Muslim Subjectivities Research Articles

Articulation of Muslim Subjectivity in Search the Ideal Type of Muslim Women: Ayu Momalula’s Counseling Da’wah on Instagram

Articulation of Muslim Subjectivity in Search the Ideal Type of Muslim Women: Ayu Momalula’s Counseling Da’wah on Instagram

Allah’s House to Domes of Secularism: Minoritization of Muslims in India

Disputes around the Babri masjid have been crucial for understanding the Muslim subject position in India, also because mosques are public expressions of Muslimness. I read the legal proceedings of the Babri masjid dispute leading to the Supreme Court’s controversial judgment in 2019, tracing the life of Babri masjid unfolding as a mosque, a disputed site and, finally, a Hindu temple. Focusing on the theological and secular claims of Hindu and Muslim litigants, I look at the differential approach to belief and historical claims within the legal adjudication. I especially analyse two strategies, disruption and description, that significantly led to the changes in the attributes of the mosque. Comparing the Babri dispute with the case of the Malappuram mosque dispute in the eighteenth century, this article analyses theological claims on a mosque, asking the question why the Muslim narrative shifted from one rooted in religious reverence, Allah’s house, to one anchored in secular symbolism, the domes of secularism? It would discreetly give an idea of the practice of secularism in India which, as different scholars contend, systematically erases Muslim religiosity from the public space. I suggest reading the anchoring of Muslim claims in secularism as pointing to the crucial changes in the Muslim subject position that is decisively framed through excessive powers of the modern nation-state.

Global Hindutva and the Palestinian Cause

A lot of attention has been paid within academic and journalistic literature to how India’s relationship with Israel has improved under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Looking beyond this, the objective of this article is to assess the position of Palestine and its liberation struggle within the Global Hindu Nationalist imaginary. The study’s main argument, therefore, is that the broader Palestinian liberation struggle, in its pluralism, its global scope, and its interconnectivity with various struggles over the course of its history, implicitly represents a refutation of the core ideological mechanisms that underpin the Hindu Nationalist Project, including but not limited to its othering of Muslims and other non-Hindu groups as well as its more recent embrace of neoliberal capitalism. More explicitly, the articles argues that the way Hindu Nationalists construct Indian Muslim and Palestinian subjectivities as being analogous and connected through tropes of them as invaders and terrorists – in line with broader imperialist constructions of Muslim subjectivities – is a key feature of Global Hindutva’s globality. To make this argument, this article first examines the literature on the historical relationship between Hindu Nationalism and Zionist settler colonialism. After this, the article analyses the overlap between Indian state and Hindutva positions on the Palestine Question before exploring practical tensions between the Hindutva outlook and the Palestinian liberation struggle. The final section of the article explores how Global Hindutva’s historic and strategic alignment against the Palestinian liberation struggle manifests in both Indian foreign and domestic policy and in Hindu Nationalist mobilisations across the world.

Reimagining home and responsibility: The case of queer Indonesian Muslims

This article investigates the lived experiences of queer Indonesian Muslims by revealing how the intertwined concepts of tanggung jawab (responsibility) and home are navigated within the boundaries of national values, religious faith, and non-normative genders and sexualities. Through ethnographic research across Java, Indonesia, the analysis illustrates how tanggung jawab is enmeshed with societal and religious expectations that redefine the notion of home for queer Muslims. Home, in this context, transcends its meaning as a physical geography to represent an emotional and spiritual haven where family, faith, and queer identities intersect. The article further explores the relevance of biological and traditional family connections, presenting a contrast to the Western focus on queer chosen families. By exploring the symbiotic relationship between responsibility and home, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of queer Muslim subjectivities, exploring their unique strategies for forging identities and spaces of belonging within Indonesia’s heteronormative societal framework.

Jewish Muslims in The Handsome Jew and Don’t Leave Me Here Alone: Conversion, Identity, and Liminality

The present article addresses the complex interplay of boundaries, belonging, and modes of identity and investigates the space between the distinct boundaries of religious identities. It focuses on the Jewish Muslim identity as it defies categorization and plays out in the liminal space of the Jewish Muslims, a space of fluid and blurred contours, haunted by ancestral religion and inherited culture, and obsessed by a crucial need to reconstruct a new sense of self. The article explores these concepts by referring to two narrative works: Ali Al-Muqri’s The Handsome Jew and Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s Don’t Leave Me Here Alone, which extensively elaborate on the relationship between conversion, identity, and liminality. It argues that Jewish Muslims stay within a liminal space due to their inability to forget their past and assimilate into the present, and that a non-binary Jewish Muslim subject lives in a place that borders the Jewish and Muslim spaces but never crosses into either position completely. The study aims to investigate discourses, as presented in the two texts under discussion, that construct boundaries between individuals of different religious affiliations and the motives for such constructions, and it tries to demonstrate the extent to which liminality can be used as an apt metaphor to define the life of Jewish converts to Islam.

