Novelist Kamila Shamsie Talks About Radicalization Citizenship and the Link Between Violence and Masculinity
Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie  didnât have to stretch to fit the plot to the times when  she  decided to adapt the Greek tragedy Antigone into a contemporary novel about terrorism.
The gripping novel explores how western responses to terrorism show the limits of our ideals and laws. In an interview over Skype   Shamsie  told me  her  initial imperative with the novel was to explore the question of citizenship  to delve into what it means to begin stripping people of citizenship for certain crimes.
âRepeatedly people in [Theresa Mayâs] government have said  âcitizenship is a privilege not a right ââ  Shamsie  said. âAnd thatâs simply legally untrue  but increasingly they want to be able to take away citizenship for people who they think are unworthy. And they get to decide.â
 She  added: âItâs your own citizens and youâre saying that for all that we have our judicial system and prison system and probation and all of that  this is the one crime that we donât know how to deal with  so weâre just going to leave you out of the country. It should be seen as a real failing of a state  to say that our judicial system is incapable of knowing how to respond to this criminal act.â
And  as in the United States  the notion of terror is racialized and associated with Muslims (President Trump entertaining the idea of sending Sayfullo Saipov  the man who killed eight people when he drove a truck down a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween  to GuantÃ¡namo  is at this point to be expected.) While stripping citizenship might initially be justified only in terrorism cases   Shamsie  noted Theresa Mayâs attempts to revoke the passports of a group of British-Pakistani men convicted of sex crimes â âthereâs no way of saying itâs not about Islamophobia and racism  because no one is making those suggestions about anyone who is white and committing similar crimes.â
In the narratives that she read of radicalization  of youth attempting to join ISIS   Shamsie  saw only demonization and one-dimensional narratives: â It âs almost an inevitability now. If youâre young  Muslim and male  and angry  then youâre going to strap a bomb onto yourself.â But she dug into research on ISIS propaganda and youth who were convinced by it  and found that the reality  for many teenage would-be fighters  was complex.
âOne of the things I was interested in was the lure being something other than violence  and all the other ways that this world that we know to be nihilistic and brutal could also be seductive â  Shamsie  said.
âThere is this link between masculinity and violence that should be inescapable  it should be part of every conversation on violence â said  Shamsie . âInstead we compartmentalize violence: Thereâs the violence of gun shooters in America  thereâs the violence of suicide bombers in Iraq  thereâs domestic violence everywhere  there are men in Pakistan who are committing honor killings â and we donât draw the line between all of them and say what is it with men  what is it with masculinity  what is it that young men do to prove to themselves or to someone else that they are a man in the right kind of way?â
All of these complexities are missing from most media narratives of radicalization  and so also is the possibility of empathy   Shamsie  believes. In  her  research   she  found little compassion for the families whose children had gone to Syria  âfamilies facing the most horrendous thing â your child or your sibling who is very young or very stupid or angry â has gone to a place from where you know they will probably never return. And these families are treated as though they are guilty  rather than as if they are mourning.â
The novel gave  Shamsie  the space to create that empathy.
 [TGT] didnât have to stretch to fit the plot to the times when   [TGT]   decided to adapt the Greek tragedy Antigone into a contemporary novel about terrorism.
The gripping novel explores how western responses to terrorism show the limits of our ideals and laws. In an interview over Skype   Shamsie  told me  her  initial imperative with the novel was to explore the question of citizenship  to delve into what it means to begin stripping people of citizenship for certain crimes.
âRepeatedly people in [Theresa Mayâs] government have said  âcitizenship is a privilege not a right ââ   [TGT] said. âAnd thatâs simply legally untrue  but increasingly they want to be able to take away citizenship for people who they think are unworthy. And they get to decide.â
 She  added: âItâs your own citizens and youâre saying that for all that we have our judicial system and prison system and probation and all of that  this is the one crime that we donât know how to deal with  so weâre just going to leave you out of the country. It should be seen as a real failing of a state  to say that our judicial system is incapable of knowing how to respond to this criminal act.â
And  as in the United States  the notion of terror is racialized and associated with Muslims (President Trump entertaining the idea of sending Sayfullo Saipov  the man who killed eight people when he drove a truck down a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween  to GuantÃ¡namo  is at this point to be expected.) While stripping citizenship might initially be justified only in terrorism cases   Shamsie  noted Theresa Mayâs attempts to revoke the passports of a group of British-Pakistani men convicted of sex crimes â âthereâs no way of saying itâs not about Islamophobia and racism  because no one is making those suggestions about anyone who is white and committing similar crimes.â
In the narratives that she read of radicalization  of youth attempting to join ISIS   Shamsie  saw only demonization and one-dimensional narratives: â It âs almost an inevitability now. If youâre young  Muslim and male  and angry  then youâre going to strap a bomb onto yourself.â But she dug into research on ISIS propaganda and youth who were convinced by it  and found that the reality  for many teenage would-be fighters  was complex.
âOne of the things I was interested in was the lure being something other than violence  and all the other ways that this world that we know to be nihilistic and brutal could also be seductive â  Shamsie  said.
âThere is this link between masculinity and violence that should be inescapable  it should be part of every conversation on violence â said  Shamsie . âInstead we compartmentalize violence: Thereâs the violence of gun shooters in America  thereâs the violence of suicide bombers in Iraq  thereâs domestic violence everywhere  there are men in Pakistan who are committing honor killings â and we donât draw the line between all of them and say what is it with men  what is it with masculinity  what is it that young men do to prove to themselves or to someone else that they are a man in the right kind of way?â
All of these complexities are missing from most media narratives of radicalization  and so also is the possibility of empathy   Shamsie  believes. In  her  research   she  found little compassion for the families whose children had gone to Syria  âfamilies facing the most horrendous thing â your child or your sibling who is very young or very stupid or angry â has gone to a place from where you know they will probably never return. And these families are treated as though they are guilty  rather than as if they are mourning.â
The novel gave  Shamsie  the space to create that empathy.