Of Kanaken and Gottes Krieger: Religion and Sexuality among Feridun Zaimoğlu’s Young Muslim Men

Summary

In his most recent writing, the novel Leyla (2006) and the drama Schwarze Jungfrauen (world première 2006), Feridun Zaimo_lu focuses on women: on those who later became Gastarbeiterinnen and on young, self-confident (German) Muslim women. In his earlier writing, however, Zaimo_lu paid particular attention to German Turkish men. The media image of young and radical German Turks — men who are still widely perceived as trouble-makers and who, according to Zaimo_lu, therefore live “at the margins of society” — caught the writer's creative attention.

In contemporary German literature Feridun Zaimo_lu has occupied the role of the radical writer. In the mid-1990s he shook the German literary market with the creation of his “Kanak Sprak”: the subversive language in which the majority of his semi-fictional characters (the children of former Gastarbeiter) speak. It is a language that lets angry young German Turkish men express their discontent with Germany, which may be their home country but still seems hostile to them as “others.” In works such as Kanak Sprak, Zaimo_lu lets his male protagonists embrace this marginal position as a means of self-identification and self-definition as “other” Germans. One feature that characterizes Zaimo_lu's men is the emphasis they place on their sexuality, manliness, and success as womanizers. This comes across as something which actively differentiates them from the German male mainstream, and as something they feel they can “do” better.

Since Kanak Sprak first appeared in 1995, Zaimo_lu's focus in his depiction of young German Turkish men has shifted: he now gives their religion, Islam, a more prominent role in his writing. One reason for this may be that since 11 September 2001, the date of the al-Qaida suicide attacks which seemed to reawaken the long-existing Western image of Islam as a worldwide “threat to Western civilization,” Muslim minorities have been forced to reposition, even justify themselves in a “new world order”; their Muslim identity has re-emerged as a battleground on which Western cultural and religious positions are examined.

Many writers with a Muslim background — even those whose religion has never played a significant role in their writing — now feel the urge or pressure to address Islam-related issues. This is noticeable in Zaimo_lu's writing and his depiction of young German Turkish men, who seem increasingly conscious of themselves as Muslims.