Between Appeal to Citizenship and Biopolitical Fracture: Islamophobia and the New Politics of Muslim Citizenship in India

This article aims to analyze the Islamophobic politics at the heart of citizenship denial in the context of India’s CAA-NRC legislation in December 2019 by the Indian Parliament under the leadership of the BJP. The politics of citizenship denial in India thus emerges in appearance as a legal tussle between the Muslim minority citizenship rights and Hindu nationalism in India. However, the biopolitical fracture of the Indian nation-state makes the legal ideal of citizenship further complicated for Muslim minority citizens in India. Tracing the logic of the paradoxical position of Muslim citizenship discourse in India by following its contradictory existence in law, state, and nationalism, this article reveals the limitations of appeal to citizenship, and the necessity need for the question questioning of the biopolitical fracture, wherein the distinction between citizen and non-citizen translates into those with rights and without rights. This article further proposes that rather than sticking to the idealism of citizenship, a critical analysis of Islamophobia and its political correlates must attend to the negative position of the Muslim subject in with respect to the biopolitical fracture at the core of Indian nationalism and the modern nation-state.

Islamophobia and Proximities to Whiteness: Organizing Outside of the Brown Muslim Subject

The existing Islamophobia 1 literature has come to illustrate how the Muslim subject “can at a moment’s notice be erected as [an] object of supervision and discipline” (Morey and Yaqin 2011: 5–6). In the popular imagination, Muslimhood 2 has come to stand for an undifferentiated culturally alien oriental subject defined through the prism of racialized violence and irrationality. Although much of the anti-Islamophobia efforts – academic and community-based – work to combat the reductiveness of a universalized Muslim figure, these efforts tend to uncritically take up the brown Muslim figure as the starting point of inquiry, thereby further reifying the homogenizing racialization of dominant discourses. This article opens up the possibilities to expand thinking on the lifeworld of Islamophobia by addressing the erasure that happens with this homogenizing approach to Islamophobia. In particular, we consider the dialogical nature between the operational life of Islamophobia and the differing proximities to whiteness our intersectional subject positions make available. And in turn, how these availabilities come to shape the experience of Islamophobia is a prime focus of analysis. The authors ask: how does the systemic demarcation of Muslim subjectivity, across racial, ethnic, class, regional, and ideological lines, interact with how Islamophobia is experienced and operationalized? Leveraging an auto-ethnographic approach, we provide first-person narratives of Islamophobic encounters from our respective geopolitical and social locations to deconstruct and delineate an intersectional understanding of Islamophobia.

Caste, Religion and Otherness: Probing the Aporia of the Dalit–Muslim Question in Omprakash Valmiki’s Short Story ‘Salaam’ and Mohandas Naimishraya’s Autobiography Apne Apne Pinjare (Cages of Our Own)

Dalit texts generally foreground the question of marginality in the context of caste-based discrimination, exclusion and violence. Interestingly, Mohan Das Naimishraya’s Apne Apne Pinjare ( Cages of Our Own) and Omprakash Valmiki’s ‘Salaam’ go beyond the scope of exploring the dialectics of dominance and resistance by probing the complexity of otherness. The appropriation of the Dalit subject by the neo-Brahmanical forces us to rethink the notion of marginality. The aversion and hatred of Dalits against Muslims and the identification of Dalits as Hindus by Muslims obfuscate the power dynamics in a communal and casteist socius. The complex Dalit–Muslim relationship re-configures the power relations underpinning untouchability and propels us to re-interpret the troubled category of the ‘Other’. This article explores the epistemological and ontological uncertainty about the marginal categories which entail the historical experience of violence, disenfranchisement and oppression. The two Dalit texts problematize the identity of the Dalit as an ‘Other’ vis-a-vis the Muslim subject and thus highlight the liminality of the subaltern subject. This article seeks to decode the aporia of Dalit–Muslim question in the casteist and communally fractured social order.

Neither global nor local: Reorienting the study of Islam in South Asia

The framework of ‘lived Islam’ overshadows the study of Islam in South Asia, presupposing a ‘local Islam’ against a ‘global Islam’. In the post-9/11 context, the global is immediately associated with the political and the political with the undesirable. On the other hand, the local is portrayed as peaceful, accommodative and, hence, desirable. Such teleological approaches produce a priori desire for the local and undermine the political, foreclosing Muslim political legitimacy. By shifting attention to the Muslim movements in Kerala, I emphasise the significance of the political and jurisprudence in the exploration of Muslim lives. I conclude that while the Muslim subjectivity is decisively framed within the constraints of security concerns, Hindu sensibility and modern citizenship, jurisprudence enables the Muslim subject to engage substantially within and beyond these constellations of power, imagining a sovereign register of Islamic ethos.

