The making and transforming of a transnational in dialog: Confronting dichotomous thinking in knowledge production,identity formation,and pedagogy

Abstract

This article, through autoethnographic narrative and reflection, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions, explores how the transnational academic mobility experiences of a Muslim scholar of Islam based in Brunei may influence his identity, research, and teaching. It pinpoints how transnational academic mobilities could (re)produce, sustain and endorse East/West, local/global, and religious/secular dichotomies and binary thinking. Likewise, it shows that transnational academic mobilities often generate ambiguous and divided spaces concerning knowledge production, pedagogy, and identity formation. The article also maintains that contextualizing and engaging (with) the specificity and particularity of place and academic discipline are pivotal in studying transnational academic mobilities. Methodologically, it highlights the role of autoethnographic reflection in bringing out complex experiences and accounts that academics undergo but rarely acknowledge and conceptualize in scholarly work. Such accounts and experiences serve as reminders of the importance of humility, trust, ethics, and reflexivity in academia. Transnational academic mobilities, after all, must not be privileged.

Setting the scene

At that conference on Asian societies that day, I was struck by this young scholar’s passionate paper on Islamic thought in contemporary Brunei. At that very moment, I saw myself in this young scholar. I walked towards him after the session to say hello and to congratulate him. That was how I met Azmi and how our never-ending conversations started. His complex account as a transnational scholar working in his home country both troubled and captivated me. I found myself painstakingly reflecting on my own account as a transnational scholar researching into transnational academic mobilities. I then invited Azmi to co-author this article, as his insights would best be expressed with authority enabled by co-authorship. I see this as mutual learning and a multidirectional reflection for both of us (Le-Ha, diaries, 2019).

Like Azmi, I have been studying and working in several countries and in varied higher education systems. Before Brunei, I had already been with other institutions in both the Global North and Global South, so to speak. Every institution I have been with is situated in its own locale with specific sociocultural characteristics and politics of knowledge and dynamic of knowing. I am aware that Brunei is not the only place in the world that exerts its own official version of ideology, value and culture (MIB) on those residing and working there as well as those living outside but considered citizens of the land. In Vietnam where I come from, socialist ideals are our national ideology that permeates every aspect of the society (Le-Ha, diaries, 2019)

We are Phan Le Ha and Azmi Mohamad (hereafter we refer to ourselves as Le-Ha and Azmi, our given names). Both of us have received our degrees from universities in Asia and English-speaking Western countries. While Azmi has been teaching in Brunei since he completed his PhD, Le-Ha has held academic positions in Vietnam, Australia, the United States, and is currently in the same institution with Azmi in Brunei. In this article, we examine how Azmi’s identity and intellectual journey as a Muslim scholar of Islam have been (re)shaped through his varied educational experiences in Brunei, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom as well as by his current experience working in Brunei. We also pay attention to how Azmi’s experiences and positioning as a transnational scholar may influence his research, scholarship, and teaching.

We show how transnational academic mobilities are unequal and could (re)produce, sustain, and endorse East/West, local/global, and religious/secular dichotomies and binary thinking in scholarship, pedagogy, and teaching. From our current location in Brunei Darussalam as well as through our educational and professional encounters, we argue transnational academic mobilities often produce ambiguous and divided spaces concerning knowledge production, career trajectories, pedagogy, and identity formation. We also maintain that contextualizing and engaging (with) the specificity and particularity of place and academic discipline are pivotal in studying transnational academic mobilities.

Brunei Darussalam or Brunei is an Islamic monarchy located on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It has a population of less than half a million people. There are four universities in the country. Its first university was established in 1985, a year after Brunei’s independence from Britain. Brunei’s national ideology is Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay Islamic Monarchy – MIB), which will be elaborated a little later. At the same time, Brunei has also been participating in and subjected to globalization, internationalization, increased global educational mobilities, modern technologies, and the digital age, which has led to complex encounters experienced by many Bruneian Muslims including Azmi. This article is a modest attempt to understand such encounters, particularly with regards to transnationally trained academics in Brunei’s higher education (HE) sector.

The article draws on detailed autoethnographic narratives, in-depth interview data, focus group discussions, and critical reflections, which come from three sources. The first data source comes from Le-Ha’s on-going multi-sited project (Study One) on the identity formation and experiences of transnationally trained academics working in the Global South (cf. Phan, 2014, 2017). Azmi is a participant in Le-Ha’s study, and this article draws exclusively on the data collected with Azmi. For a year, Le-Ha and Azmi had six face-to-face in-depth interview sessions to discuss the above-mentioned topic. Alongside these sessions, Azmi also sent Le-Ha his journal entries which he crafted as his autoethnographic narratives and critical reflections, as guided by Le-Ha’s questions and her work on autoethnography (Phan, 2011) as well as by Reed-Danahey’s (2017) and Stanley’s (2017) writings on critical autoethnography. These authors see critical autoethnography as a methodology that moves beyond the insider/outsider divide and places personal experiences and narratives in complex social, cultural, and political contexts that require critical engagement and analyses.

