Islam is the Eternal Irony of the Community: Reading Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire

This paper reads Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire to demonstrate this thesis: by using Sophocles’ Antigone as intertext, Shamsie places Islam in the role that philosophy has traditionally put Antigone and, by extension, women. The disavowal of Islam from the “western” tradition is what “ironically” constitutes it. Sophocles’ play has been a well for Continental philosophers, particularly around questions of politics and gender. Hegel famously used the play to define women as the “irony” of the community and the “internal enemy.” European and American feminists and queer theorists have reread the play to successfully push back on Hegel’s sexist understanding. Yet, they have maintained a seal around “western” philosophy, excluding the importance of Islam to modern understandings of the Greeks. In this way, they have replicated Hegel’s basic move, but replaced “women” with “Islam.” By reading Home Fire, this paper shows how Shamsie gives the lie to this exclusion.