Book review: 'The Good Muslim'

The Good Muslim
Tahmima Anam
Hamish Hamilton
298 pages
Rs499

It is a question that seems easily answered at first: where does fundamentalism come from? In what kind of soil does it take root and grow? What are the factors that nourish it?

The Good Muslim begins where the existing facile answers to that question dry up. It shows us, through the perception of a loving sister, how a promising young man can be transformed, through religious conservatism, into a dispassionate preacher to whom familial ties hold no meaning.

Anam’s novel opens with Maya Haque, a thirty-two year old Bangladeshi woman struggling to come to terms with a new turn in her life a few years after the Bangladeshi war of independence. She has wrapped up her life as a village doctor and is returning to Dhaka to live with her estranged family: her mother and recently widowed brother Sohail. There is a strong sense of displacement that runs through the narrative: street names have changed, as have the natures of people. The optimism that bolstered the Bangladeshi psyche post-war is gone. Maya recounts, “The war ended and all the ugly and beautiful things were uglier and more beautiful.”

In the face of the memory of terrible suffering, of harsh war crimes and the failure of any kind of system to punish the criminals, is it surprising that a young man like Sohail may turn to religion? What makes Anam’s book fresh and forthright is that she accepts the usual suspects but also thrusts deeper. Maya’s own petty failures to be accepting of the worldview of a good Muslim and Sohail’s capacity to tap into a divine peacefulness are point and counterpoint — neatly made. In Anam’s book, both fundamentalism and obstinate objections to religion are culpable as forms of blindness.

Beautifully evoking the primal ache of the sibling connection, Anam’s book achieves a rare kind of understanding towards religious conservatism — as well as its alienating consequences. Equally surprising, her skill with plotting offers us both the hint of a romantic ending and the reality of a collision with harsh facts.