Colonial Discourse and Narratives of Hate in Leon Uris's The Haj

Abstract

The paper critically examines The Haj as an imperialistic novel incorporating racist and colonialist narratives which aim to defile Arab culture and profane the Islamic religion in order to achieve dubious political purposes. As a novel tracing the development of the Arab-Israeli conflict, argues the paper, The Hai emphasizes the impossibility of reconciliation between the colonized Palestinians and the Zionist colonizers due to racial and cultural differences separating the two sides. Depicting the Palestinians as uncivilized savages and the colonizers as carriers of the banners of western civilization and democracy, The Hai deploys narratives of race and ideology replacing the discourse of the real with that of the imaginary in order to make the latter desirable and render history consumable. The paper also points out that The Hai aims to justify colonization by depicting the colonial process as a historically inevitable movement of progress toward bringing civilization to the land of the barbarians