Arab Islamic voices, agencies, and abilities : disability portrayals in Muslim world literature and culture / Saloua Aali Ben Zahra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ben Zahra, Saloua Ali, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

People with disabilities in motion pictures.

Literature, Modern--Muslim authors--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

People with disabilities in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (140 pages)

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, 2017.

Summary:

This book explores portrayals and predicaments of the disabled in Arab/Muslim post colonial North African and Middle Eastern societies in genres ranging from classical Arabic scripture to secular popular culture including Francophone Moroccan and Algerian fiction, Egyptian Middle Eastern film, as well as Tunisian song and television. In line with theorists Aijaz Ahmad and Ato Quayson's objection to reading Third World literature as "national allegory," The author argues that rather than being metaphors or allegories, disabled characters represent persons with disabilities in their culture and act as a mirror upon their changing societies. Contemporary Maghrebians and Muslims with disabilities find themselves at an intersection of conflicting and competing cultures, their native Islamic culture and Westernizing lifestyles. In the rush to import everything Western, despite humanitarian Islamic teachings regarding the disabled, are often abandoned. In situations of fundamentalist menace, the disabled, who tend to be the most vulnerable and abused fraction of Arab/Muslim society, suffer the worst, especially women.

Contents:

Introduction

Al Qur'an's teachings with respect to the disabled

The Tunisian deaf mute through the lens of American Orientalism

Tunisian camera's treatment of disability

The disabled native: ressource humaine for the French: a literary study of Algerian Rachid Mimouni's Tombéza

The case of female characters with disabilities: Moroccan Fatima vs. "cure or kill": a disability study of Tabar Ben Jelloun's L'enfant de sable [Sand child]

Disability and shame in Salman Rushdie's novel Shame: what it means to be a Pakistani disabled postcolonial woman

The Egyptian visually-challenged Sheikh Husni's treatment of blindness in the Egyptian film Al Kitkat

Iraqi in Paris: speaking volumes: the bond in deafness of an Iraqi father and son

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4985-6958-7