Religious extremism is a topic that is extremely difficult to talk about, especially if you are not a part of that religion. It’s easy to come across as dismissive or patronizing if you do not understand the minute details and the reasons why it escalates to that point. The novels that I am discussing today are sorely aware of that fact and are a fresh look on how extremist religions come together. They also take a look at the process of someone being radicalised and ask the audience to follow their journey with sympathy. The novels were only published a year apart and are on a searingly relevant topic. R.O. Kwon’s, The Incendiaries (2018) and Kamila Shamsie’s, Home Fire (2017) are commentating on two extremely similar experiences. In their narratives about extremism, radicals, and cults they both critique toxic masculinity, and the radicalisation of a young adult who is in pain. Their narrative delivers honest criticism and insight into the processes of grief, unreliable narrators, and the constant fear and suspicion that people of color deal with.
For Kwon it was incredibly important to convey the themes of “of faith and about faith”. She reflects in an interview with Longreads about losing her faith, “Losing my faith was devastating to me. For the next year I was as depressed as I’ve ever been. I was and am close to my parents, but I remember thinking that I’d rather lose one of my parents than lose God.” She explains in another interview that she wrote this for her younger self, to say, “You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ve experienced this, too.”
“People with no experience of God tend to think that leaving the faith would be a liberation, a flight from guilt, rules, but what I couldn't forget was the joy I'd known, loving Him.”
The Incendiaries is a narrative about a violent cult and overwhelming grief. Will Kendall, a former Fundamentalist Christian, pointedly experiences and mourns over his loss of faith throughout the novel. We experience through the fragmented narrative his longing for his faith, and the parallels that can be found within John Leal’s cult. John Leal preaches that faith and belief are not the important parts of religion. Phoebe confirms this thought process: “It wasn’t until the 18th century that the church established belief as a precondition of Christian faith --- if I act as though I believe, maybe I’ll also experience the divine.” (146) For the novel’s narrator, this is impossible. He will always long for this faith, but will not be able to attain it again.
In Home Fire, Shamsie tells a story about two families at odds with the other, and the internal conflicts when one of the family members is radicalised. Based on Antigone, Shamsie says that the narrative has the ‘marrow’ of Antigone, but not the bones. Home Fire borrows beats from the story of Antigone, but the narrative is a fresh breath of life into the story of Antigone. Shamsie has made it all her own. Home Fire is interested in the ties of family, conflicts of one’s national identity and one’s ethnic identity, the surveillance of minorities, and the circumstances in which a young man could be brought into a extremist group. Love and home are at the center of this novel. Shamsie also says, “I don’t think you can untangle the idea from love from home. You can’t [untangle] the idea of loyalty from love, either. I was interested in this triumvirate of love, loyalty, home, and how they work together.”
“Grief was the deal God struck with the angel of death, who wanted an unpassable river to separate the living from the dead; grief the bridge that would allow the dead to flit among the living, their footsteps overheard, their laughter around the corner, their posture recognizable in the bodies of strangers you would follow down the street, willing them to never turn around.”
In passages like this, Shamsie displays the grief that flows through the latter half of the narrative, and is able to convey how heavy grief hangs on the family. Grief is a underlying theme throughout the whole novel; the family grieves for their mother and then in the latter half of the novel they grieve for Parvaiz. “Grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was every speck of pain in the world.” The grief in this novel is visceral, and Shamsie is able to convey this so accurately that the reader feels it as well.
Another important theme across Home Fire is the surveillance state. Aneeka mentions a concept called GWM, which can be translated to “Googling While Muslim”. This concept is important because of the increased surveillance on the family; moreso because they are Muslim, and their father was involved in an extremist group. Shamesie forces us to take notice of this fear interlaced across the text. One of the first chapters in the novel reminds us of this reality, “The interrogation continued for nearly two hours. He wanted to know her thoughts on Shias, homosexuals, the Queen, democracy, The Great British Bake Off, the invasion of Iraq, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites.” (5) The fear that Isma experiences is a recurring feeling throughout the novel which coalesces at the ending when their home country, and its citizens starts treating the family as the enemy of the state.
“So, Will. Poor Will. Paradise still burns his eyes, but he can’t get back in. It would be heard to witness others’ faith; he tried so long for his own. Though he’s lived in a state of lack, people often take what he’s lost to be nothing, a joke. Even his mother still thinks it’s a phase. His childish rebellion. He grieves, the absence more vivid to him than what’s present, while being forced to pretend he’s fine. It’s possible that, with time, the mask has sealed itself upon his face….He hears the church bells ring, but not to him.” (150 - 151)
Faith is extremely important to Will in Home Fire. It’s something he can never attain again, and that fact is a painful one for him to live with. Will was an active, and enthusiastic member of his church, and when he lost his faith, it seemed like he lost his way. “I attended Jubilee, the Bible college in California, until I lost my faith, at which point I’d had to give up a long-held plan to assign my life to God...Child Evangelical that I’d been, I knew as little about pop culture as I did about East Coast shibboleths.” (15) In contrast to that, Phoebe gains a new religion while they are dating; which is extremely hard for Will to understand, and live with. “You chose the one set of beliefs I wasn’t going to be able to stand. I’m asking if it was on purpose, if it’s something I did.” (145) Phoebe’s faith is incomprehensible to Will, and seems to be a retaliation against some unknown action he had taken. He is unable to see past this because the own ache his long gone faith had left in him.
Both books are extremely poignant narratives about faith, love, home, and loyalty and how they affect your identity, and those you love. It is impossible to wrangle them from each other because they are so tightly interwoven. The experiences that are cataloged throughout these narratives speak volumes of the world around us, about how hard it is to live in a world that is suspicious of your actions, and refuses to acknowledge the pain you’ve been through, and the circumstances that have pushed some to the bring. Home Fire, and The Incendiaries repeatedly reaffirm these ideas, and are important to understand.
