Provincializing Geographies of Religion: Muslim Identities Beyond the ‘West’

Abstract

AbstractMost of the research on Islam and on Muslims, within geographies of religion, focuses on Muslims in diaspora. A trend in geographic research on non‐Western places has emerged, however, illuminating the global variance of Muslim communities and identities. Yet in spite of scholarly efforts to draw attention to the development of research in these ‘other’ contexts, there has been little explicit examination of how studies of Muslim geographies in non‐Euro‐American places contribute to geographies of religion, beyond an empirical or topical diversification of the field. This paper argues that geographic research on religion is situated knowledge that reflects the social and political contexts within which it is conceived and conducted. As such, it reflects particular cultures and priorities of place. The paper begins by situating Anglophone geographic literature about Muslim communities and identities by examining how the ‘West’ operates as a geographic imaginary that implicitly but powerfully conditions research contexts in Europe and the United States. This research responds to the popular and political discursive framing of Muslims as minorities, and as separate from others. As a result, Muslims appear to constitute bounded and distinct (albeit internally diverse and contextually dependent) communities. By contrast, research conducted in predominantly Muslim societies illuminates the relational, historical and cultural dynamics that bring Muslims of different sects, and Muslims and non‐Muslims, into co‐constitutive identity relationships. Indeed, the sites, practices, and things that constitute or represent identity for Jews and Muslims, for Sunni and Shi'a, or for pious and secular people, are the same: what it means to be Muslim is contextually specific and formed through relationships with others. This approach involves a more dynamic and productive theoretical conceptualization of place than operates in most Anglo‐European geographies of religion. By illuminating the specific empirical and theoretical contributions of Muslim/non‐Muslim geographies beyond the West, this paper provincializes geographies of religion and offers observations that may extend the field in new directions.