Blind Faith: Women at War in Khuda kay Liye and Escape from Taliban

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Published Jul 31, 2012

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Pascal Zinck
Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille

Abstract

Blind Faith: Women at War in Khuda kay Liye and Escape from TalibanInspired by Huntingdon’s “Clash of Civilizations,†George W. Bush’s Manichean cold war rhetoric struck a responsive chord in the media, with the villification of Islam or more precisely the conflation of Islam – as though it was a monolithic religion – with terrorism. For Hollywood and Bollywood, the Islamic terrorist became the archetypal villain and a new subgenre of thrillers emerged featuring terrorist cells with films such as Shoot on Sight: Is it a crime to be a Muslim? (Mundhra, 2007), New York (Khan, 2009) or My Name is Khan (Johar, 2010). Those binaries also underpin films about Pakistani and Afghan societies. The present paper discusses the issues of women’s rights, particularly forced marriage, and the growing influence of fundamentalism in the Pakistani box office success, Khuda kay Liye (Mansoor, 2007) and in the Bollywood film, Escape from Taliban (Chatterjee, 2003).

Article Details

Issue
Vol 4 No 2 (2012): Summer Issue
Section
Refereed Articles (Humanities)
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Author Biography

Pascal Zinck, Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille

Dr Pascal Zinck is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial Anglophone Literature at the University Charles-de-Gaulle of Lille3. I was a long-standing member of the VALE-ERCLA research institute at the Sorbonne where I obtained my PhD. I subsequently joined CECILLE, University of Lille’s research unit dedicated to Culture Studies, Languages and Literatures. I am affiliated to ESSE and EACLALS and am a member of SEPC. My research include Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Diaspora and Trauma studies. My current scholarly work has been driven towards disciplinary intersection and the cross-overs between globalisation, migration, ethnicity, identity and resistance across West and non-West, within the West, and between various non-Western locales (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Sri Lanka). Together with Dr Stephen Morton of Southampton University and Veronica Thompson of Athabasca University, our research team is currently investigating "Cultures of Terror" and terrorism in the wake of 9/11, in South Asian Literature and film. After publishing several articles on K. Shamsie, U. A. Khan, M. Hamid and HM Naqvi, I am currently working on a book on contemporary Pakistani fiction.