parvez do not lust after materialism.
They do not wish to be rich and they do not seek wealth behind
their children' forced marriage. What they seek is respect and
acceptance in the British society. Both of them are satisfied with
the financial gains that preserve them and their children a good
life. They feel that acceptance and welcome inside the British
society are more important goals to pursue than money. The
children too do not wish to be wealthy. They are too confused
searching for their true identity to wish wealth and welfare.
George is more conservative than Parvez. He tries hard to
maintain his Islamic traditions and rituals, preserving going to
the mosque to pray. Drinking win and a sexual lust are excluded
from his. George also maintains his loyalty to Pakistan while
living in England. He is always interested to listen to its news.
Parvez, on the contrary, has forgotten everything about Pakistan
and about his religion since he reached Britain. He embraces
liberty and practices it with all its pleasures and joys without
feeling regret for violating his religious instructions.
Tariq the son in East is East is a small image of Parvez.
Tariq is the most rebellious son who refuses being a Pakistani as
Parvez who does not even remember to take off his shoes while
entering the mosque. Both George and Parvez did not join
Pakistani communities in towns like Bradford. They had hopes
of integration and acceptance. They both were disappointed but
responded differently to this disappointment.
In both plays there is a relation with white western women
whether as a wife in East is East or as a friend in My Son the
Fanatic. Hence eastern men often look for a relation with
western females. George married a British woman , regretting it
because she did not comprehend his traditions and norms While
Parvez married a Pakistani woman but after many years in
Britain he has the same feeling of alienation that George suffers
from in East Is East. So whether marrying a British or a
Pakistani, the immigration experience and the prejudice they
face has destroyed both families. George feels alienated among
his wife and children and Parvez as well. But George's case is
better than Parvez's because at the end, George and his wife
could maintain their marital life after the collision. The love
scene between them proves that love prevails. Parvez and his
wife could not continue their life together, Minoo deserts him to
return home. Allover the text Minoo is unable to exchange love
with Parvez. Life in Britain has destroyed their marital life
completely. Parvez has betrayed Minoo with a whore.
Both George and Parvez resort to violence in solving
their problems. They do not apply conversation and dialogue.
The British society has not conversed with them before to teach
them the language of conversation in solving problems.
Accordingly they use the methods they learnt with their sons.
Also both of them evict their sons from the family home when
they disobeyed them exactly as the British society has evicted
them from their unity.
Madelaine: He wanted someone he had more in
common with. He has become inflexible
Parvez :I will break open his face until he obeys
Madlaine: You do not know anything, do you know
that Farid told my father he was the only
pig he'd ever wanted to eat(305).
Stella in East is East resembles Madeline in My Son the
Fanatic. Both of them love colored immigrants without having
the same prejudice look that the first generation of their parents
has. They do not think of their lovers as immigrants but as
British citizens like them. This confirms that the main problem
seems to be dug in the first generation imperial mentality. Both
dramas also skillfully depict the bad sides of the western and
eastern Muslim people. Both George and Parvez are bad
examples of the Muslims personality. They misrepresent Islam.
Parvez has abounded his religion completely indulging in the
bad western habits while George practices his Islamic rituals
superficially, mere rituals with no application in his family
relationship. The western culture also looks cruel in both dramas
as it has destroyed the immigrants with its blind discrimination.
The West needs to understand the Islamic expressions of revolt,
as movements against corruption and lack of justice, not
necessarily as anti-Western(Ahmed Akbar S 216).
East is East ends with a hope in the ability of coexistence.
Ella does not desert George. She continues to live with him
because there is love that still gathers them in some moments.
Earnest and Sajid are still so young and they respect each other
and do not feel different from each other. Consequently there is
a hope that this generation could change the situation of the
older generation. They carry out love and respect without
discrimination. On the contrary is My Son the Fanatic that ends
with Minoo and Farid deserting Parvez with no hope of return
because love relationship between them does not exist, it faded
away due to the prejudice they were exposed to.
