An immigrant story for our time.
We are a nation of immigrant stories, those family tales of how our ancestors came to this country from Ireland, or from Italy, from Mexico or Moldavia, from China, or Lagos or Laos. Each story is different, unique to a particular family and its origin culture. Yet there are similarities, too: these immigrants were usually driven by dreams and/or desperation. They experienced disorientation, needing to adapt to different customs, to a different language, often to different values, while also trying to hold on to their own cultural heritage.
The Bad Muslim Discount is a more recent immigrant story, a novel set in 2016, that is timely, touching, and poignant. It’s also very funny. Anvar, the son of Pakistani immigrants, has grown up and been educated in the US, and is now an attorney. A product of American and Pakistani cultures, he often finds himself suspended uncomfortably between the two. Irreverent and endlessly joking, he is frequently at odds with his family's traditional values and more somber outlook (he's the "bad Muslim" of the title).
Family and friends express concern that he is losing touch with his religion. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t endanger your soul,” a friend tells him. Anvar replies, “Don’t worry about it. They made me give it up when I passed the bar.” His mother comments, “This one thinks he is funny…He’s the only one who thinks so.”
A second, more serious story is told by Safwa, a young Iraqi woman from war-torn Baghdad. She is living with her conservative father and abusive fiancé. For her, culture is a prison, and this new country may offer her an escape. But she lacks proper documents.
Anvar and Safwa’s stories also reflect the immigrant experience in 21st century America. A presidential campaign is underway where one of the candidates is stoking anti-immigrant, and particularly anti-Muslim, sentiment, as a way to boost his campaign and fire up his base. Safwa worries at the increasingly hate-filled rhetoric. But Anvar reassures her. He has lived here much of his life. He knows this country. This man will never be elected, he tells her. The American people are better than that. Ouch!
Throughout the book, Anvar struggles with his faith, in God and in humanity, eventually coming to an uneasy peace for his soul that allows him to proceed amid life’s many complexities and uncertainties—“I no longer believed that I believed, though I did have faith without knowing what I had faith in.”
That radical Islamists and “America First” nationalists had essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony was simply divine. Still, I wasn’t worried. The common sense and decency of my fellow Americans would never allow xenophobia and hatred to come to power.
from The Bad Muslim Discount
Syed M. Masood
Anchor Books
This review first appeared in The Columbia River Reader (September 15, 2025.) Reprinted with permission.