As Study One was being conducted, Azmi became very interested in the topic, particularly on his autoethnography as a transnational scholar returning home that he had not shared with anyone until he met with Le-Ha. Hence, Azmi initiated a new project with Le-Ha (Study Two—the second data source) to explore his students’ responses to his teaching, knowledge, and pedagogy. This joint study collected data with nine undergraduate Muslim students who had taken Azmi’s core courses on Islamic Studies. Focus group discussions were used in which Le-Ha and Azmi were both present to co-facilitate the discussion. Then, Azmi shared with Le-Ha his written reflections on the students’ responses, which were also discussed in interview sessions between Le-Ha and Azmi afterwards.

The questions discussed in Study One and Study Two include: How Azmi’s transnational (scholar) identity has evolved and been (re)shaped during his early years of education growing up in Brunei and then during his further education in Malaysia and the UK, and then in the time he has been back in his home country of Brunei; how his perceived transnational identity and transnational training has influenced his research, scholarship, and teaching in Brunei; and how Azmi’s students have responded to his transnational knowledge, pedagogy, and teaching.

Insights obtained from these questions show a diverse range of stereotypes and dichotomies involving the Self and Other in knowledge production and representation of knowledge, which we discuss in subsequent sections. They also show many cultural dilemmas, challenges, constraints, and struggles faced by Azmi as a transnationally trained scholar working in a Bruneian university. They also reveal opportunities and occasions leading to Azmi’s teaching and pedagogy that he finds appropriate and that his students can relate to for their own intellectual growth.

As Le-Ha and Azmi engaged in this interactive journey, Le-Ha also constantly reflected on her own positioning as a transnational scholar of Vietnamese background studying and working in several countries. Le-Ha showed Azmi her written reflections and answered many questions from Azmi regarding her scholarship and transnational experiences. While the article focuses on Azmi, Le-Ha’s account is deliberately brought in to show their interactions and how such interactions have enabled in-depth and complex reflections for both. Their interactions are themselves part of the data informing this article (the third source of data)—a methodological approach that Le-Ha has engaged with and contributed to (Phan, 2017; Viete and Phan, 2007). In particular, such interactions and reflections have brought to the fore deeply rooted dichotomous thinking in academia, including the East/West and Global North/Global South binaries—dichotomies that academics still hold (though may not acknowledge) and draw on to identify themselves and others in research, scholarship, and teaching. The article pinpoints how transnational academic mobilities could (re)produce and sustain such dichotomies and binary thinking. At the same time, it reveals how the representation of certain dominant knowledge in binary terms with “the West” has also contributed to the continuity of die-hard dichotomies in academia.

The next section discusses several key concepts and relevant literature that help us conceptualize the article and bring forward our arguments.

The “East–West” divide, the global–local binary, and transnational academic mobilities

Transnational academic mobility relates to academic travels involving academics, researchers, and graduate students across state and territorial borders (Alemu, 2019; Jöns, 2018; Kim and Locke, 2010; Kuzhabekova et al., 2019). Transnational academic mobility is often seen as bringing about potential benefits to both mobile academics and the HE institutions of both their countries of origin and destination (Hugo, 2009). The movement of academics across the world has enabled collaborative research, knowledge production, knowledge movement, and publications (Hamza, 2010; Kim, 2017; Krstic, 2012), and has led to the development of personal, professional, and international skills and experiences in teaching and research (Hamza, 2010; Sandgren et al., 1999). The benefits of academic mobility are further emphasized in terms of mobile academics bringing positive changes back home. Hamza (2010), for example, stresses that academics who have been exposed to foreign HE systems are able to bring home new knowledge, perspectives, skills, or practices obtained from their experiences abroad. As a result of their international interactions, mobile academics tend to experience positive changes in personal and professional attitudes, and with their global perspectives on international events and world cultures, they are supposedly able to understand and adapt to international students’ learning styles and behaviors (Hamza, 2010). In addition, mobile academics are believed to be able to “internationalize” their home environment and “enlighten” their fellow academic and students who never travel abroad (Hamza, 2010).

