Ensouling Agential Praxis in A Secular World: A Sufi Spiritual Turn in Leila Aboulela’s the Kindness of Enemies

ABSTRACT

This article explores Leila Aboulela’s novel, The Kindness of Enemies (2015), in light of its protagonist’s attempt to resolve her predicament of belonging through constructing an agential praxis oriented by Sufism. Aboulela crafts her story in two narratives: the first one is set in present day Britain and thematizes Natasha Wilson Hussein’s quest for identity in a largely Islamophobic environment, whereas the second narrative tells the history of Shamil, the 19^th century Sufi leader, who lived in a period when the word ”jihad” had a less a stigmatized meaning. Aboulela offers a revisionist reading of history by juxtaposing Islam and political resistance in non-fundamentalist terms but as a dialectic, which through its manifestation of the principles of Sufism synthesizes in challenging and resisting imperial oppression. Relying on a postsecular perspective, this paper highlights how Aboulela presents Sufism as a galvanizing force of agency through which her female migrants resist and overcome marginality and alienation. I argue that Aboulela’s novel maps out a turn toward spiritual traditions of Islam as transformative and liberating forces which endows her characters with a spiritual spatial horizon to ensoul the concept of agency, and by extension cultivate critical grounds from which hegemonic secular formations can be open to analysis from spiritually oriented praxes.

Acknowledgments

The author is greatly indebted to Dr. Ágnes Györke for her thoughtful and constructive comments on this article as well as her constant support and guidance. Special thanks to my colleague Achraf Idrissi for his spirited and critical engagement with the article. I would like also to express my gratitude to the anonymous Reviewer and the Executive Editor of Critique, for enlightening me with their critiques and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saleh Chaoui

Saleh Chaoui is a Ph.D. researcher in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. His research focuses on the return of religion in postcolonial literature, particularly the interplay between Sufism and identity politics and the experience of diaspora in contemporary female diasporic writings.