It has always been important for instructors teaching course material related to 9/11 to take into account the possibility that some students may hold prejudicial assumptions about Islam. Instructors have needed to caution students against conflating Islam as a whole with groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, or assuming that there is an inherent clash between the values of the United States and those of Islam. The political ascent of Donald Trump, whose rhetoric and policies have inflamed American racism and xenophobia, has lent a renewed urgency to this imperative. The intense atmosphere of hostility generated by Trump requires a reassessment of the pedagogy of courses concerned with 9/11, so as to more effectively counter the expressions of proud, aggressive bigotry to which students may be exposed outside the classroom.
For courses on the 9/11 novel, providing a counter is complicated by the fact that the genre’s canonical texts are generally of two types: the “trauma novel,” which focuses on the individual and societal damage done by 9/11, and the novel that explores the mindset of Islamic terrorism. Most courses on the 9/11 novel draw from only these two types for their reading lists. Yet in so doing, a course presents a reductive characterization of Islam and creates an oppositional framework for the US and Islam. As a result, the course risks inadvertently implying that there is some credence to the noxious Trumpian worldview.
It is therefore essential that the course on the 9/11 novel also include novels that depict ordinary Muslims whose religious beliefs are entirely removed from violent extremism, Muslims whose attitude toward the US is either positive or neutral. Such novels subvert the equation of violent extremism with Islam in full, as well as the paradigm of US-Muslim polarization.
About the presenterEdward Rooney
Edward Rooney is an associate professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology, where he teaches composition, fiction writing, and 9/11 literature and film.