Challenging Stereotypes of Muslim Women in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator

This post has been contributed by Taghreed Ayaz.

Hijab by Lion Multimedia Production U.S.A. (Flickr)

Earlier this week Prime Minister David Cameron announced his plan to invest £20 million in providing English Language courses for Muslim women in Britain, as part of his attempt to build ‘One Nation’ by ending “passive tolerance” to the “flawed idea of separate development”.

Mr Cameron’s comments are pertinent for the study of postcolonial texts, including Aboulela’s The Translator, because his aspiration for social cohesion places western liberal values at the centre of British society, relegating other cultures and belief systems to the periphery. Aboulela rejects this discourse, and presents Western liberalism and Islam as stemming from equally legitimate roots. She tells us “that the centre of one was freedom and the other justice” (Aboulela 179).

Aboulela’s heroine Sammar is a British-born Muslim who migrates to Sudan with her parents when she is seven years old; she later returns to the UK first as a bride, then as a widow, and spends numerous years working in a Scottish university translating Arabic texts into English. Her occupation would suggest a fluency in English which no doubt Mr Cameron would admire, but this has not led her to a corresponding embracement of liberalism. Conversely, Aboulela challenges two symbols of the Islamic faith vilified in the West as being oppressive towards women (Aly). She shows the reader how Sammar finds relief in Sharia law, telling us that “She thought of how Allah’s Sharia was kinder and more balanced than the rules people set up for themselves” (Aboulela 67), and describing the joy with which she embraces the hijab: “She covered her hair with Italian silk […] She wanted to look as elegant as Benazir Bhutto, as mesmerising as the Afghan princess” (Aboulela 9). Aboulela uses the adjective ‘Italian’ to describe the type of the scarf because of its connotations with luxury, and the adjectives ‘elegant’ and ‘mesmerising’ also suggest that Sammar views the scarf as a sign of beauty. Her relating the scarf to Pakistan’s beloved ex-prime minister and Afghan royalty show that she believes the scarf to be empowering to women.

Aboulela presents her reader with a heroine who does not fit the narrative of a migrant Muslim woman unable to speak English, forced to wear a veil, bound by Sharia law, in need of a saviour –rather through Sammar she attempts to illuminate the beauty of a distinct culture and landscape. The inherent superiority of western liberalism is by no means apparent to everyone, and Leila Aboulela’s The Translator serves as a powerful reminder that there exists an equally compelling alternative.

Works Cited

Aboulela, Leila. The Translator. Edinburgh: Polygon, 2008. Print.

Aly, Remona. “David Cameron Needs to Look beyond the Veil.” The Guardian, 20 Jan. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/19/cameron-veil-muslim-women-reckless-intervention>.

Cameron, David. “We won’t let women be second-class citizens.” The Times, 18 Jan. 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016. <http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4667764.ece>.

Links

• For more information on how Mr Cameron’s speech is problematic in a postcolonial context, read Madeleine Bunting’s piece in The Guardian.
• An interview with Leila Aboulela.