A Rejection of Saleem Sinai and His Family to Islamic Sharia’ as Reflected in Midnight Children : New Criticism Studies

Islam is a universal religion that we must admit its existence. In Islam there are Sharia’ teachings that every moslem must obey. Many novelists portray Islam in a fictional story based on their own experience. Among the authors who raised the issue of Islam is Salman Rushdie. In his novel Midnight Children, he describes the main character in the story, Saleem Sinai, and his family whose attitudes reflect the rejection to Islamic Sharia’. This thesis focuses on analysis of the attitudes of the main character in violating the Islamic Sharia’ and the consequenc due to the rejection. The aim of this thesis is to look at the attitudes of Saleem Sinai and his family in the rejection to Islamic Sharia’ instead of their being Moslems, and to reveal the consequences of their rejection as being described in the novel. Because this thesis discusses the main character's attitudes, as well as his family's, that reflect the rejection to Islamic sharia in the form of speech or action, this thesis applies the new criticism theory that focuses on the intrinsic elements of literary work. The method used in this thesis is qualitative method because the explanation of all these issues is descriptive. Moreover, this thesis also correlates the issues with some teachings in Islamic view.