The Salvific Value of Islamic Perspectives on English Literature
By Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Jan/Feb 25
Many believe that Islam and English literature are mutually exclusive. Some people may even shudder at the thought of integrating one into the other.
English literature’s global reach is often greeted with disquiet, as it’s considered a corollary to Britain’s colonial expansion. What’s more, its study is generally believed to be unsuited to the needs of non-British or non-Western readers. In a 2019 essay, Esmaeil Zeiny of Tehran’s Kharazmi University argues that reading this literary tradition is interpreted as “celebrating the Anglo-American canonical literature.”
British-Zimbabwean writer Doris Lessing, the 2007 Nobel laureate in literature, had limited formal schooling. In “Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change”(1994), literary scholar Gayle Greene states, “When she was seven Lessing was sent to school at the Roman Catholic Convent in Salisbury [now Harare], and at thirteen she transferred to the Girls High School, also in Salisbury, but withdrew at fourteen.”
Simply stated, Lessing was largely self-taught. In 1982, when asked if she regretted not studying at a university, she responded, “But I’m glad that I was not educated in literature and history and philosophy, which means that I did not have this Euro-centered thing driven into me, which I think is the single biggest hang-up Europe has got. It’s almost impossible for anyone in the West not to see the West as the God-given gift to the world.”
Clearly, Lessing detests the replacement of indigenous knowledge systems with Eurocentric education and correlates humanities subjects like English literature with colonial hegemony over the (formerly) colonized.
Similarly, in “Culture and Imperialism” (1993), Edward Said characterizes imperialism as “an educational movement” (p.269). In the same vein, in her 1988 essay “Currying Favor: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854”, Said’s student Gauri Viswanathan of New York’s Columbia University states, “The English literary text functioned as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect state…. The split between the material and the cultural practices of colonialism is nowhere sharper than in the progressive rarefaction of the rapacious, exploitative, and ruthless actor of history into the reflective subject of literature.”
During the British colonial period, Englishmen acted as colonial administrators and harbingers of imperial modernity in different parts of the world. Since their departure, the cultural role of spreading British values has partly been played by English literary texts. This approach makes the colonized glance away from imperial plunder and pillage and immerse themselves into various strands of literary and philosophical musings.
According to John McLeod of the University of Leeds, “The teaching of English literature in the colonies must be understood as part of the many ways in which Western colonial powers such as Britain asserted their cultural and moral superiority while at the same time devaluing indigenous cultural products” (“Beginning Postcolonialism,” 2000, p.140).
All these arguments suggest that introducing English literature helped reinforce the notion of British cultural dominance. As a result, it reduced indigenous literature to the level of a provincial, inferior and inchoate culture.
Indigenous Canadian but Western-educated scholar Marie Battiste discusses the (ir)relevance of English literature to postcolonial societies. She “speaks with an authoritative double consciousness” and “provides important empirical perspectives aligning Western educational systems with coloniality.”
In her 1998 essay, Battiste argues, “We cannot continue to allow Aboriginal students to be given a fragmented existence in a curriculum that does not mirror them, nor should they be denied understanding the historical context that has created the fragmentation” (“Enabling the autumn seed,” Canadian Journal of Native Education, 22.1 [1998]).
In 1968, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his colleagues Taban Lo Liyong and Peter Awuor Anyumba at the University of Nairobi’s English Department wrote a note titled “On the abolition of the English Department.” They sought to make a case against the dominance of English literature in Africa and, by extension, other non-Western societies. As a result, the university’s English Department was renamed the Department of Literature.
In that memo, the three formidable Kenyan literary scholars stated, “For any group it is better to study representative works which mirror their society rather than to study a few isolated ‘classics,’ either of their own or of a foreign culture” (quoted in Killam, “African literature and Canada, The Dalhousie Review, 53 [1973-74]).
The word “mirror” in the above quote and in Battiste’s paper is important. The literary texts – Western or Eastern – taught to students should mirror their present-day, pervasive concerns as well as the life and struggles of their time’s underprivileged people.
Moreover, the literature should reflect comparable social realities in the wider world that we inhabit. The literature classes’ content should be relevant to the students’ lives and encourage their engagement and interest. For example, in terms of the context and reflection of reality, Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” is relevant to our time and retains its own historical context. Its major themes – such as corruption, criminality, injustice, poverty and an unfeeling society – resonate with present-day social conditions in many parts of the world.
Thus, the novel can be characterized as a global text of enormous scope and with worldwide appeal. It compels readers to contextualize the titular protagonist’s experiences in their surroundings and acknowledge that the kind of life in which the novel was produced is not unique.
When teaching “Oliver Twist” to Muslim students, an educator can easily relate Dickens’ portrayal of oppression, exploitation and degradation of vulnerable groups in society to Islam’s strong, primordial emphasis on justice and ending all forms of injustice: “Say: My Lord enjoins justice” (7:29).
Another verse reads, “And how could you refuse to fight in the cause of God and of the utterly helpless men and women and children who are crying, ‘O our Sustainer! Lead us forth [to freedom] out of this land whose people are oppressors, and raise for us, out of Thy grace, a protector, and raise for us, out of Thy grace, one who will bring us succor!’” (4:75).
Therefore, correlating this novel’s central thesis to Islam lends the text greater legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of Muslim readers.
In March 2023, The New Yorker published Nathan Heller’s essay “The End of the English Major.” As the title indicates, the essay argues that enrolment in English departments at U.S. universities is “in free fall.”
While subjects in the humanities are losing out to the bread-and-butter fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in the West, the field of English literature in Muslim-majority countries is at risk for its underlying Eurocentrism, foreignness and irrelevance to Muslim realities.
In a time when this field is at risk of dying out or disappearing from the syllabi, seeing English literary texts through the lens of Islam will establish its relevance and context for the Muslim audience and ground them in Muslim societies.
In light of the decolonizing or indigenizing of Eurocentric education, providing Islamic perspectives on English literature will establish this literary tradition’s importance, significance and applicability to Muslims. In other words, interpreting English texts through the lens of Islam has a salvific value in terms of continuing their teaching and learning in Muslim-majority countries.
The pinnacle of the glory and global prestige of English literature is perhaps behind us. Therefore, learning its texts from Muslim perspectives may generate new insights and provide it with new trajectories of academic research. This new lens will make those works relevant to, and prolong their prevalence in, Muslim societies by way of exploring points of convergence and divergence between Islam and the literary tradition.
Any literary tradition bears the risk of becoming anachronistic if it loses relevance to its audience’s real world experiences or fails to enrich its readers’ understanding of the meaning of life. What students encounter in the text should offer an analysis of the past and present (oppressive) social conditions and have a perennial appeal to the reader globally. This will spare English literature the charges of Eurocentric bias, disconnect or anachronism.
Md. Mahmudul Hasan, PhD, is professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia. He edits Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature. An earlier version of this essay appeared on https://www.islamicity.org/ on May 20, 2024.