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Parvez
Ali is Parvez’s son. He was born and raised in London, but both of his parents are immigrants from Pakistan. Ali was successful in school and sports throughout his childhood and adolescence. He had close friends as well as an English girlfriend, and was studying accounting at university. The drama of the story revolves around Ali’s sudden shift from a life of assimilation to one devoted to fundamentalist Islamic beliefs and practice. This shift begins when Ali starts throwing out clothes, books, cricket bats, video games, and other possessions that, to him, represent what he now sees as the indulgence and excess of Western culture. While his father views Ali as the family’s final step towards achieving full assimilation into English culture and society, Ali’s experience of growing up as the child of immigrants in England has turned him against assimilation entirely. Instead, he wishes to reclaim the identity and culture that his family left behind in Pakistan, but in this quest winds up entangled in the ideology of a radical version of Islam that doesn’t actually match the former religious practices of his family. While his father delights in Western values like the flexibility and freedom to enjoy life and its excesses, Ali is steadfast in his beliefs that enjoyment and materialism are antithetical to a virtuous life. At times, Ali deploys valid critiques of the West, pointing out the destruction wrought by Western imperialism and the Western violence perpetrated against Muslim peoples and countries around the world. He asks his father how he can love something which hates him so publicly. Ali, however, takes his beliefs to the extreme, and is willing to give his life for jihad to end the persecution that he describes. Ali’s unwillingness to give in to Parvez’s desire for him to assimilate ends up enraging Parvez, and leads him to drunkenly attack Ali. This final action makes Ali’s point that the West is itself fanatical for the hatred and violence it deploys against Muslim people.
Ali Quotes in My Son the Fanatic
The My Son the Fanatic quotes below are all either spoken by Ali or refer to Ali. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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My Son the Fanatic Quotes
But Parvez had been unable to bring this subject up with his friends. He was too ashamed. And he was afraid, too, that they would blame him for the wrong turning his boy had taken, just as he had blamed other fathers whose sons had taken to running around with bad girls, truanting from school and joining gangs…Was it asking too much for Ali to get a good job now, marry the right girl and start a family? Once this happened, Parvez would be happy. His dreams of doing well in England would have come true. Where had he gone wrong?
My Son the Fanatic
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He returned his father’s long looks with more than a hint of criticism, of reproach even, so much so that Parvez began to feel that it was he who was in the wrong, and not the boy!
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In fact they made jokes about the local mullahs walking around with their caps and beards, thinking they could tell people how to live, while their eyes roved over the boys and girls in their care.
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Ali then reminded Parvez that he had ordered his own wife to cook pork sausages, saying to her, ‘You’re not in the village now, this is England. We have to fit in!’
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‘The problem is this,’ the boy said. He leaned across the table. For the first time that night his eyes were alive. ‘You are too implicated in Western civilization.’
Parvez burped; he thought he was going to choke. ‘Implicated!” he said. ‘But we live here!’
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‘The Western materialists hate us,’ Ali said. ‘Papa, how can you love something which hates you?’
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‘But I love England,’ Parvez said, watching the boy in the mirror. ‘They let you do almost anything here.’
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Ali accused Parvez of ‘grovelling’ to the whites; in contrast, he explained, he was not ‘inferior’; there was more to the world than the West, though the West always thought it was best.
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‘In other people. I will continue - in you.’ At this the boy appeared a little distressed. ‘And your grandchildren,’ Parvez added for good measure. ‘But while I am here on earth I want to make the best of it. And I want you to, as well.’
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‘All over the world our people are oppressed,’ was the boy’s reply.
‘I know,’ Parvez replied, not entirely sure who ‘our people’ were, ‘but still – life is for living!’”
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Parvez became aware of Bettina’s short skirt, gaudy rings and ice-blue eyeshadow. He became conscious that the smell of her perfume, which he loved, filled the cab. He opened the window.
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The boy neither covered himself nor retaliated; there was no fear in his eyes. He only said, through his split lip, ‘So who’s the fanatic now?’
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Ali Character Timeline in My Son the Fanatic
The timeline below shows where the character Ali appears in My Son the Fanatic. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
My Son the Fanatic
...his son’s room because he has noticed changes in it. At first the changes in Ali’s room are welcome. The room, once messy, is now clean and orderly. But when Ali’s...
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Parvez is unable to confront Ali about these changes, as he finds himself suddenly afraid of his own son. Questions he...
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When Ali’s room is bare of almost everything, including even the pictures that once hung on the...
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Parvez knows he needs to confide in his cabbie friends about Ali’s troublesome new behaviors, but he is ashamed and fearful that they will blame him for...
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...confides in his two closest friends at the taxi office. His friends are convinced that Ali must be selling his possessions in order to buy drugs. They advise Parvez that he...
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...he rescued her from a violent client one night. Shaken by his friends’ suggestions that Ali is on drugs, Parvez confides in Bettina who advises him to be on the lookout...
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Relieved to have a plan, Parvez begins to carefully observe Ali’s every move. As Parvez watches over Ali, he notices that his son is likewise watchful...
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...out late discussing the matter with Bettina, Parvez comes home and uncovers a clue to Ali’s mysterious behavior. As Parvez is standing in the hall, he hears his son’s alarm go...
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...what they see as their hypocrisies. However, when he tells Bettina and his friends that Ali’s strange behavior turned out to be prayer, no one knows what to say as religions...
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Parvez wants to sit down and talk to Ali about his newfound interest in Islam. After refusal and evasion on Ali’s part, Parvez convinces...
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...wrong, while suggesting that he is a bad man who has lived a shameful life. Ali continues to insist that his father has lived a bad life because he has broken...
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Ali then tells his father that he is “implicated in Western civilization.” Parvez believes this is...
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On the way home, Ali sits in the back seat of his father’s taxicab, as if he is a customer....
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...him that he belongs in hell. The last straw for Parvez, however, had been when Ali told him that he was dropping out of accounting school because Western education is anti-religious....
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...by telling Bettina that he feels that he’s lost his son. He can’t stand that Ali looks at him like he’s a criminal, so has resolved to kick him out of...
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Ali’s preaching shows no signs of fading, however. He claims that Parvez is “grovelling to the...
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...and that everyone needs “philosophy to live by.” Bettina suggests that he sit down with Ali and share his philosophy, in hopes that Ali will see and be influenced to see...
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...the importance of respect, especially between children and their parents, which appears to resonate with Ali. Encouraged, Parvez explains that he believes life ends with death, and that once “rotted in...
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Parvez wishes that Ali could recognize the beauty of living, but Ali is focused on the oppression of “our...
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...they are driving through a poor neighborhood where there are two mosques. They drive past Ali. Bettina insists that they pick him up because she wants a chance to talk to...
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Parvez begins driving faster, as Bettina asks Ali where he’s been that night. Ali replies tersely that he was at the mosque. When...
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Parvez and Ali return home in silence. Ali retreats to his room while Parvez retreats to his bottle...
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