The play and the screenplay were made into films. Both
films were so successful that draws attention to the original
texts. Om Puri the Indian actor acted the role of both Parvez in
My Son the Fanatic and George in East is East .Om Puri is a
British Indian immigrant and is seen as a very talented actor. He
was one of the main reasons for the success of both films and
also is a main reason for creating a strong relation between the
two dramas. He played the role of the father in the two dramas
perfectly. Both dramas reflect the ever growing crisis between
the East and the West. They reflect a history of 1400 years since
the beginning of Islam. They show how the anger increased and
led to murder, killing and destruction. Yet the ever-growing
chasm between East and West—between Islamic duty toward
the family and the Western emphasis on enjoying yourself
without hurting others. Both My Son the Fanatic and East is
East are calls for equality, tolerance and peace among East and
West.
Conclusion
This thesis has discussed racial prejudice in England
among the British people and the multicultural British minorities
especially the Pakistani minority which led to identity crisis
inside the British society. This prejudice is the main reason for
the phenomenon of terrorism in England and the different violent
attacks in the British society. The theory of "culture collision" is
discussed in relation to the play East is East by Ayub Khan-Din
and the screenplay My Son the Fanatic by Hanif Kureishi. Both
writers are British Pakistani immigrants who suffered from racial
discrimination and prejudice during their life in Britain. The
characters in both dramas reflect the influence of the British
discrimination upon the immigrants' life.
The Introduction defined the concept of culture collision
in general, its reasons and roots. Most religions call for cooperation, collaboration and support among all nations. The
concept of culture collision was invented by people like Bernard
Lewis and Samuel Huntington to confuse the eastern nations
and weaken them in order to live in ignorance and
backwardness. The western powers that dominate the whole
world politically and economically fear the Islamic strength
which threatened their power during the Islamic conquest and
the Ottoman Empire. Hence Islam is the latent power which
threatens the domination of the West all over the ages. They fear
that Muslims might regain their previous superiority,
endangering the western dominance. Consequently they use
theories such as 'the clash of civilizations' and 'Muslims'
terrorism' to weaken the Muslims. However, it can not be denied
that the Muslim world has some feelings of anger and rage
towards the western countries due to their being treated as third
world citizens.
The terrorist attacks that invaded the whole world during
the last twenty years from the so called Muslims' militant were
due to the western arrogance and feeling of superiority. The
imperial background of the western nations like Britain, France,
Germany and Italy still dominates the mind of the first
generation of these nations and motivates them to treat the
immigrants from the previous imperial countries as their slaves.
They refuse their existence as equal citizens, abusing them and
refusing their rights as citizens. The immigrants faced prejudice
and discrimination which led them to feel alienated in their
adopted countries. All these actions have charged the eastern
peoples' emotions with anger and hatred upon the western
nations subjecting them to criminal organizations that convinced
them to revenge from the western injustice.
Chapter one discussed the Pakistani immigrants in
Britain, their condition and the problems they faced there. It
highlighted the deteriorating conditions they lived in, after their
participation in post war reconstruction in Britain. The Pakistani
drama reflected these conditions. This chapter has placed Ayub
Khan-Din and Hanif Kureishi within their contemporaries such
as Azma Dar, Yassmin Whittaker and Rukhsana Ahmed. It has
presented as well a survey of the social background of the
dramatists.
Chapter Two analyzed Ayub Khan-Din’s play East is
East, emphasizing the realization of George, the father, that
neither he nor his children would be treated as British citizens,
in spite of his marrying a British lady. Consequently, he urged
them to assimilate inside their original community through
marrying Pakistani wives. They rejected the attempt preferring
to stick to the British citizenship, to the extent of going to
church instead of the mosque. This chapter has discussed the
different reactions to ‘the culture collision’ amongst the first
generation and the second generation of Pakistani immigrant.
The title of the play itself is very significant. It confirms the
difficulty of westernizing the East.
Chapter Three concentrated on Hanif Kureishi’s
screenplay My Son the Fanatic. This play has presented a
different figure to the father. Parvez did not resist the
marginalization he was exposed to. Instead, he simply
surrendered to his being humiliated. He even urged his son Farid
to marry a British wife, to facilitate his assimilation into the
British society. The father’s negative response to humiliation
has made of Farid an easy prey to fanatic groups. They have
exploited his rejection to humiliation and convinced him to join
their group. He was transformed into a fanatic person, torturing
prostitutes and exploding places.
