For the Love of God and His Prophet: Rediscovering Islam Through the Arts

Week 13’s reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist inspired an idea of an alternative 9/11 memorial. Reading about Changez’s identity struggles as a young Pakistani man in the post 9/11 United Sates, made me consider aspects of the human tragedy that usually don’t have enough space in the public discourse in America. I thought of the victims of the terror attack on the world trade center, on the thousands of lives that were lost and the millions of lives that were brutally scarred forever; but maybe for the first time, I also thought, specifically, of the Changezs that lost their lives in the attack. I thought of the Pakistanis, the Afghans, and the Iranians who were proudly trading Fed bonds in these towers the day the planes crashed; I thought of devout Muslims or those who may have considered their Islam no more than their cultural identity, who lost the people they loved and cherished; I thought of all those people who were not only victims of the terror attack but that were, to some extent, forced to bear the blame in the aftermath of the events—those who were cynically victimized twice, by each of the worlds they were attempting to bridge. It reminded me of the discussion we had in class about the role of the veil in securing identity at a time when identity was under attack; the idea of the veil as a symbol of culture that was made into a symbol of Islam. Sometimes things don’t fit into molds we already have created in our minds, but for lack of alternative we force them into those molds anyway, and sometimes, unintentionally, we end up deepening the tragedy rather than healing. This alternative monument would contain a humble quote, one of my favorites quote in the novel. This quote should serve as a reminder that the enemy who brought this tragedy upon us is no monolith and that by demonizing people based on their religious beliefs, cultures or traditions, we turn them into “reluctant fundamentalists;” we, ourselves, feed the circle of hate and divergence. A little space for the other dimension of the tragedy could have made all the difference between perpetuating our noble values and aspiring to be even better.