Eurocentric Worldliness and the Representation of Muslims in Tariq Ali’s The Stone Woman

Abstract

This paper analyzes Tariq Ali’s The Stone Woman by employing Edward. W. Said’s ideas of worldliness, filiation, and affiliation. Said believes that every text is worldly and it is always influenced by its socio-political and economical contexts. A text is a depiction of an author’s filiation and affiliation. This study aims to investigate the ideological worldliness of Ali along with filiative and affiliative aspects of his text. This paper also explores whether the representation of the Muslims in the novel is Islam-centric or Eurocentric. This study establishes that Ali reinforces the stereotypes associated with the Muslims and represents them as irrational, backward, hypersexual and uncivilized. The paper foregrounds that stereotypical representations of the Muslims and Islam demonstrate Ali’s blatant Eurocentrism and the suppression of his filiation with Islam. We recommend that the findings of this paper can also be extended to study the ideological worldliness of other Muslim writers.