Stereotypical Islamic Terrorism

       While reading Terrorist, I was struck by the stereotypical portrayal of an Islamic extremist. Ahmad seems so intense that it borders on ridiculousness. I could not help but think that Ahmad was similar to Jeff Dunham’s comedy skit of “Achmed the Terrorist”. In this skit, Jeff Dunham portrays terrorists as passionate lunatics that scream “the infidels!” and rave about killing the masses.

In this novel, John Updike attempts to enter the mind of a terrorist who of course, is Muslim. Despite the fact that not all terrorists are Muslim, John Updike chooses to make his leading character Muslim knowing that it would play into the fears of the American masses. Ahmad is not only Muslim, but chooses to take his faith to the next level so that everyone who subjects themselves to impurity and sin is beneath him. “Infidels, they think safety lies in accumulation of the things of this world, and in the corrupting diversions of the television set. They are slave to images, false ones of happiness and affluence” (Updike, 4). Here, Updike shows how committed Ahmad is to his negative perception of others. While Islam is a religion of peace and being close to god, Ahmad uses it to critique “the infidels” and condemn them to lives of slavery and unpleasant deaths. “I look around me, and I see slaves- slaves to drugs, slaves to fads, slaves to television, slaves to sports heroes that don’t know they exist, slaves to the unholy meaningless opinions of others. You have a good heart, Joryleen, but you’re heading straight for Hell, the lazy way you think” (Updike, 73). Again, Ahmad appears as the picture for a religious fanatic similar to Achmed the terrorist. His condemnation of Joryleen causes him to chastise her freedom in her body. It is obvious that his fanaticism will only grow until he becomes the stereotypical terrorist.

Throughout the entire novel it is extremely difficult to sympathize with Ahmad. After a terrorist attack many often ask, “Where did they go wrong?” or “How could we not have noticed their insanity?” However, when the terrorist is Islamic, they just attribute their violence to the religion. Updike does a great job in appealing to the societal prejudice against Muslims in showing Ahmad’s extreme religiousness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsElecvWXu0