Abstract

Many people's opinions of Muslims and Islam have evolved since the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. Muslims and Islam have been blamed for helping to breed terrorists. This prediction has thus been included in the literature. The same thing is done by John Updike in his book Terrorist. He has played Jews and Muslims. The disparity between the two identities fuels Western viewers' and Americans' fears about Islam. Updike masterfully alienates his Muslim protagonist from his community by utilising language, narrative style, concepts, and symbols. To analyse the Islamophobic and Orientalist elements in Updike's Terrorist, this study analyses and contrasts the two. American Jews and Muslims from Egypt are two very different populations.

Key Words

Islamophobia, Terrorism, Fear of Islam, Stereotyping, Otherness

Introduction

Since September 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, American views about Muslims and Islam have changed. According to the study, before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, "survey data on American attitudes about Islam indicated a virtually equal gap between positive and negative sentiments of Islam.". However, after September 11, the pendulum swung the other way due to popular misconceptions. In 2001, just 25% of Americans thought that Islam encouraged violence, whereas 51% had the opposite opinion. As of 2011, 40% of Americans still maintained this attitude Jungkunz, S., et al 2019). This paradigm shift and change of perspective are directly attributable to the terrorist outbreaks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the terror campaign on London subway trains on July 7, 2005.

The word "Islamophobia" was used in the 1990s to describe the growing trend of seeing Islam and Muslims through the lens of "essential terrorism" (Skenderovic, D., & Späti, 2019). In an effort to define the phrase, there has been much discussion over it. However, since the term's debut, there hasn't been agreement on what it means. However, academics like Neil Chakraborty, Irene Zempi, Carl W. Ernst, and Christopher Allen have made an effort to define the definition of the word. In his book of the same name, Christopher Allen describes Islamophobia as "the demonization of human beings for no cause other than their Muslim faith". By extension, to fear or despise Islam as he portrays it later in the book is to dread or detest all or the majority of Muslims. Carl W. Ernst has made an effort to describe it as "the manifestations and repercussions of anti-Islamic bigotry,". According to Gabriel Greenberg, who sees it as an irrational cultural dread of Islam and Muslims, the focus on the fear of Islam is greater than that of other stereotypes. This kind of Islamophobia, according to Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, is closely related to violent media depictions. 

 Neil Chakraborti wrote in their book Islamophobia Victimization, and the Veil.These many uses of the word have certain basic characteristics. The majority of the European Union (EU) countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other terrorist-attacked countries in the West are all afflicted with "Islamophobia," which is defined as "hate, prejudice, and fear of Islam and Muslims." Assaults West in the 2000s transformed how the rest of the world views Muslims and Islam. (Karjo, C. H.,et al 2020).  Islam and Muslims were vilified as terroristic, underdeveloped, and "backwards" nations by their adherents. Edward Curtis draws attention to the racism-related effects of Islamophobia by connecting it to the government's repression of political opposition. Jihadists are immediately associated with all Muslims. The Western world makes generalisations about them without taking into account their unique personalities, points of view, social contexts, and psychological conditions. The West is similarly uninformed about Islam. Terrorist assaults and jihadism have only been shown in the media. (Alghamdi, E. A. 2015).

In order to give the public something to fear, the Western media and government continuously depict Islam and Muslims in a negative light. Russia was used in a similar way before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because of the advent of the Taliban and the Iranian Uprising, when Khomeini and his exciting beliefs were supremacy in Iran, Western political elites were forced to criticise Islam and Muslims in the years that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. (Dabashi, H. 2017). 

In this instance, the word "West" is not used negatively but rather to distinguish between two extremes. The West created both the East and the West, the two unequal halves of the planet. Compared to their Western counterparts, eastern countries have fewer resources. It is also more bizarre, archaic, and primitive (Said, E. 2018). Part of what makes Europe (or the West) unique is how it contrasts with the Orient in terms of image, thought, personality, and experience. Knowing that the West has always attempted to demonise the Orient, Islam, and Muslims is essential to understanding its values and identity (Said, 2006). Islamophobia must thus be tackled with related problems like racism, Orientalism, Strangeness, Stereotyping, and the White Man's Burden. All ideas intersect when discussing Islamophobia since Islam is a religion with origins in the Far-off East, and as such, its members are not from the "West" and do not resemble White Men. Muslims thus regularly encounter prejudice and discrimination in Western culture.




Research Questions

? What tactics were used to promote islamophobia in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks?

? How were Muslims portrayed by the West as being different and innate terrorists?

? How did John Updike depict Islam, Muslims, and Jews in his Book The Terrorist?




Research Objectives

? To explore the marketing of islamophobia after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

? To examine the Muslims as other and natural-born terrorists. 

? To investigate John Updike, portrayed the picture of Islam, Muslims and  Jews in his novel terrorist

? To study the perceptions and manifestations constructing the identity of Islam and Muslims in the selected American literary texts

Literature Review

 Updike (2006) explores that terrorism has drawn both favourable and unfavourable reviews. Negative reviews of the book are mainly due to Ahmad's inaccurate representation of the subject matter itself. According to Stufflebeam, the author believes that "John Updike's Terrorist is a thriller born of the everyday news we read". It explains a terrorist's beginnings without preaching or fervor’s was absolutely perplexed for at least the first third of the novel, Stufflebeam, and I still don't sure who the terrorist is since all of Updike's characters are so real and have both admirable and repugnant qualities.

According to Miller, The Terrorist is "a contemporary work of literature that is well-written and crammed with observation and description". Updike gives insight into the psychology and potential motivations of terrorists by placing the reader in the terrorist's head. Weis claims that Terrorist, the most current book by John Updike to be published in the US, is selling like "hotcakes". The author, John Updike, may have contributed to its quick success. Or maybe Americans are fascinated by the inner workings of a terrorist's mind. There are certainly many people in the Arab world who view the twenty-first century in the same manner. Updike (2006) recounted how his early inspiration for the character of "a young seminarian who perceives everyone around him as a demon attempting to take his faith" came to him. I guess I thought I could see how an Islamic believer might view our civilization with disdain and contempt.

There is no question about Updike's goals, which inspired him to support the causes of his society. However, he does badly since the place he sees is outside of his purview. The flaws have been pointed up by several reviews. A limp bitterness lingers in the narrator's attempts at omniscience, according to Badar Sheikh. Ahmad is persuaded to join the bombing expedition by his whiny, spoiled-child demeanour and boring name. It's as if Updike gave solid skeletal muscle and intellectual tissue to the CNN caricature of a terrorist—an anti-American, anti-consumerist, social outcast of Muslim heritage.In Terrorist, Updike's empathy "does not carry him quite far enough to become the voice and suffering...of his young protagonist," similar to earlier stories that support a Neo-Orientalist point of view.

Another significant factor in changing Westerners' opinions of Islam and Muslims is Updike's Terrorists. Any political, historical, or philosophical characterization of Muslims must begin and finish with the fact that they are Muslims: violent, intolerable, and life-haters, according to Deyab, Updike seems to have thought it was his duty to inform Western readers of this. My argument is that Updike, like Joseph Conrad a century earlier in Heart of Darkness, seems to really want to reveal the shallowness and sleaziness of his own civilization. However, he was unable to do so because of his ideological and cultural preconceptions, which tainted Ahmad's character image and caused it to resemble how Muslims are currently portrayed in Western media, which equates Islam with terrorism. Any noble intentions Conrad may have had in Heart of Darkness are undermined by his ideological and racial prejudices. Conrad was forced to describe the civilization of the Africans he was writing about most on the basis of hearsay because he had no firsthand experience with them.

Updike’s concept of prejudices towards Islam and Muslims foils his attempts to utilise Ahmad as a platform to critique the declining morals and superficiality of American capitalist culture. The tale is distorted as a result of his stereotypical representation of Muslims, his misinterpretation of Quranic verses, and his ignorance of Islamic doctrine.

Herman, P. C. (2015) The repercussions of this portrayal, which tend to reinforce the already dominant Western trend of thought regarding Islam and Muslims, do not appear to have been addressed by Updike. Said warns, demonstrating his strong awareness of the peril posed by such biassed representations: "Demonizing and dehumanising an entire civilization on the basis that it is 'enraged' at modernity is to convert Muslims become the objects of therapeutic, punishing attention."

