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alexseanchai) wrote2017-04-13 05:58 pm
alexseanchai) wrote2017-04-13 05:58 pm
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I have writing questions for any Muslims or ex-Muslims reading this who are willing to answer, here or in PM. My concern is that I-as-author am-or-seem Islamophobic, and I want to avoid that. (Characters' Islamophobia is a different story.) I'm hoping to avoid redoing this protagonist's whole character to have no Muslim background, but I'm early enough in the drafting that I could do that if that's the best solution. Many thanks in advance.
1) I understand from Writing With Color dot Tumblr dot com that Islam has a problem with magic--something about it always being a temptation away from the true faith. I'm writing a fantasy and one of my protagonist mages was raised Muslim. I intend to depict her as refusing (at first, but see 2) to have anything to do with her magic. I also intend to depict another protagonist, who is not at all Muslim, as having no idea why the Muslim-raised protagonist has a problem here. Is this something that will work how I mean it to?
2) The Muslim-raised protagonist will, for reasons including that (if I understand correctly) Islam--at least in the persons of her parents--has problems with lesbianhood, asexuality, and magic...that sentence got convoluted. Anyway. She will be abandoning Islam for reasons. How can I depict her journey from that faith to another without being-or-seeming Islamophobic? Especially in light of 1!
3) Is it possible to depict this protagonist's parents as queerphobic-because-Muslim (and therefore not best of parents to their queer daughter) without being disrespectful to Islam-in-itself?
4) I'm not sure what to do with this protagonist's older sister--she's unquestionably either queer herself or an ally (I'm not sure which yet), but will that put her in enough conflict with her religious convictions that she has to choose one or the other? In whatever event, how can I respectfully depict her?
ETA: a fifth question in hopes of avoiding the pit I seem to have fallen in with the first four!
Which of these two (mutually exclusive) approaches to addressing the concerns expressed in comments will best avoid my being-or-seeming Islamophobic? Or will either result in an Islamophobic story and therefore I need to rethink some more?
* I give this particular protagonist's older sister, a queer woman and devout Muslim, a more prominent and significant role that highlights both her queerness and her devotion, without otherwise changing the protagonist's background or spiritual-narrative arc
* I change this particular protagonist and her family from a Muslim background to a Christian or Christian-inflected atheist background, so that this particular protagonist's spiritual-narrative arc begins somewhere unrelated to Islam
1) I understand from Writing With Color dot Tumblr dot com that Islam has a problem with magic--something about it always being a temptation away from the true faith. I'm writing a fantasy and one of my protagonist mages was raised Muslim. I intend to depict her as refusing (at first, but see 2) to have anything to do with her magic. I also intend to depict another protagonist, who is not at all Muslim, as having no idea why the Muslim-raised protagonist has a problem here. Is this something that will work how I mean it to?
2) The Muslim-raised protagonist will, for reasons including that (if I understand correctly) Islam--at least in the persons of her parents--has problems with lesbianhood, asexuality, and magic...that sentence got convoluted. Anyway. She will be abandoning Islam for reasons. How can I depict her journey from that faith to another without being-or-seeming Islamophobic? Especially in light of 1!
3) Is it possible to depict this protagonist's parents as queerphobic-because-Muslim (and therefore not best of parents to their queer daughter) without being disrespectful to Islam-in-itself?
4) I'm not sure what to do with this protagonist's older sister--she's unquestionably either queer herself or an ally (I'm not sure which yet), but will that put her in enough conflict with her religious convictions that she has to choose one or the other? In whatever event, how can I respectfully depict her?
ETA: a fifth question in hopes of avoiding the pit I seem to have fallen in with the first four!
Which of these two (mutually exclusive) approaches to addressing the concerns expressed in comments will best avoid my being-or-seeming Islamophobic? Or will either result in an Islamophobic story and therefore I need to rethink some more?
* I give this particular protagonist's older sister, a queer woman and devout Muslim, a more prominent and significant role that highlights both her queerness and her devotion, without otherwise changing the protagonist's background or spiritual-narrative arc
* I change this particular protagonist and her family from a Muslim background to a Christian or Christian-inflected atheist background, so that this particular protagonist's spiritual-narrative arc begins somewhere unrelated to Islam