Rereading Post- 9/11 Paradigm Shift in Mohsin Hamid's Diasporic Novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Due to its diasporic features and being 'in-between' competing Pakistani-American discourses, Mohsin Hamid (1971--)'s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) has the potential to deconstruct the dominant perceptions about influential incidents like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The major concept which is dislodged in this novel is the paradigm shift which occurs in the West and especially the United States after the event. The United States claims that its strategic alteration toward the Muslim immigrants in the post 9/11 era is a reaction against the fundamentalism and terrorism engendered by them; whereas, Hamid's critical reading against the grain, regards the post 9/11 alterations in the reception of Muslim migrants as anterior to the global fundamentalism and terrorism, rather than posterior to them. Put differently, the marginalized and oft-neglected narrative of a Muslim migrant author of the post 9/11 tumults, recognizes the United States as the origin of the global fundamentalism and terrorism and not the victim of them as widely claimed. The redefinition of this change in American policies in post 9/11 is depicted through the perspective of Changez, the novel's protagonist. He is a Muslim Pakistani young man, a Princeton graduate, and employed by a prosperous economic company. Hamid's redefinition of the post 9/11 paradigm shift is investigated along three axes and three important binary oppositions are deconstructed in his novel; the cosmopolitan/nationalist United States, the religious/ economic fundamentalism, and the military/economic terrorism.