Religious motivations for Conflict in Burhan Shawi's Labyrinth Novels

Abstract

Religious motivations are among the main incentive of the novelistic characters in determining their attitudes and the way they deal with other characters. In Burhan Shawi’s labyrinth novels, there are normal characters who understand religion correctly, and abnormal characters who wrongly use religion in their favor to achieve their goals. The focus was on the abnormal characters as they were the cause of many hotbeds of conflict due to their lack of integrity and their harm to others. The most significant objectives that this research focused on are the conflict of these dubious religious figures with the other who differs from their intellectual ideology and the fabrication of misunderstanding the other for control and exclusion. Thus, they have the lead in society and gain the power. The other core of the conflict is a woman's conflict with the other represented by a man who understands religion in a way that intertwines religion with tradition, which makes it lack of tolerance. Moreover, the problem that we can observe is the characters represented by religion and who have no shame, even at the expense of others (There is no religion for the one who has no modesty) in contrast to the one who practices religious thinking modestly as ordered by Islamic law. The most important result that we have seen in Burhan Shawi's Labyrinth is the reference to the philosophy of contradiction created by life and created by man himself, who is the activator of this difference, to put the mind at a crossroads. In this study an appropriate approach is used which is the descriptive approach, in which the researcher explains in detail according to the components of the phenomenon as it is, without addition, decrease, criterion, or criticism. Rather, the description is based on stating the facts as they are either positive and negative.