Research Methodology

The researchers chose a qualitative approach for their investigation. The social world and its issues are the primary focus of the qualitative technique. The experiences of the people they study are regularly used by qualitative researchers to generate fresh ideas (Neuman 1999, p. 145). Finding the causes of social phenomena is their goal. This kind of study enables a thorough analysis of the aforementioned elements. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Muslims residing in the West were seen as potential threats by Westerners. We read and analysed a number of literary works that highlight how the West treats Muslims and the assault on their religious beliefs from Edward Said's perspective in order to better understand Islamophobia as a kind of racism. Said continues by noting the widespread belief among Orientalists that Islam and Islamic culture pose a danger to Western civilization. Orientalists usually categorise the East as either "Near Orient" or "Far Orient" as a result of this.

In his book Covering Islam, Edward Said investigates how Islam was portrayed in American media before the September 11 attacks. Despite the term's seeming simplicity, he thinks that it is "part fabrication, part ideological label, and part minimum description of a religion termed Islam" in its current usage (1). He claims that biassed fictional depictions and ideological goals have an influence on how Muslims are seen in American 

Results And Discussion

Conclusion

The way American culture treats Muslims is shown in John Updike's book Terrorist. Muslims have historically faced persecution, been treated as second-class citizens, and been blamed for every social ill in every civilization. They have been and still are held responsible for America's demise. After 9/11, Curtis contends that Americans are more afraid of brown immigrants like Ahmad than of African American Muslims (Ernst, 2013). Persecuting individuals of colour and punishing Muslim organisations for refusing to participate in politics are common practices in the United States. In contrast, every Muslim who engages in politics in the United States is immediately branded a terrorist and seen as someone who is attempting to undermine the values and social fabric of American society.

Islamophobia is the belief that Muslims cannot be morally upright citizens of the United States and that Islam is inimical to Western culture. Because of the prejudice that labels them as terrorists from birth, it is very challenging to see them as patriotic Americans. Islamophobia and anti-Muslim attitudes have grown in the West. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been an increased interest (Allen, 2012). As a result, individuals from all walks of life felt compelled to write down their opinions regarding Muslims. Announcing his intolerance and contempt for Muslims in an open letter, John Updike felt forced to distance himself from the Muslim community.

The unfavourable opinions of Muslims that many Americans have promoted in the book Terrorist. To show that Muslims and Islam are aggressive and radical, it misinterprets a number of Qur'anic texts and certain Hadith from the Prophet Muhammad. All of the novel's Muslim protagonists are fanatics, as was already mentioned. Additionally, Ahmad's "imam," Sheikh Rashid, exposed him to fundamentalism at the mosque (Updike, 2006). Ahmad was first sceptical but was persuaded to support terrorism by Sheikh Rashid and Charlie Chehab. Sheikh Rashid quotes from the Quran and the Hadith, which encourages Ahmad to use his car as a bomb to kill Western and American "kafir" (Updike, 2006).

Western nations, especially American people, see Islam as static and sluggish (Yenigun 2004). As a result, Muslims are stigmatised as being anti-modern, anti-"liberal," and unable to distinguish between religion and state (Ziadan, 2009). (Said 2006). Because Islam does not distinguish between religion and state, as shown by Orientalism, Christians and Jews in the West assume Muslims are incensed about the current condition of affairs (Said 2006). Therefore, this worldview is portrayed in Updike's book Terrorist.

Jews and Muslims are pitted against one another by terrorists. The Muslim characters are shown as radicals who despise the riches brought forth by America, whereas one Jewish character represents the true American patriot, prepared to sacrifice all for his nation. There is strong proof that Updike's anti-Muslim bias is the driving force for his labelling of three different Muslims as zealots and extremists. Updike falls victim to the Islamophobic narrative that depicts Muslims as a single homogenous group by creating three characters that are quite similar to one another. people who are identical and lack distinctive characteristics.

Levy is depicted as a character who values peace and hopes for its victory, whereas Ahmad works to upend the natural order of things. In the novel's closing pages, Ahmad exclaims, "These animals... have taken away my God," leaving the reader wondering what will happen next (Updike 2006). It's unclear if Ahmad is referring to Sheikh Rashid, Charlie, Levy, or the other Americans when he makes a reference to "devils". In order to further arouse American readers' fear and hatred toward Muslims, Updike leaves the plot unresolved. He nevertheless conveys to Muslim readers the impression that his assessment was unbiased and fair. The book ends by disparaging Muslims as terrorists and endorsing Jews as the ones who have the way to preserve humanity. Islam naturally bears the similarities that Updike drew between Jews and Muslims. Jews are seen as the adversary, same as in Islam, while Christians are seen as allies. Levy wasn't selected by Updike at random; he had a good reason.

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