Islamic Fundamentalism vis-à-vis Jihadi Women: Tabish Khair’s Jihadi Jane
Arnab Kumar Sinha
- Pages
- pp. 15-22
- Published
- January 1, 2018
Arnab Kumar Sinha (2018). Islamic Fundamentalism vis-à-vis Jihadi Women: Tabish Khair’s Jihadi Jane. Labyrinth, 9(1), 15-22.
Abstract
Tabish Khair ’s recent novel, Jihadi Jane (2016) provides an interesting perspective on the issue of Islamic f undamentalism. Instead of simply critici sing the worldview of the Jihadis, Khair presents the world of the Jihadis through the eyes of two Jihadi women. Jihadi Jane is a kind of travel narrative that captures the psychological journey of two Muslim women, who migrate from London to Syria for accomplishing their mission to become pious and good Muslims. This mission, which initially drives Ameena and Jamilla to the training institution of the Jihadis, turn out to be a disastrous experience for both of them. In the training institution run by the Jihadis for grooming the minds of young women, the Jihadis preach a fundamentalist perspective of Islam that appears to be dangerous to both Ameena and Jamilla. They find it difficult to negotiate their secular view o f Islam with the religio-political view of the Islamic fundamentalists. Instead of preaching the actual message of the Quran, the Jihadis, as Ameena and Jamilla discover, selectively use certain messages in the Quran to imbibe in the minds of young women a wrong idea about Islam. Thus, through the structure of a dystopic travel narrative, Khair shows the world of terrorism. In fact, the narrative can be read from the perspective of the conflict between secular and non -secular Islam. This paper will therefor e make an attempt to address this conflict through the point of view of the Jihadi women. Khair ’s fiction, as my paper will argue, appeals for a secular view of Islam that seeks to be inclusive and apolitical
Keywords:Islamic fundamentalismSecular IslamJihadi


