c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Mohsin Hamid went to Harvard Law School and worked as a management consultant before becoming a novelist. He describes his youth in Lahore, Pakistan, as “fairly quietly religious.”

His second book, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” tells the story of Changez, a Princeton-educated Pakistani who leaves a lucrative financial career in New York to return to Pakistan in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

The novel shot to the best-seller list within weeks of its release in the United States this spring. Hamid talked about the book from London, where he now lives, after a book tour in India, Australia and Finland. Following are excerpts.

Q: You describe yourself as a secular, progressive Muslim. What does that mean when definitions of Islam _ both within Islam and without _ are so contested?

A: I am somebody who thinks that laws should be enacted by the will of the people, based on their exercise of reason. Now, for many people, that exercise of reason includes a religious belief of what is right and wrong from what their religion has taught them. And I think that’s completely fine.

What I’m concerned about, though, is when we have laws that are dictated by people who claim to be interpreting religion for the rest of us.

Q: How has your identity as a Muslim changed since Sept. 11?

A: It’s become much more pronounced. While I always thought of myself as a Muslim, it didn’t seem to be of such paramount importance before Sept. 11. I think for many Muslims, that’s what happened. You thought of yourself as a Muslim, but you also thought of yourself as a writer and a brother and, you know, a person who likes to eat sushi.

Those things are different in different contexts. In a sushi restaurant, the fact that you are a sushi eater is much more important. So the idea that being Muslim had to be the most important thing in all contexts, took place much more after Sept. 11 when certainly the suspicion of Muslims became so pronounced.

Q: How does your novel unsettle stereotypes of Muslims?

A: Well, the thing about Changez is that he is a Muslim, but actually he is not particularly religious. And although the behavior he begins to indulge in starts to look a lot like what we might think of as Muslim fundamentalism, his ethos and his value system is based on kind of a rational pragmatism.

I don’t think that we are in the midst of a religious conflict. I think we’re in the midst of a political conflict where many of the actors happen to belong to different religions.

Q: Changez grows disenchanted with the United States, despite being part of the American elite. It seems he could easily represent some Muslims who became terrorists, many of whom come from wealthy, Westernized backgrounds.

A: Very few of the people we read about who’ve become terrorists are people who seem to be predominantly concerned with spiritual matters before their radicalization. They’re very often young men going through a particular masculine crisis, who then take on the trappings of religion in much the way that knight errants put on armor and go and kill dragons.

There’s a profound crisis right now taking place in the world. And large parts of the world are feeling fundamentally emasculated. The men in these places are feeling that they are on the losing side of history, that they are trapped on the outside, that they are not part of the wealth and quality of life that is accruing. But they can see it on the television set and they can see it down the street.

Q: What is it about the American dream, culture or capitalism that fails in such cases?

A: America is only half true to its ideals, I think. The ideals of America are incredibly seductive: all people are created equal, and we will protect your liberty, etc. If we take the ideas that underpin America, and express them in their fullest, they apply to all of humanity. The perverse effects of having such attractive ideals, but constraining them in a nation-state that is accruing power to itself, creates huge tensions in the world.

Q: In the book, Changez decides to grow a beard, even though it makes his American co-workers uneasy. Yet when a devout Muslim prays in an airplane aisle en route to Pakistan, it makes Changez uncomfortable. Is he religiously or culturally Muslim?

A: He is asserting his identity as a Muslim because he feels he is partly betraying that identity by staying in America when Pakistan is almost going to war. He’s ashamed of himself, and this asserting his identity with a beard is his way of responding to that. Yet when he sees someone else with a beard he can be quite frightened or alarmed.

I think this is the paradox for many Muslims who are dealing with a perception of suspicion from non-Muslims. The response is to say I’m going to assert my Muslimness. But for the very same Muslims, when they deal with perhaps extreme behavior among their own group, the response is a deep sense of fear and unsettlement.

Q: The perspective of a critical, cosmopolitan, secular Muslim is not one often heard in contemporary fiction. Why do you think your book became such a best seller in the United States?

A: Partly because of good timing. Had the book been published a couple of years earlier it probably would not have done very well.

But the other part of it is that you are best positioned to offer a critique if you do so from a position of affection. For me, the novel is, at the end of the day, a love story about a guy who’s madly in love with an American woman and also to a large extent in love with America.

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