SHATTERING THE OPPRESSED TROPE: ISLAMIC FEMINISM AND THE JOURNEY OF NAJWA IN ABOULELA'S MINARET

Abstract

This paper examines where post-secular female identity, diasporic displacement, and faith-based agency come together in contemporary Anglophone Arab literature. It offers a close reading of Leila Aboulela's novel, Minaret (2005), using the postcolonial feminist and anthropological frameworks developed by Lila Abu-Lughod. For many years, mainstream Western liberal feminism has defined liberation for non-Western and Muslim women through an exclusively secular, Eurocentric lens. This view holds that genuine emancipation requires secular modernization, bodily freedom, and the rejection of religious tradition. As a result, women who actively embrace religious devotion, modest dress, and spiritual submission are often reduced to an Orientalist stereotype: the passive, victimized Muslim woman who lacks individual agency and needs rescuing from her own culture. By tracing the shifting social, economic, and spiritual path of Aboulela's protagonist, Najwa, who moves from a Westernized, unveiled, privileged life among the political elite in Khartoum to life as a hijab-wearing domestic worker in London, this article shows that her embrace of orthodox Islamic practice is a conscious, agential choice. Rather than treating her modesty and spiritual surrender as signs of defeat, this study draws on Abu-Lughod's critique of Western "savior" politics to show how Najwa's deliberate transformation challenges colonial binaries. The analysis examines how Najwa reclaims control over her body, sense of self, and movement through the world by finding a home within the global Muslim community (Ummah) and the physical and spiritual spaces of the mosque. Ultimately, Najwa's rejection of secular compromise and consumer culture validates faith as an independent source of empowerment. This article frames Minaret as an important literary intervention that broadens global feminist theory by showing that human agency can flourish outside a secular framework.