Islamic anti-patriarchal liberation psychology: A framework to decolonize psychology for Muslims

Abstract

Due to the focus in psychology on Euro-American centric ontologies and epistemologies, many non-European psychologists have been calling for the decolonization of the field. In joining this call, I propose an Islamic anti-patriarchal liberation psychology framework to guide psychological knowledge production and application within contexts in which some or most people identify as Muslim. Using Martín-Baró’s proposal of three essential tasks of liberation psychology as a guide, my framework explains how and why it is necessary to decolonize psychological knowledge production and application in such contexts. The first task requires the privileging of Muslim voices, with Muslims being conceptualized as diverse, racialized peoples. The second task involves challenging the internalization of colonial ways of thinking among Muslims. The final task asks researchers and practitioners to recover Islamic histories of scholarship, Muslims’ sense of community, and queer and feminine ways of being. Together, these tasks can provide an adaptable guide for psychological knowledge production and application for Muslims in a wide variety of contexts.