Postcolonialism, Islamophobia and Inserting Islam Facts in African-American Fiction: Umm Zakiyyah’s If I Should Speak

Islam has been growing quickly in the world, yet it is a predominately misunderstood religion. Othering Islam through media propaganda and western writings, and mis associating it with some assumptions are still rampant. Thus, the researcher attempts at showing these assumptions stereotypical prejudgments of Islam and Muslims that are commonly associated with Western assumptions resulted in Islamophobia and exploring the role of counter-discourses in contemporary Black-American Fiction by analyzing Umm Zakiyyah’s If I Should Speak and showing to what extents the novel has an important role in correcting assumptions and narrating the Islamic facts. Thus, this article highlights Umm Zakiyyah’s narrative of Islam’s truth within its historical sources the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The paper analyses Umm Zakiyyah’s reconsideration of Islam’s truth, by focusing on the meaning of Islam and being a Muslim. To do so, this qualitative and non-empirical research is conducted in a descriptive-theoretical analysis, using the selected novel as a primary source and library and online critical materials, such as books and journal articles, as secondary references. Based on the analysis, it is found that Umm Zakiyyah narrates Islam and Muslims to counter the West’s negative view on Islam. Furthermore, based on the story, the power of Muslim self-identification within the historical transparent knowledge based on the Quran’s perspectives leads to the conversion of Tamika Douglass, proving that Islam can be perceived positively by non-Muslims; in this case, it is represented within its subjectivity. It is found that the novel can be a tool of Islamic da’wah [call for the faith]. Hence, the Muslim writers and novelists should write to solve the challenges facing Muslims and the Ummah by Islamizing English fiction.