My Son the Fanatic, a short story by Hanif Kureishi, revolves around a father and his son who are Pakistani immigrants in England. Their relationship undergoes a violent shift when the son becomes a religious fanatic. ‘My Son the Fanatic’ skillfully presents the political through the personal. The story was first published in The New Yorker in 1994.
My Son the Fanatic Summary
Parvez is a Pakistani immigrant in England and he has been a taxi driver here for twenty years now. Noticing changes in his son Ali, he starts inspecting his room. Parvez sees that the room has become neater than it was ever before. Ali himself has become neater and cleaner. However, he has started throwing away his valuable possessions like electronic devices, clothes, and other things. He has also broken up with his English girlfriend and dissociated himself from his friends. Parvez ruminates about how other people’s children have fallen into pitfalls in England. The TV, guitar, the pictures on the walls- all of these go out of Aii’s room one by one. Parvez is worried and takes to drinking more and more, even during work hours.
Parvez’s fellow drivers are Punjabis. They work at night since the pay is better and since sleeping during the day enables them to avoid their wives. Together these men live almost a ‘boy’s life’, indulging in the various pleasures of life. Parvez hesitates to open up to his friends about his son since he thinks they might think he is somehow responsible for the recent changes in Ali. The situation is all the more awkward because for years Parvez has boasted to his friends about Ali’s excellence at sports and academics. Parvez has always hoped Ali would settle down with a good job and a family.
Anyway, one day Parvez does speak to his friends about Ali, and after listening to Parvez, they unanimously declare that Ali has taken drugs and is selling all his possessions in order to pay for them. They advise Parvez to stay alert and be strict. Parvez further opens up to Bettina who is a prostitute and a good friend to Parvez. She tells Parvez the signs that Parvez should be looking for in his son to ensure he indeed is a drug addict. However, after days of observation, Parvez finds no evidence of drugs in Ali’s rooms, nor does Ali show any signs of intoxication. Rather, he is as sharp as before and returns his father’s gaze with an alertness of his own. The only physical change noticeable in him is that he is growing a beard.
After some days, Parvez finds out something interesting; he catches Ali in the act of praying in his room and notes how Ali has taken to praying all five times a day, as prescribed in Islam. Parvez himself has never really cared for religion. Rather, he and his friends make fun of the local Muslim priests. His friends, upon hearing Ali’s recent religious turn, are reluctant to advise Parvez on anything since after all, religion is not as easy to condemn as drugs.
Following Bettina’s suggestion, Parvez takes his son out for dinner so that they can both talk things out and resolve the tensions between them. However, this dinner ends up being ‘the worst experience’ of Parvez’s life. Throughout the dinner, Ali preaches to his father about what is right and what is wrong according to the tenets of Islam. Moreover, he accuses Parvez of having led a blasphemous life since Parvez disobeys several tenets of Islam by indulging in alcohol and enjoying pork, among other things. At one point, Parvez becomes so enraged that he smashes a plate onto the floor. Ali charges Parvez of being ‘too implicated in Western civilization’ and explains to his father that the West hates them, meaning the Muslims. When Parvez asks his son what the solution is according to him, Ali, much to Parvez’s horror replies that soon Islam would rule the world and that he would gladly join the jihad if the oppression against his people did not stop. Parvez cannot believe this is his son talking to him.
Later that night, while going home, Parvez falls on the road and gets hurt. Ali does not stop to help his father. Ali plans to abandon his college education, citing how Western education fosters an anti-religious attitude in people, and how the field of accountancy is against the spirit of Islam in any case. Parvez is now determined to tell Ali to leave his house immediately but Bettina advises him against it, saying how Parvez must wait for his teenage son to grow out of his extremism.
Parvez attempts reconciliation and even starts growing a beard. But Ali does not notice it. Bettina instructs Parvez to talk to his son about his philosophy of life so that Ali gets to know how there are different ways of approaching life. Parvez does this. The talk initially goes well but becomes fraught with tension once again when Parvez mentions how life essentially is meant to be enjoyed without hurting others. Ali objects to this view, citing how millions of people around the world would take Ali’s and not Parvez’s side on how to live a good Muslim life.
Bettina and Parvez run into Ali one night. Ali was returning from a mosque. He gets into his father’s car, in the backseat, with Bettina occupying the seat beside his father. Suddenly Parvez becomes conscious of Bettina’s skimpy attire and boisterous perfume. Bettina tries to start an amiable conversation with Ali. However, the latter starts insulting her, implying how inferior she is because of the fact that she is a prostitute. Bettina jumps out of the car in indignation.
Back home, Parvez tries to calm himself down by trying to distract himself with the TV or the newspaper. Nothing helps. He goes up to Ali’s room. Ali is praying when Parvez barges into the room and starts beating him. Ali is soon bloody but he does not try to defend himself. There is no fear in his eyes. He simply asks through his split lip:
“So who’s the fanatic now?”
