Anglophone Literatures

COSMOPOLITANISM

This is a unique opportunity of improving ourselves! Appiah's definition of cosmopolitanism combines few principals:

• The idea that we have obligations even to people beyond family and nation
• An interest in the lives and practices of others and other places

Cosmopolitanism begins with a 'conversation' across boundaries, like in Bird Summons. Conversation is a key term.

In certain sense he advocates what he defines as "partial cosmopolitanism". Appiah is critical of those he thinks are 'extreme' cosmopolitans (they think that one day we will be all the same), he is sympathetic to the view that local identities are important!

What Appiah suggests is that we should embrace both local and universal loyalties and they do not necessarily have to come into conflict with each other. "I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that

write fiction that reflects Islamic logic; fictional worlds where cause and effect are governed by Muslim rationale. However, my characters do not necessarily behave as 'good' Muslims; they are not ideals or role models. They are, as I see them to be, flawed characters trying to practise their faith or make sense of God's will, in difficult circumstances."

BIRD SUMMONS

It is actually set in Scotland even though it tells the story of 3 Diasporic Muslim friends. Leila's book is slightly autobiographical: she doesn't tell her story but certainly her characters tell something about her own experience of displacement, of living in a country where the majority of people are white (episodes of racism) and of course suffering from anti-Muslimism prejudices. In this book the characters are going to do a very complex pilgrimage to find the meaning of their lives. The title is a little bit strange, summons = convocation.

Preface

"Assembly of birds, the Hoopoe spoke,

I am the Messenger Bird… A bird who carries Bismillah in its beak is never far from the wellspring of mysteries.” Farid’ ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds

This is a famous poem about the Hoopoe, she is not quoting from Islamic texts.“It is travel which lifts up the curtain hiding people's characters.” Al-Ghazali, On Conduct in Travel

We have two things:- A bird which is a messenger, possibly it will deliver some truth or reveal some mystery- The importance of travel. It is by moving that you can lift the curtain that doesn’t allow you to understand who you are

The book is about mystical bird who could indeed appears and summons the three ladies and it is also about journey.

Chapter 1

Page 1-2: “She had hired a coach, then when the women started pulling out after the anger over the photo, a minibus, then when the numbers fell still further, a people carrier, then when there was just the three of them, Salma decided to take her own car.

She had fought a battle and lost. The next time the Arabic Speaking Muslim Women's Group held their annual election, she would be voted out and someone else would be in charge. She had misjudged the situation. 'How was I meant to know that the grave had been defaced!' This was a lame defence. If her rivals in the group could find a news article and post it to the group chat, Salma hadn't done her research properly. But even if she had known, it wouldn't have deterred her. It certainly wasn't deterring her now. She still wanted to go and offer her respects."

This is our first encounter with Salma, indeed the leading character. The story is about 3 friends, but Salma is the leader, certainly the one that designed this trip. We learn that originally, she wanted to organize a trip for the "Arabic Speaking Muslim Women's Group". The first question is "Who is the narrator? What kind of narrator do we have? And what do we gather about Salma?".

About the group: is the kind of club/group that is formed in a city where Muslim is a minority. These women share the language (Arabic) and the religion (Muslim), but they all come from different countries with very different backgrounds. The diaspora that we have here is defined more in terms of language and religion, rather than in terms of place. Salma is breaking the rules of this group and making them unhappy, and proposing things that are not regarded as fully orthodox or fully acceptable as this trip she has organized.

Narrator: this is a third person narrator. It is not omniscient but is clearly close to this world and observes it as an insider.

and colleague disagree with her and cannot really accept that someone who lives in Scotland should own (?) this lady. Salma thought that is important for a Muslim woman who lives in Scotland to honour Lady Evelyn, because she is in a very similar position as them (partly displaced). Salma is a leader also because she can see things beyond the more limited perspective of her fellow women that are in the group. Leila Aboulela provides us with a representation of this environment, of this of Muslim diasporic group who are quite conservatives about their ideas of what Muslim should be.

The comment that their friends are meaningful: "Is this what you want our children to see? That you can be from the Scottish aristocracy, buried in the middle of nowhere and still the haters will get you." This because the tomb was deturpated by Muslim haters! "Why didn't she wear hijab? Why wasn't she in touch with other Muslims? Sounds like an eccentric imperialist no.

“At the end just 3 of the group decided to leave: Salma, Moni and Iman. The 3 characters are presented in this character, they don’t share similarity (of all sort) and also, which seems obvious, they seem to have fixed roles as if their identities were frozen:

• Moni has a son (handicap) and she is obsessed about him so that she can focus on other things
• Iman is beautiful
• Salma is the leader

They seem not that interesting at the beginning. We don’t see actual friendship.

Page 4: “Salma, Moni and Iman - travelling companions. Escaping the stuck-together buildings of the city, the regenerated Waterfront, the Jute Museum, the busy Tay Road Bridge and the pretty park overlooking the estuary; distancing themselves from the coffee-scented malls, the kebab restaurants and the trapezoid mosque; getting away from the scheduled rubbish collections and the weekly meeting of the Arabic Speaking Muslim Women's Group. The three of them moving together and