Both dramas reflect the feeling of alienation that most of
the characters are sinking in due to the rejection and exclusion
of the British society. Parvez and George are truly confused.
They do not know how to act to provide their children with a
respectful life. Most of the young generations suffer from a
hidden identity crisis; they lost their sense of their true identity.
They do not know whether they are Pakistani or British. They
refuse their fathers' ways of solving this problem. Both Parvez
and George want to obligate their children to carry out their
orders without giving them the right of choice. The clash of
civilizations occurs within the small family as a result to the
prevalence of culture collision.
All the western nations including Britain should overcome
the superiority feeling which led to the modern division of the
multicultural families in England and exploded feelings of anger
and hatred in the body of the British nation. They should absorb
the fact that all the British citizens are human beings regardless
of their religion, race or colour. Mr. Morehouse in East is East
and Mr. Fingerhut in My Son the Fanatic feel superior to the
Pakistani immigrants, hence they scorn them and ask for
repatriation. It is only when you stop thinking of somebody as a
Muslim, and you think of them according to their position in
society whether doctors, drivers or teachers and you relate to
them according to shared goals, that a truly inclusive public life
would be achieved. Mr. Morehouse and Mr. Fingerhut should
judge George and Parvez's families' on their ability, not their
ethnicity. No doubt Muslims do encounter some barriers and
discrimination. But any solution to divisions in the British
society needs to start with the aim of bringing about a society of
confident, freely associating individuals, who gather to work,
educate and enjoy the arts – regardless of their race or religious
background. People like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington
who have great influence on the public sphere should stop
plotting against Muslims and the Middle East. Tolerance, peace,
equality and fairness are values needed to be sewn in the
whole world nations' mentality in order to reap co-operation and
progress instead of collision and destruction.
As for the Islamic world, its larger crisis is not political
or economic. The larger crisis is of a civilization that has
become aware of its inadequacies but is too confused to act
better. That applies to George who has become a tyrant and
Parvez who has become hedonist as well. In Pakistan as much
as in other Islamic countries, Muslims like Farid have to
abandon the culture of victimhood and get out of the groove of
hate and spite, rage and self-pity. George and Parvez should
struggle more to convince the British that they are good British
citizens. Instead of blaming others for their problems, they
should objectively look into the whys and wherefores of their
decline. It should be clear to them by now that the only way to
present the true image of Islam is by getting out of the
downward spiral of ignorance and obscurantism, fanaticism and
delusion, poverty and oppression, rage and self-pity, hate and
spite, violence and suicide bombing. Muslims have to convince
the militants that terrorist attacks have harmed Islam and
Muslims more than their enemies. They have to persuade them
that hijacking planes, bombing shopping centers, burning
women and children, slaughtering innocent civilians, killing and
getting killed in order to be martyr is a most flagrant violation of
the Qura'n injunctions, Islamic morality and the humane
teachings of the holy Prophet. They cannot get out of the mess
in which they find themselves today unless they comprehend the
real reasons for their decline. This applies to Pakistan as much
as to any other country in the Islamic world. In addition Islam
has to be presented correctly to the West. They do not know
anything about it, except through tendentious media. Genuine
intercultural dialogue needs enrichment from both sides.
Muslims should wake up from their cultural inadvertence.
Muslims are living in an interdependent world of accelerated
changes. Time is moving so fast that unless Muslims heed the
wake-up call, the world will soon pass them by and treat them as
a lost tribe. They have to regain the lost spirit and habit of
inquiry and analysis, reform and regeneration to get out of the
rut of moral chaos and intellectual stupor and decline. The best
hope lies in reason, free discussion, receptiveness to thought,
openness, synthesis and harmony, pluralism, tolerance,
accommodation, and seeing the other fellow’s point of view. If
Muslims continue to ignore these virtues, the future would
become even bleaker for them than the present, cultural and
institutional backwardness. The inter-cultural dialogue is highly
recommended.
Works Cited
Works Cited
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Smith,
Alistair. "Admit Problem over Lack of Minority
Participation in Arts". Stage News (7 December 2005).
Social Exclusion Unit, Minority Ethnic Issues in Social
Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal, London:
Cabinet Office, 2000, 237.
25 May 2009
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/1076
Sparks, Thomas. "Jewish Control Of The UK British Media".