My Son the Fanatic Analysis
The 1970s and 1980s were times of international political turmoil, with the Cold War manifesting itself in more concrete ways than ever before. In a shrewd attempt to out-maneuver the Soviet Union, the West actually helped many Islamic fundamentalist groups in Asia by supplying them with arms and training. These fundamentalist groups did fight against the Soviet Union but later attacked the West as well, due to complex geopolitical reasons, among others. The 9/11 attack was a culmination of years of tension. Kureishi’s short story of course predates the attacks but effectively captures the tensions. Many people from the Muslim-majority countries of Asia emigrated to the USA in the second half of the twentieth century in order to flee the unstable political conditions at home. Many of these immigrants often faced discrimination in the West, resulting in many second-generation immigrants developing an anti-West fundamentalist outlook. Ali’s attitude should be read against these broader cultural and political contexts.
My Son the Fanatic | THEMES
This story is a nuanced take on religious fundamentalism. Kureishi does not offer any solutions by the end of the story; instead, he deftly shows the various angles that a sensitive matter like religious fundamentalism comes with. If fundamentalism entails having too strong a faith in something, resulting in ‘blind faith’, religious fundamentalism is not the only sort of fundamentalism seen in the story. Kureishi presents this complex idea through his power of insightful characterization: Ali is a religious fundamentalist, yes, but Parvez, his liberal father, can also be labeled a fundamentalist because he is just as eager to see his son implementing his strategies of assimilation to the English culture. One may naturally sympathize with Parvez but one must not fail to see the irony that it is Parvez, the liberal Pakistani immigrant in England, who is the first one to resort to violence against his son who he thinks has become a religious fanatic. This irony is powerfully brought into light by the question the story ends with.
The story, however, is also careful enough to show how religious fundamentalism is in fact a menace to society and culture. Ali’s changes are not all positive, and the underlying philosophy brings out the same not only shocks his father but also in the reader:
The Law of Islam would rule the world; the skin of the infidel would bum off again and again; the Jews and Christers would be routed. The West was a sink of hypocrites adulterers, homosexuals, drug takers, and prostitutes.
As Ali said. Parvez looked out the window as if to check that they were still in London.
“My people have taken enough. If the persecution doesn’t stop there will be jihad. I, and millions of others, will gladly give our lives for the cause.”
‘But why, why?’ Parvez said.
“For us, the reward will be in Paradise.”
‘Paradise!’
Ali’s answer against Islamophobia is an all-out cry for war against the broad, grossly generalized entity called ‘the West’. Kureishi does hint at the grievances many Muslim immigrants felt while living in the West but he shows one wrong cannot justify another.
Having said this, Kureishi also does not forget to critique the West’s heavy-handed treatment of the people it labels as ‘fanatics’. This approach of the West is symbolized through Parvez in the story. Yes, Parvez does attempt to reconcile with Ali at several points in the story but Ali’s concluding question does raise the question if those attempts are the right ones in the first place. The post-9/11 attitude of the USA towards Islam -suspecting random Muslim citizens of being ‘terrorists’- betrayed the same kind of paranoia indicated in this story.
Parvez and Ali stand for two very different ways of life, at least after Ali has transformed into a devout Muslim. Parvez supports the idea of what postcolonial discourse would call ‘assimilation’. He wants to make England his home as much as possible. He represents an open-minded, pleasure-seeking (”…you should enjoy yourself … Enjoy yourself without hurting others”) attitude towards life. Whereas, Ali represents an ascetic attitude towards life, intent on living like the Quran prescribes. This clash is made all the more complex by the fact that Parvez cannot really be labeled a hedonistic profligate. As a result, Ali’s extremism comes across as all the more vicious, showing how limited Ali’s perspective is.
It is important to note that Parvez and Ali are not mere characters standing for two different ideologies in the story. They are very life-like characters and the gap and tension between father and son is a crucial theme of the story. Parvez’s lament -‘We were not father and son – we were brothers! Why is he torturing me?’- is an emotion many parents can recognize, especially when their children are teenagers like Ali.
The marginal position occupied by women is subtly depicted in the story.
My Son the Fanatic | CHARACTERS
Ali: second-generation Pakistani immigrant in England. Once a young boy with a promising future with a job and family, he becomes a religious fundamentalist with a deep hatred towards the West. The changes in him distance him from his father.
Parvez: Ali’s hard-working, likable father. He wants to live a good life in England and has high hopes for his bright son. However, as Ali becomes more and more radical in his views, Parvez turns to alcohol in frustration. At the end of the story, he vents out his anger and frustration to his son by beating him mercilessly.
Bettina: prostitute, and friend to Parvez. Bettina and Parvez care for each other and tell each other about their lives. She tries to help Parvez reconcile with his estranged son but her efforts backfire as Ali insults her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hanif Kureishi was born in 1954 in England, to a Pakistani father and an English mother. He has worked as a writer of fiction, screenplays, and as a playwright. He wrote the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of ‘My Son The Fanatic’. His work often contains autobiographical elements.
