Why We Need More Muslim Heroines

Apparently people who read a lot have a greater capacity for empathy and understanding. Studies confirm this and so does personal experience. After I read Jane Eyre I’d think twice about judging a person for the way they looked. Wide Sargasso Sea had me reassessing the entire notion of the mad woman in the attic – she could be any one of us. (I, myself, am probably an attic short of being one.) Little Women taught me it was okay to be bookish and obscure. By the time I was in my 20s I was brimming with empathy (though perhaps still substantially lacking in understanding). I’d managed to find myself in life, which was quite useful, but still hadn’t found myself, truly, in literature. I don’t want to sound the "More ethnic minorities in literature! More Muslims in books!" trumpet, but I must. If only because the idea of being Muslim nowadays is hijacked by the media and that minority of people who are armed with fatwas and bombs. A Muslim narrative (though let’s set the record straight and establish that there isn’t just one) is being sold to the masses and we have here a vacant creative space that isn’t being used nearly enough to form an alternative. 

The beautiful thing about literature is it encompasses us all. The reader – wherever you’re from and whatever you believe – is transported into a world where they become that protagonist and live a life through their emotionally turbulent glasses. My book is just an attempt to transport people and show them what it might be like to grow up in a city you love, to feel part of it in a rather naively homogenous way, only to one day hear: "Hey, you’re not a part of it. You’re a f….g terrorist." Crikey! Terrorist! Where?? Oh… here.

But I’m making out as if I wrote this book to make a strong socio-political point. I did not. I simply took the absurdities of life, the mini-injustices, the comic incidents, sometimes cringing sometimes heartening moments and have tried to weave them into a single character – Sofia – and her experiences. Who can’t identify with that? Most people have been bullied or harassed for being different, had their heart broken, been caught in some kind of compromising scenario (whether it’s been your arse in the air because of a passionate encounter with someone inappropriate, or because you decided to use the conference room to pray). 

Of course the character is lacking. You show me a Muslim hijabi in fiction and I’ll show you a female jihadi who’s gone to fight with ISIS. But here’s the thing: Sofia’s Muslim-ness, I hope, becomes incidental because – I continue to hope – she appeals to the basic emotions we all have. She’s a bit like Marmite, you’ll either love her or loathe her, but whatever you feel about her character it becomes part of the fabric of the society in which she lives: different yet familiar, relevant but inconsequential. And that’s why I wrote her: because she is needed in literature, because more Muslim heroines are needed. Only through this will they cease to become the "other" and meld perfectly with all the heroines of our time.  

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik is published by Twenty7 as an ebook on September 3rd (£4.99) and paperback in January 2016 (£7.99).