Faith, hybridity, and Arab-Muslim female agency in Leila Aboulela’s the translator

This article examines Leila Aboulela’s The Translator as a reimagining of cultural hybridity and diasporic identity through a framework rooted in Islamic ethics and African feminist negotiation. Challenging dominant postcolonial and secular feminist readings that equate agency with rupture, rebellion, or assimilation, the study foregrounds negotiation as a spiritually grounded mode of subjectivity. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of the “Third Space,” Islamic feminist theory, and Obioma Nnaemeka’s Nego-feminism, the article argues that faith is not an obstacle to hybridity but its moral structure. Through close analysis of Sammar’s experience as a Sudanese Muslim woman in Scotland, particularly through her worship, relationship with Rae, translation work, and reflective interiority, it positions negotiation as an Afro-Islamic mode of agency rooted in religious discernment and spiritual clarity. Rather than casting hybridity as improvisation or secular liberation, the novel affirms a form of hybridity shaped by Islamic duties and virtues through Aboulela’s depiction of Sammar as a modern Muslim woman. This study contributes a new perspective to postcolonial and feminist literary criticism by demonstrating how The Translator reframes Arab-Muslim women’s literary voices through the lens of religiously grounded negotiation and Afro-Islamic feminist aesthetics.