The Western countries have become conservative in their outlook of the Muslim communities all over the world. In the wake of 9/11 attack of terror on America, Muslim diaspora all over the world, especially in the Western countries has been subjected to humiliation and alienation. The Muslim communities all over the world had faced stiff challenges from time time and asserted themselves and their love for freedom in many literary pieces. The literature of the diaspora in many ways records the basic human desire for survival as well as the 'urge of becoming' overcoming the stiff resistance and confrontations that the host countries and communities had have inflicted upon the small yet strong-willed people.

The essay will show that living in America after 9/11 and being the “other” could affect one's identity, both in conscious and unconscious ways. By using psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, this paper will explore how the identity of the protagonist, Changez in The Reluctant, is affected by 9/11.

Bringing together Erik Erikson’s theory of identity crisis and the works of other eminent scholars on the subject, this paper aims to propose a better understanding of the issue with special emphasis on Muslim immigrants. Keeping in view 9/11 as a major catalyst, I have opt to analyze and discuss the factors and reasons that contribute to the protagonist’s identity crisis in Hamid’s work.

This issue is all the more poignant for Muslim immigrants who immigrate to non-Muslim countries as their Islamic code of life clashes with the secular and more liberal ideas of the west. The identity attained and maintained by the immigrant in his homeland is found to create problems for him in a new environment where the culture, traditions and life style is altogether different. Among many issues that the novel highlights, one particular issue is of importance and is the topic of heated debate in the intellectual circles. This paper shall explore the world and thinking of a Pakistani immigrant living in America through Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The so- called ‘melting pot’ of different cultures and religions had become sceptic about its Muslim inhabitants. The historic attack of 9/11 had changed the very scenario of United States.

The reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes