Hegemonies, subalternities and haram : Islamic extremism, masculinities and religious masks in post-9/11 African writing

In the multicultural and transnational reality of the contemporary global community, terrorism has arguably assumed a discursive synonymity with Islamic fundamentalism. This significantly post-9/11 development has constructed demonising forms of seeing the male Muslim as a potential terrorist with the ominous capacity to purge perceived institutional haram (heresies considered abominable to Islam) in his Salafi-Jihadist persuasion. This development informed a range of arguable Orientalist post-9/11 writings, as well as counter-Islamophobic literary reactions that responded to narratives generated by anti-Arab discourses. As yet, we do not have an African perspective on this literature nor an analysis of the representations of masculinity that produce the subaltern young male terrorist. In this paper, I argue that Arab-Islamic terrorism in post-9/11 African writing challenges the view that presents indigent male youth as driven by religious conviction and conscripted as ‘religious zealots’. Post-9/11 African writing rather reveals contexts of failed modernity, multicultural trauma and intra-Islamic power relations that young Muslims can fall victim to.