BEYOND TOLERANCE: RACIALIZED-GENDERED SECURITIZATION AND MUSLIM COUNTERPUBLIC RESISTANCE IN SARAH MUGHAL RANA’S HOPE ABLAZE

Abstract

This article examines Rana’s Hope Ablaze (2024) as a significant literary representation of contemporary Islamophobia in the United States. It argues that the novel does not depict Islamophobia as isolated prejudice or only as cultural misunderstanding. Rather, it presents Islamophobia as a governing structure that works simultaneously through anti-Muslim racialization, gendered rescue discourse, and the securitization of Muslim citizenship. To address this complexity, the article develops a merged framework called racialized-gendered securitization, synthesizing Sahar F. Aziz’s concept of the “Racial Muslim,” Sara R. Farris’s theory of femonationalism, and Jasmin Zine’s work on Muslim youth, security culture, and counterpublic resistance. Through close textual analysis of key scenes, including Nida’s public prayer and illegal frisking, the media’s fixation on hijab, the school board’s surveillance of Muslim student life, Mamou’s criminalization, and the final protest performance, the article demonstrates that the novel maps the workings of liberal Islamophobia with unusual sharpness. The article further argues that Hope Ablaze is especially important because it shows how poetry becomes both incriminating evidence and a resistant mode of testimony. By centering a Pakistani American hijabi protagonist whose body, words, and community are repeatedly subjected to scrutiny, Rana’s novel reveals the conditionality of Muslim belonging while also imagining Muslim speech, solidarity, and artistic practice as counterpublic forms of survival. The article contributes to scholarship on Islamophobia, Muslim American literature, and Pakistani diasporic writing by offering an integrated model that is directly applicable to literary analysis.