Ground Zero Narratives: Islam and Muslims in Post-9/11 American Narratives and Arab American Counter-Narratives [Hardcover]

Ground Zero Narratives: Islam and Muslims in Post-9/11 American Narratives and Arab American Counter-Narrativespresents a dissection of American narratives to understand how 9/11 stories reflect both geopolitical relations and conflicts of our collective present regarding terrorism and counter-terrorism. Mubarak Altwaiji approaches post-9/11 narratives from two opposing perspectives/voices: neutral narratives and political narratives. By doing this, the book provides a neutral cultural territory divorced from geopolitical strategy to understand this new version of American literature and explore the common beliefs and values in it. A third focus, emerging in American literary studies and offering a bridge to those interested in exploring the cultural contributions of Muslim immigrants to American culture, is on the literature of immigrants. It is vital to consider the contribution of Arab American writers as the concepts of culture and co-existence are interlinked.Mubarak Altwaiji is associate professor of literary theory and criticism, as well as head of the department of English Language Skills at Northern Border University.

In his investigation of representations of Islam and Muslims in post-9/11 Euro-American and Arab American narratives, Altwaiji (Northern Border Univ., Saudi Arabia) not only engages postcolonial theory in his critique of the Western Orientalist literary tradition but also historicizes Orientalism as a binary thinking mode in its evolving religious, geopolitical, technological, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Reading what he calls Ground Zero narratives, which range from John UpdikesThe Terroristand Tom ClancysThe Teeth of the Tigerto Richard ClarkesThe Scorpions Gateand John ElraysKhalifah, Altwaiji argues that these Euro-American authors equate Islam with terrorism and Muslims with violence and irrationality, which would justify Western domination of the Arab nations and the Middle East. Moreover, hl<