Re-Islamization of baptized Tatars during the revolutions of the early 20th century: on the example of the Apazovo village of the Kazan district

The article examines the difficult period in the history of the Apazovo village of the Kazan district of the Kazan province – 1905–1917. During the first Russian revolution baptized Tatars renewed their movement to return to Islam. We used different focuses to analyze this rural community: socio-economic ties, an Orthodox parish, an illegal Muslim community, leaders and outsiders of a religious movement. Markers of the Muslim subjectivity of the population of Apazova were different religious practices. Conflicts and conformity in the community correlated with different phases of the 1905–1907 revolution. There are the main motives that led to the change of religious attitudes. It is important that in addition to external forces (Orthodox missionaries, Muslim Tatars), the religious movement had internal resources: an active middle generation and the female factor. Fot citation: Gabdrafikova L.R. Re-Islamization of baptized Tatars during the revolutions of the early 20th century: on the example of the Apazovo village of the Kazan district. From History and Culture of Peoples of the Middle Volga Region. 2023, vol.13, no.2, pp.53–72. https://doi.org/10.22378/2410-0765.2023-13-2.53-72 (In Russian)

What are We to Do with ‘Muslim Subjectivity’? Prospects and Pitfalls of the Research Approach in a Historiographical Context

The author discusses, in the historiographical context, problems posed by the growing wave of research on the “history of Muslim subjectivity.” Noting the paradoxical danger of the reorientalization of and the loss of historicity in Islamic studies, the author insists on the importance of the very designation of the emerging approach and suggests as a more correct term “history of Muslim subjectivities”. Some aspects of the nowadays’ interpretations of the interaction between the individual and the social and cultural in history, of the role of agency and subjecthood of historical actors are considered, as well as the correlation between persona studies and studies of the “techniques of the self.” Proceeding from the approaches that presume the “return of the subject,” the author emphasizes the expediency, for the studies of Muslim subjectivities, of microhistorical approaches, in particular, the “pragmatic turn” and the Russian version of microhistory with its characteristic attention to the individual and its complex vision of the historical context.

Book Review: Muslim Subjectivity in Soviet Russia. The Memoirs of ’Abd al-Majid al-Qadiri by A. Bustanov, V. Usmanov, eds. Brill Schöningh, 2022, 448 p.

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Muslim subjectivities in Russian history

A researcher who studies the subjectivity of believers and religious people will have a number of unanswered questions. Through their work, the author has hoped to address the most prominent of them: the problem of sincerity, the relationship between external and internal subjectivity, the methodology of research of the subject, the multi-discursiveness of subjectivity, and, in many respects, the duality of the given (traditional) and the indefinite/unestablished (new) thought provoked by its study. Several definitions of the concept of “subjectivity” are also proposed by the author, and Muslim subjectivities are considered in the historical context of the period, and how they are represented and covered under a new form of historical research - the History of Muslim Subjectivities. The article ends with a brief review of the thematic themes on the subject, including: the Soviet view of Muslim childhood; the “prison experience” of Russian Muslims; female subjectivity; and Islamic rhetoric and discourse of modernity.

The costs of recognition: global politics, religion, and the colonial history of South Asia

AbstractIn this article I consider religion in international political scholarship and suggest a study of its epistemological politics and conceptual history. I argue that scholarship which strives to ‘engage’ or ‘recognize’ religion in global politics remain ignorant of the costs involved. Building on this argument, I ask if the troubles with recognizing religion reflect more basic qualities of recognition scholarship. Following the work by Jacques Rancière, Patchen Markell, Elizabeth Povinelli, and Jens Bartelson I argue that recognition has two faces and that along with its frequently acknowledged empowering aspect, it also comes with costs. In order to assess the costs of recognition I propose a study of its conditions of possibility, that is, a study of the ways in which the subjects of recognition become recognizable as such. In the final section of the paper, I apply this to the example of religion in global politics and the formation of the Muslim subject in the lead-up to the partition of British India and the founding of Pakistan.

Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran

Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran

Critical Pious Agency and Muslim Feminists’ Activism in the Age of Authoritarianism

AbstractThis article examines how the aggressive public discourse on feminist protest works at the current political moment in Turkey, when Muslim feminist subjects are at stake. It looks at the heated public debates on the 2019 Feminist Night Walk with a particular focus on the recent proliferation and concentration of the divergences and fault lines in the Muslim women’s movement. Drawing on the Foucauldian approach to the power-discourse-resistance nexus, it investigates different forms of gendered subjectivity in the reformist segments of the Muslim women’s movement that are produced in accordance with the changing contextual dynamics and explores whether these subjectivities are conventional/conformist or resistant. Along these lines, it provides a typology of two distinct modes of gendered Muslim subject formation at the intersection of Islam and feminism: hybrid subjectivities embracing the hegemonic terms of governmentality, and resistant Muslim feminist activists.

Poetiska homeplaces: Reflektioner och samtal om muslimsk subjektivitet inom spoken word och poesi

The last decade saw a renaissance of the artform called spoken word poetry through several spoken word projects in the suburbs of Swedish cities. A group of women who have been prominent in using these platforms as a way to highlight their voices and stories are young Muslim women from primarily from socioeconomically disadvantaged suburbs. This article focuses on a few of these voices. Based on a multimodal methodology including interviews with poets and readings of their work, this article sets out to understand how the young women use their poetry to formulate their subjectivity and issues that that matter to them. The poets and spoken word artists can be seen as knotworkers who use various platforms and tools in order to share their stories and reflections. The study shows how spoken word platforms have played an important role in creating a space where young poets find creative homeplaces and craft their own positions as poets and the kind of poetry they want to engage in. Through personal experiences and stories, the poets bind together several societal issues such as antiblack racism, antimuslim racism, classism, and patriarchy. Muslim subjectivity is articulated through the use of language and certain religious definitions such as references to prayers. Poetry is also used as a way to create feminist archives of missing stories. This study also highlights how double consciousness is at work where the poets reflect on certain difficult topics and how they chose to engage with them through their writing.

Urdu Ethics Literature and the Diversity of Muslim Thought in Colonial India

Abstract This essay discusses Urdu-language akhlaq (ethics) texts produced and circulated in late-colonial India (1858–1947), situating them both within a classical genre of Islamic ethics and in the context of Indian vernacular print culture. It focuses on three akhlaq texts published between the 1870s and 1930s to consider contemporary Muslim ethical concerns and schema, arguing that the genre points to a widespread, everyday, and unexceptional Muslim subjectivity that placed a high value on ethical striving. The essay offers new perspectives on the history of Muslims in late-colonial India by highlighting a non-institutional, diffuse, and capacious intellectual formation whose ideas were disseminated through print in a commercial market. It also expands existing notions of Muslim authority from individuals—such as the ulama (Muslim clerical class)—and institutions—such as madrasas (religious schools and seminaries)—to include literary genres themselves. Finally, the article broadens the range of Muslim subject-positions represented in scholarship on Islam in colonial India.

Framing the Muslim subject, contesting the secular citizen: Tablighi Jamaat and the (trans)nationalization of Islam in Singapore

AbstractThis paper explores how the (trans)nationalization of Islam can lead to differential understandings of the Muslim subject and secular citizen in Singapore. (Trans)nationalization problematizes the state‐led regulation of religion by revealing the complexities that emerge when religious subject positions are indexed to citizenship status. Islamic expression is closely regulated in Singapore, meaning the Singaporean Muslim subject is framed by the state in secular‐first terms. Complicating this framing is the presence of Bangladeshi migrant workers, who, by virtue of their visa and residency statuses, are viewed as transient members of society and denied access to citizenship. Non‐citizenship causes a variety of Islamic expressions to become viable pathways to religious subject formation, including those associated with Islamic missionary movement, Tablighi Jamaat. By claiming these subject positions, Bangladeshi Tablighis become vectors through which Singapore's Muslim spaces are exposed to transnational Islamic influences, causing the mosque to be imbued with divergent, and sometimes contested, meanings and attributions of value.

The Role of the Internet in the Formation of Muslim Subjectivity Among Polish Female Converts to Islam

AbstractIn this article, we discuss the main arguments related to female Muslim converts' formation of a religious subjectivity in the context of studying Islam in online spaces. In distinguishing between Western and Eastern Europe, it is our purpose to highlight the significance of online sources for converts who inhabit geographic “peripheries” of Islam. After giving an overview of the literature that discusses Muslim subject formation among converts, we analyse 35 in‐depth, qualitative interviews with Polish female converts to Islam in reference to a theoretical framework that integrates Belenky et al.'s model of epistemological categories of knowledge and the concept of Muslim subjectivity formation. We argue that for the Polish female converts we interviewed, the process of acquiring and revising their knowledge about Islam, through online engagement with individuals, groups, texts, and multimedia content, is vital for developing an ontologically secure Muslim subjectivity.