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Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat is a play written by the Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi. It handles many important themes such as identity formation of Arab Americans, the misrepresentation of Arab Americans in the American media and internal conflicts among them. The play illustrates how some Arab Americans are real enemies who involve each other in pranks, serious problems and who can even threaten each other's lives. They can intimidate each other and, according to the play, often-misrepresent themselves in the American media. The corrupt images and the harsh opinions spread by some Sheikhs, who speak on behalf of Muslims in the American media, are also portrayed in the play as leading to hatred among Arab Americans, especially Muslims. The negative image of Arab Americans in the American media is drawn in the play as perpetuated by the Muslims themselves. As a result, the American media conceptualizes Arab Americans especially Muslims as enemies to the United States of America. Homi Bhabha's two major concepts \"mimicry\" and \"ambivalence\" are applied in the analysis of the play.

The Egyptian-American playwright, Youssef Elguindi, in his plays Back of the Throat (2006) and Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (2012) shows an interest in exploring the issue of cultural power dynamics bringing to the fore the experience of eastern immigrants in the west. He portrays characters that find themselves, as immigrants, trapped between the western American culture and their original eastern one. In his Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha discusses the concepts of Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Hybridity discussing the cultural and trans-cultural ties between the western host culture and the Eastern one. In fact, cultural ties are reciprocal, so when one imitates another culture, one will reach a point where he combines the two cultures producing what Bhabha refers to as a 'third space.' This third space is a new cultural arena in which the immigrant adapts his existence. Hybridity is a stage which simultaneously combines the thing and its opposite, and with which the culture of the other completely mixes with the original one producing thus a third space for the individual. It could be that the playwright suggests that through adopting Hybridity one may find a solution for the struggle of the hyphened identities. The individual must be fully aware of, tolerant with, and accepts the diversity and the dynamics of east-west cultural and trans-cultural ties.

In the aftermath of the September attacks, it has been widely discerned that several Western literary works have shaped -and at times distorted- the perception of Islam, offered a mediated version that transcends reality, and featured Islam in the consciousness of international readers in a negative manner: Islamic culture is backward, Muslims are prone to violence and Islam promotes terrorism. Within the framework of postcolonialism, this paper discusses 'Islamophobia' in Yussef El Guindi's play Language Rooms (2010). As an Arab American writer, El Guindi tackles the prejudices of the Western world against Arab Americans after the 9/11 attacks. Accordingly, the paper is divided into two main parts. The first part tends to be an introductory theoretical one. It begins by surveying the history and development of 'Islamophobia' in literary studies. The second part of the paper focuses on El Guindi's Language Rooms. This part provides a comprehensive analysis of the play in order to find out how 'Islamophobia' is reflected in it. Hence, the play reflects failure in Western circles to properly understand the nature of Islam and Muslims considering them a source of fear, threat and violence

Drawing on a psychoanalytic approach, the present paper tackles Yussef El Guindi\"s Back of the Throat (2006) as a study of the American attitude towards Arab/Muslim Americans after the 9/11 attacks, with a special focus on the traumatic effects arising from police interrogations throughout the play. This is done by employing such features as fear, verbal and physical attacks, inhuman practices, cynicism, scapegoating, etc. as negotiated by psychoanalysts like Allan Young, Philip Bonifacio, Marna Young and others. In a seven-character one-act piece, El Guindi illustrates how the police officers, traumatized by the 9/11 attacks, pass on their own trauma to innocent people on so fabricated evidence that they may appear as more sinned against than sinning. The paper has reached three findings. (1) The playwright fulfills his target of showing the American traumatization of Arab/Muslim Americans as due to the West\"s old view of the latter as inferior and uncivilized. (2) Trauma survivors (the police officers) usually have to pass their trauma on to their victims (by means of cynical inhuman practices). (3) The 9/11 acute trauma has developed into different chronic traumas due to passing it on to others.

This study aims at studying Yussef El Guindi's Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes (2008). Arab American, particularly non-Native, actors are typecast in the roles of terrorists. Therefore, they are torn between their desire at stardom and their loyalty to their origin. The present study employs the intersectional theory in such a way to relate it to the form, not merely to the content. Intersectionality is a sociological theory but it is applied on numerous fields, including literature. This theory is based on the premise that multiple social categorical axes (e.g. race, religion, and social status) operate simultaneously to produce a distinct system of discrimination and privilege for each individual. In the view that Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes is a play within a play, this study utilizes this metadramatic technique to illustrate that layers of narrative can be an effective tool to clarify layers of stereotyping. This is the point where a modern sociological theory can cohere with a classical dramatic device. In other words, this paper attempts at linking the content, form, and theory together in order to expound how Muslim American actors are stereotyped in their real-life situations as well as in the roles they perform. Arab American actor Ashraf is stereotyped and experiences the prejudice practiced on Arabs and Muslims in the frame story/his personal life and the inside story/the cinematic roles he plays. In such a way, both the levels of narrative, which represent different social contexts, reflect two levels of the intersectional stereotypes of the same person.

This paper investigates whether it is better to have a heterogeneous society based on diversity, in which each culture keeps its own distinctive qualities, or to have a homogeneous country, in which ethnic groups abandon their heritage to have a single common culture that maintains the national identity of the country in which they live. Exploring some of the problems which immigrants face today and referring to Homi Bhabha's concepts of mimicry, hybridity and ambivalence, this paper handles the immigrant experience through an Arab perspective in Yussef El Guindi's play Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (2012). Moreover, it sheds light on the struggle of Arab immigrants to synchronize their native Eastern culture with the dominant American one, and handles people's expectations of each other and of themselves. Furthermore, it explores whether Laray Barna's stumbling blocks of inter-cultural communication might impede the interaction between the different characters in this play. As this paper handles different models of assimilation, specifically the melting pot and the salad bowl models of integration, it explores which model is the most appropriate one in cross-cultural communication. Besides, it asks whether inter-ethnic love can overcome all the cultural differences. It, also, investigates whether it is better to have a rational and safe marital relationship or to venture and have an exciting marriage based on love. In addition, it explores how far our personal qualities can unite us together more than our cultural differences that separate us.