Lived Practices in Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage: Uncovering the Threat to Pluralism in Postcolonial Arab-Majority Milieus

Abstract

Abstract:
The transnational memoir A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman’s Journey has attracted scholarly debates about Leila Ahmed’s performance of multiple critiques, focusing on the tensions and overlap between categories of Eastern and Western. In this article, however, I propose a new reading of Ahmed’s work that focuses on tensions between local and lived traditions versus textual and theoretical ideals. I argue that Ahmed writes in support of reform and inclusive politics and her multiple critiques especially draw attention to marginalized communities and uncover local lived religious and cultural traditions of practice to emphasize the danger locality and pluralism are facing in postcolonial, Arab-majority milieus.

Key words: Lived religion, Muslim literature, Postcolonial locality, pluralism, Arab American literature, Orientalism, Western Feminism, nationalism