ISSN 1923-1555[Print] ISSN 1923-1563[Online] www.cscanada.net www.cscanada.org Studies in Literature and Language Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015, pp. 19-25 DOI: 10.3968/6196 19 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Islam and Terrorism in Post 9/11 th Literature Salim E. Al-Ibia [a],* [a] English Department, Al al-Bayt University, Mafraq, Jordan. * Corresponding author. Received 6 November 2014; accepted 10 January 2015 Published online 26 February 2015 Abstract Although it has been always difficult to provide an adequate and comprehensive definition of “Terrorism”, Islam has been falsely and closely associated with this concept in post 9/11 th literature. Focusing on Joseph Geha’s Alone and All Together (2002), Laila Halaby’s Once on a Promised Land (2007), and Mohsin Hamid’s the Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), I explain how Islam and the Arabic identity—which relates to Islam in one way or another—become responsible for the misery experienced by the Arab-American minority after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 th . In the aforementioned works, Islam and the Arab ethnicity are entrapped under the strong feelings of patriotism and Americanism in post 9/11 United States. Islam falsely becomes the religion of terrorists who are referred to as radical Arabs and who are not recognized as patriotic citizens of the United States. Key words: Islam; Terrorism; Arab-American identity Al-Ibia, S. E. (2015). Islam and Terrorism in Post 9/11 th Literature. Studies in Literature and Language, 10 (2), 19-25. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/view/6196 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/6196 INTRODUCTION Terrorism is one of the most challenging concepts that might not be easily defined. Nevertheless, many people use the concept out of context to refer to Muslims as potential suspects of awful crimes in recent times. Thus, I do believe that the misconception of associating terrorism with Islam might be located in a larger continuum of religious discrimination against others. The laws of our own young century have failed to end religious bias and discrimination among religious groups and different religions and as a result against the other. I use the word “other” in a religious sense rather than racial or postcolonial ones. But because our contemporary laws prohibit the obvious discrimination of any type including the religious one, some hateful people cannot express their religious hatred of the other publically. Interestingly, people have developed some tricky concepts to avoid the legal responsibility of expressing religiously hateful ideas. Such tricky concepts include the use of the word “extremist” or “fundamentalist” in front of the targeted religious group. For instance, we have recently heard of “extremist Muslims” or “extremist Christians” to refer to “terrorists” which is in turn another tricky concept. It is widely understood that the words “extremist” and “fundamentalist” have some negative connotations when associated with religious groups. In using these tricky concepts, we attempt to separate Christians from extremist ones and extremist Muslims from the Muslims. But these religious extremists or fundamentalists should never be religiously different from others in their religious group; if they are different from their religious group, they should not be referred to extremist or fundamentalist members of it. In other words, I do not believe in having extremist Christians and non-extremist ones. The same applies to Islam. I do not believe in having extremists and non- extremist Muslims. I wholeheartedly believe that these extremists neither belong to Christianity nor do they belong to Islam. But because some people still cannot have enough respect for the other who does not belong to their religious group and because they cannot coexist with others, and because the modern laws prohibit religious discrimination, they came up with the false classifications of extremists and non-extremist or fundamentalist and non- fundamentalist groups. These are hateful classifications,