Sean Bryson. June 2002
25 May 2009
http://seanbryson.com/articles/
uk_jewish_media_control.html
Thompson,
Harvey. "My son The Fanatic ,A Moving and
Unconventional Love Story". World Socialist
29 May 1998.
5 October 2009.
www.wsws.org/Arts reviews/film reviews: My
Son the Fanatic
Tobias,
Scott." East is East". DVD,A.V.Club
March 29th 2002,
5 October 2009
www.avclub.com/content/dvd/east is
east/htm
Turan,
Kenneth . " My Son the Fanatic, Cross-Cultural
Fallout". Chicago tribune
24 July 1999.
5 January 2010.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/clmovie990624-4,0,6519839.story
Weisberg, Jacob "Party of Defeat". The Slate, March 14, 2007.
http://www.slate.com/id/2161800/
Whittaker Khan, Yasmin ."My Mother was the Victim of
Honour Killing, Reveals Muslim Playwright".
Daily Mail
8 September 2007.
5 October 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article480719/My-mother-victim-honour-killingreveals-Muslim-playwright.html
Films
I-East is East. Dir. Damien O'Donnell. Perf. Om Puri, Linda
Bassat.DVD (1996).
II-Executive Decision. Dir. Stuart Baird. Perf. Kurt Russell,
Steven Seagal. DVD (1994).
‫‪III-My Son the Fanatic .Dir. Udayan Prasad. Perf. Om Puri,‬‬
‫‪Rachel Griffths, Akbar Kurtha. DVD (1997).‬‬
‫‪IV-The Siege. Dir. Edward Zwick. Perf. Denzel Washington,‬‬
‫‪Annette Bening, Bruce Willis .DVD(1998).‬‬
‫المراجع العربية‬
‫الكتب‬
‫السيد عطاء هللا مهاجرانى‪.‬االسب والغرب‪.‬ترجمة دكتور عادع سويلم‪.‬القاهرة‪.‬مكتبة‬
‫النرو الدولية‪ .‬الطبعة األولى ‪2006‬‬
‫المجلك األعلى للنئون االسبمية‪ .‬في سبيل الهدى والرشاد‪.‬الج ء السادس ‪1997.‬‬
‫مقاالت‬
‫أمينة البندارى‪ .‬مائدة مستديرة ألوع صراع الحضارات ومناقنة مع ادوارد سعيد‪.‬‬
‫األهرا ‪ 27‬مارس ‪.)7) 2003‬‬
‫األهرا ‪ .‬تفتيش البابا شنودة في مطار هيثرو‪ 18.‬ابريل ‪.)1( 2008‬‬
‫األهرا ‪ .‬ضياب أدوات التفاهم بين االسب والغرب‪ .‬األهرا العدد‪ 44389‬لسنة‬
‫‪132‬فى ‪ 18‬يونيو‪.)10( 2008‬‬
‫بثينة أبو المجد ‪ .‬مجلة فكر وإبداع‪ .‬صورة االسب والمسلمين في أعماع مار لو‬
‫وشكسبير ‪ .‬العدد ‪.)52-27( 20‬‬
‫عمرو موسى ‪ .‬نظرية صراع الحضارات تطبح فقا على االسب دون‬
‫ضير ‪.‬وكالة أنباء السعودية‪ 15.‬أكتوبر ‪.)1( 2006‬‬
‫فارو جويد ‪ .‬لماذا يكرهنا الغرب‪.‬األهرا ‪ 18‬أضسطك ‪.)9( 2006‬‬
‫محمد ألسنين هيكل‪ .‬صراع الحضارات ‪.‬مجلة العربي العدد‪ 1000‬ف‪ 12‬مارس‬
‫‪. )1( 2006‬‬
‫البرامج التليفزيونية غير المسجلة‬
‫منتهى الرمحى برنامج "بانو راما" قناة العربية مع األب نبيل ألداد راعى قائفة‬
‫الرو الكا وليك –عمان ‪.‬د‪/‬محمد النجيمى أستاذ الدراسات االسبمية بكلية الملك فهد‬
‫الر ياض ‪ .‬اال نين ‪ 18‬سبتمبر‪ 2006‬الساعة الثالثة ظهرا‪.‬‬