Islam in Bed with Europe in “My Son the Fanatic” Essay

My Son the Fanatic is a film that addresses the cultural conflict of both Moslem integration in into Europe and English socialization, as soundly as the relationship that arises between a father and his Muslim news when the child grows up to become an Islamic fundamentalist. (Udayan Prasad, 1997, England screenplay by Hanif Kureishi) A Pakistani cab driver in a Northern English township has an affair with a prostitute and chauffeurs her and her colleagues to make extra money. When his son becomes an Islamic fundamentalist and joins in an effort to clean up vice in the town, the familys loyalties and beliefs are tested.This film completely tests the conflict that exists with Islam encountering the European worldly concern through with(predicate) migrations and cultural information. Kureishi reveals the core conflict of the reality of English sexual revolution of the 60s encountering Islamic sexual regression of the give era. In the sweet York Times article My Beautiful cap ital of the United magnatedom, author Rachel Donadio, nones, One of the most revealing insights into Britains recent br otherly history comes early in My Son the Fanatic, Hanif Kureishis tender and in darkness prescient 1997 film.Its morning in an unnamed city in northern England, and Parvez, a laic Pakistani immigrant taxi driver brilliantly portrayed by Om Puri, watches Farid, his increasingly devout college-age son, sell his electric guitar. The eye of this cultural conflict between Islamic and Western English culture can be seen in both in how the filmmaker and the cardinal character, the taxi driver Parvez and his son Farid, are raised. They are both brought up by mullahs and nuns alike which reveals the complex nature of multicultural extends a Muslim immigrant might encounter living in Europe.The potential for plot development is endless as the director notes You cant ask plurality to give up their religion that would be absurd, he wrote in The Guardian. nevertheles s hard-line views might modify as they come into contact with other ideas. That was the essence of resolutionive multiculturalism not a superficial exchange of festivals and foods impelled by liberal guilt, but well-nighthing else entirely an encounter with human desires in all their complexness. Higson poses the question in his article The Limiting Imagination of guinea pig movie theatre, When is a cinema national?, asks Susan Hayward (1993 1). As if in answer, Crofts delineates several contrasting types of national cinema that have emerged in different historical mountain (1993, 1998). They have performed quite distinct functions in relation to the state (Higson, p63). Hanif Kureishis work My Son the Fanatic fits this description exactly. The Film is historical and has an effect on multicultralism through its relevance and relation to England and the happenings of the state. In also world historical, My son the Fanatic is also a product of National Cinema, as Proclamatio ns of national cinema are thus in infract one form of internal cultural colonialism it is, of course, the function of institutionsand in this slip of paper national cinemasto pull together diverse and contradictory discourses, to articulate a contradictory unity, to play a part in the hegemonic process of achieving consensus, and containing exit and contradiction Higson p. 139).Islamic constabulary is formally composed of literal translations of Arab tribal customs and ancient Muslim traditions as well as the Koran, and quotes from the Islamic prophet Muhammad as well as his predecessors. When you get down to it, at that place are two types of people in Kureishis work those cartroad toward sex and those running a counselling from it (p. 6) In the film Parvezs son Farid notes that he is seeking Belief, purity, belonging to the past, and then he notes I wint bring up my children in this awkward. This represents the classh between what is now his fundamentalist beliefs through devotion to Islam and the clash European cultures poses on those beliefs. Farid sees no way both ways of life can exist together. Likewise, Parvez represents the embodiment of a westernized Muslim, so much so that he cant identitfy with son. In the film this conversation boils up into a conflict in which Parvez begins to experience his son repeatedly, until his son shouts to him whos the fanatic now? A study motif of the film that Kureishi mentions in his interview, is the concept of old Sharia law and the ancient traditions of the past being re-imposed on a post-sexual revolution present. Kurishi points this intergenerational maneuver out as ironic when he says, It perplexed me that young people, brought up in secular Britain, would turn to a form of belief that denied them the pleasures of the hunting lodge in which they lived,(Donp.7 he goes on to pinpoint that exact issue that faces the relationship for shared for young people concerning Islam and western culture to project when he says, the West, the Nietzschean project, has been to drive out religion and to produce a secular society in which men and women make their own values because righteousness is gone. Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World. How can you not laugh at that? How can you not find that a qabalistic historical irony? This irony Kureishi speaks of is the main theme of the film.In Richard Dyers essay The White Mans Muscle, he talks near stereotypes that have been enforced connecting as further back as the Grecian era, and that now dominate film and television basically promoting the superiority of white masculinity. Body hair is animalistic hairlessness connotes striving above nature. The terminate of Gli amori di Ercole has Hercules fighting a giant ape, who has previously behaved in a King Kong-ish way towards Herculess beloved Dejanira, stroking her hair and when she screams making as if to rape her close-ups contrast Herculess smooth, hairless muscles w ith the hairy limbs of this racial archetype.(Dyer) here(predicate) Dyer points out how the uppermost essence of masculinity is equated with shaven white muscle, through its very contrast to that of hair apes, who are historically associated with blackness. He acknowledges the racist aspects of this archetype, but also gives notice to the private boys club-like tradition that has formed from this prejudice. This mind demonstrates the epitome of the world in whichA state agency for assessing worldly concern religious schools had given a top rating to a Muslim school that was advocating a return to the Caliphate the interior minister at the time, bozo Straw, came under fire for suggesting that it might be difficult for a community-relations official to meet with constituents who wear a full veil an Indian muliebrity living in England was lured back to India and murdered in an honor cleanup position the archbishop of Canterbury said he thought England might consider making some accommodation for Shariah, or Islamic law.What, I wondered, did Kureishi make of all this? (,p. 7) thither arent any answers to these questions, he replied. Theyre just questions that everybody has to engage in and think about. What is it like to make a multicultural society? How far do you go in multiculturalism? Do you have parts of the country under Shariah law, for instance? What would that mean? How does that work? You have to engender this stuff seriously. (p. 7) In sum, My Son the Fanatic is potent with cultural complexity and relevance.The film speaks volumes about current issues facing the Western world immediately as well as those being posed by, and imposed upon the center of attention East. One cant see this film and overlook the tensity brewing between the two cultures of the Muslim world and the Christian European environment in which it finds itself. The film does an excellent job of providing authentic interlingual rendition for a conflict that is undyingly rel evant and prevailingly influential in todays socioeconomic and political climate.Work CitedBordwell & Thompson Film History 2004 Donadio, Rachel My Beautiful capital of the United Kingdom New York Times August 8, 2008 Dyer, Richard The White Mans Muscles in White London Higson, & Fowler, Catherine. The European Cinema Reader London New York Ptacek, J. , & Dodge, K. Coping Strategies and Relationship Satisfaction in Couples. The Society for Personality and societal Psychology, 21(1), (1995). 76-84. Savran, David. (1998). Taking It Like a Man White Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. 380 pp.