ISLAMOPHOBIA AND THE PARADOX OF ASSIMILATION: RE-ISLAMIZATION AND QUEST FOR SELF IN MEHMOOD'S YOU'RE NOT PROPER

The paper investigates how the Western secular societies, even though they purport to be culturally neutral, unwillingly provide the conditions that push the Muslims to religious revival and self-identification. Through a close analysis of Karan, who intentionally changes her name to Kiran, in You’re Not Proper by Tariq Mehmood, the research claims that Islamophobia, racialized stereotypes, and existential pressures of secular liberalism create a crisis of unbelonging to second-generation Muslims youth. Rather than leading to assimilation, these forces enhance desires of coherence and authenticity through a conscious reversion to the basic Islamic values. Based on the theorization of re-Islamization by Olivier Roy, this paper shows how the character, Kiran, is a representation of a decultured Islam that is based on a core belief and not on inherited culture. To this, the difference between the Muslims by Culture and the Muslims by Practice by Malak can be used to explain how Kiran was able to change her disjointed half-Muslims identity into a consciously adopted Islamic selfhood. Her re-Islamization is both a spiritual awakening and a counter-discourse to the Western hegemonic discourses that distort Muslim subjectivities. The paper concludes that the experience of Kiran is a broader diasporic phenomenon where Islam is a place of dignity, empowerment, and ontological safety to Muslims who are trying to find their way through exclusion in the West.