Dr Sadia Zulfiqar

Leila Aboulela and Muslim Women: From Rescue to Resistance

The proposed monograph will examine representations of Muslim women and Islam in the fiction of Leila Aboulela. This research is timely given the increasing polarisation of discourse around women and Islam, and the lack of any existing monographs on Aboulela; it will engage with debates around Muslim women and agency, exploring the ways in which Aboulela’s heroines negotiate the politics of gender and identity through their faith. I will join an established research community at Aberystwyth exploring themes of gender, migration, belonging, faith and female empowerment. My research will be underpinned by an examination of Muslim female experience in the UK in the post-9/11 world and the ambivalent relationship between Islam and the west; the project will be contextualized alongside recent work by UK-based scholars such as Claire Chambers, Daniel O’Gorman and Peter Morey, who investigate contemporary narratives of Muslim experience, the war on terror and Islamophobia.