Article Summary by Abir Hamdar

What is the relationship between disability and Islamic fundamentalism? To answer this question, this essay explores the representation of disability in postcolonial Arab fiction about Islamic fundamentalism and in particular, the significance of the prosthesis: an artificial device that substitutes for a missing part of the body. As the essay argues, disability functions as a crucial fictional and emotive device, support or supplement—in short a prosthesis—in narratives of Islamism that underpins and sustains the process of radicalization, the turn to violence as well as the attempt to negotiate peace. In conclusion, I argue that the prosthesis becomes an essential part of the fictional Islamist body-politic but I also raise questions about how far Islamic fundamentalism instrumentalizes this prosthesis for its own purposes.

Read the full article on the Medical Humanities journal website.

Abir Hamdar is Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University and a playwright.  She is the author of The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature (Syracuse University Press, 2014). She has also co-edited a volume of essays entitled Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World (Routledge, 2014). Her play The Silicone Bomb was performed in Beirut, Alexandria and Jordan. Her ethnodramas I Am Waiting for You and Hair Talk on Arab female cancer experiences premiered in Beirut, Lebanon in 2017 and 2020 and were staged at hospitals and cancer medical units in Lebanon.