ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some questions of Husain's narrative form, which both inspires this reception and equally thwarts it. It is perhaps no coincidence that Husain's memoir is structured as a Bildungsroman, which projects a reformed Islam by charting a path of rebellion, liberal self-determination, and socialization. In exploring Husain's coming-of-age trajectory, the chapter explores a hesitant, secularized, liberal Islam, at the very points where it is defined and promoted. These complexities point to the difficult project of reforming Islam within a shifting British landscape. Husain's initial rebellion into Islamism is contradicted by his disavowal of agency; his later self-determination is punctured by the anxiety of seduction; socialization is muddied by the nebulous nature of Britishness. Husain concludes the Bildungsroman trajectory with an uncertain socialization: he wants to marry the 'essence' of Islam with 'progress' and 'social change'; conversely, he strives to fuse the timeless exceptionalism of British liberalism with an emergent Islam.
