Narrating American Muslim Reversion: Islamic Ethics in Nadine Jolie Courtney’s All-American Muslim Girl
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32792/tqartj.v3i54.928Keywords:
American Muslim YA , conversion/reversion, focalization, Islamic virtue ethics, narrative voiceAbstract
Although representation and Islamophobia have been widely examined in studies of American Muslim Young Adult (YA) fiction, the formal ethics of reversion and the use of Islamic concepts as analytic tools remain underexplored. This study seeks to investigate Nadine Jolie Courtney’s All-American Muslim Girl (2019) as a convert/revert bildungsroman in which Islamic virtues operate as structuring narrative principles. The aim is to develop a transferable ethics-of-form protocol and to provide a teachable vocabulary for analysing religion-in-form within American classrooms. Methodologically, this research employs a stringent close textual methodology, informed by the principles of Islamic virtue ethics, and incorporates a dual frame of analysis that includes Genette's narratological constructs as well as Boulton's anatomical model of the novel. To do so, classical Islamic virtues and narratological categories are exploited to scenes of interior reflection, ritual learning, public disclosure, and school-based interaction. The that first-person internal focalization renders niyyah (intention) legible as practice; taqwā (God-conscious restraint) functioning as micro-corrections in speech, dress, and social relations; iḥsān (excellence/beauty in conduct) reframes “doing it well” as beauty-inflected care for self and others; and adab (ethical comportment) structures respectful dissent and communal belonging. It is shown how risk, mediated through whiteness and passing, modulates ethical practice without disrupting the grammar of attention, self-address, and act. In conclusion, the study contributes to both literary criticism and pedagogy by highlighting the ethical operations of form in American Muslim YA fiction and by proposing a replicable model for integrating Islamic narrative ethics into classroom practice.
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