Pluralism and Secularism in Cunningham Graham's Mogreb-El-Acksa

Not all the travellers who had trodden the 'orient' during the heightened era of imperialism comply with the defining precepts of what Edward Said has labelled Orientalism. The worldviews of some travel writers were not unilaterally levelled by the juggernaut of imperialism. From within the hustle and bustle of colonial rhetoric, some voices retain a poignant independence that interrogates the unicity, generalization, stability, and homogeneity with which Said has sealed up his seminal thesis Orientalism. Following a multidisciplinary cultural studies approach, the present thesis interprets such free thought through the prism of secular pluralism that is capable of disrupting the discursive dichotomies hyped by the various orientalist artistic forms. The travel text of Cunningham Graham, Mogreb-el-Acksa, is approached as an example of tenacious secular and pluralist stance that arguably predefines the modern diasporic voices, which are calling vehemently for cultural hybridization, dialogic cosmopolitanism and apolitical multiculturalism as an antidote to the ideological fanaticism/fundamentalism and armed violence that are tearing up today's worlds across the Atlantic divide.