However, academic mobility is not always so rosy. Alemu (2019) highlights the under-discussed problem of mobile academics struggling to reconcile domestic contexts with foreign academic experiences, which subsequently affects their academic performance at home. Specifically, some mobile academics find it difficult to integrate themselves into the host environment and consequently remain “foreign” (Alemu, 2019; Karakas, 2020 (this Special Issue); Phung, 2020 (this Special Issue)). Mobile academics have also experienced restrictions imposed on them by their countries of origin in what they can research and reveal to the public (Karakas, 2020 (this Special Issue)). Academic mobility can also be seen as a threat to domestic cultures, one that leads to cultural attrition, as Lumby and Foskett (2016) discuss.

At the same time, while global-mindedness and a boundless imaginary have been attached to transnational academic mobilities, transnational scholars can also construct and carry with them stereotypical dichotomies about the superior “West”/the less competent “Other” (Bauder et al., 2018; Phan, 2017). What is more, binary understandings of Us/Them, East/West and local/global in academia could result in the endorsement of ideas such as “Western” superiority and “Eastern” incompetence by the very celebration of transnational academic mobilities. The result is that any social, cultural, religious, and political differences, as well as any educational practices found in any societies and HE systems, can tend to be described and interpreted in these binary terms. Despite criticisms of the East–West divide and of what we have come to understand as “the East” and “the West” and their differences, stereotypes and beliefs about these two entities continue to dominate contemporary discourses on education and societies (Hendry and Wah Wong, 2006; Iannucci and Akbari, 2008; Phan, 2017; Said, 1978).

Indeed, in the data shown later, the age-old binaries of Us/Them, East/West, and local/global were prevalent in Azmi’s thinking, self-identification, and experiences. While these binaries were not explicitly mentioned during the focus group and in Azmi’s “confessions” to Le-Ha, the descriptions given by both Azmi and his students of their struggles in navigating around “cultural differences” and “cultural constraints” were reflective of the tendency in the literature on East–West discourses (which include Muslim writings on Islam and modernity) to describe the so-called “Eastern” and “Western” worlds as cultural opposites.

In his years as an international student in the UK, Azmi and his religion and knowledge were projected along the lines of these dichotomies by his seemingly transnationally exposed professors and peers. As we shall show, paradoxically, while international and transnational education and transnationalism are supposed to cultivate space for transnational and dialogic thinking, those occupying such space tend to categorize knowledge, societies, and identity in binary terms.

The subsequent sections blend together the three sources of data mentioned earlier. How Azmi’s identity formation as a Bruneian Muslim transnational scholar of Islam has been (re)shaped by his upbringing, life, and work experiences is projected in his own autoethnographic reflections and journal entries, and in the interview sessions with Le-Ha, as well as in his students’ views of his knowledge, teaching, and pedagogy. Likewise, these data sources also show the in-depth interactions between the authors, which have enabled both to reflect honestly and critically on transnational-ness and transnational academic mobilities. It should be reminded that Azmi is the focus of this article, not Le-Ha.

Introducing Azmi

As a Malay Muslim Bruneian, Azmi was raised to embrace the dominant norms and values of Bruneian society. Azmi then went to Malaysia and later to the UK to pursue Islamic Studies at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As he shared with Le-Ha, while abroad, he struggled to fit his cultural thinking, behavior, and identity into these new international HE settings, which subsequently forced him to unlearn much of what he had inherited from his cultural upbringing in order to adjust to the host cultures. Upon his return to Brunei after his overseas stint, he found himself needing to readjust his approach to teaching and research to the cultural expectations of his home culture and struggled to do so. At the same time, he found that his students were also facing the same struggles due to similar cultural constraints.

Being transnational, for Azmi, has involved cycles of learning, unlearning, and relearning. The internal conflicts that transnationally trained scholars like Azmi have been undergoing have hardly been examined in depth in the current scholarship. Culture, religion, ideology, and being transnationally exposed through research and education appear to be at odds with one another, as Le-Ha and Azmi specifically show in the subsequent parts.

Azmi’s formative years: Struggling with “one individual two identities”

Being born to and raised by Malay Muslim Bruneian parents, I never wondered if I could be anything but a Malay Muslim Bruneian. Through cultural conditioning and my 12-year formal education in the country, I uncritically observed, learned and socialized into my people’s values, norms, beliefs, and modes of behavior. My parents and teachers would constantly remind me that my reference for shaping my identity should always be the country’s national philosophy of Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay Islamic Monarchy). Melayu Islam Beraja (hereafter MIB) unites the three fundamentals and ideals of Bruneian life as envisioned by the state: Malay (embracing the Malay way of life, which encompasses the values and norms of the Malay people), Islam (observing the teachings of the Islamic religion), and Monarchy (trusting the Monarch and living under his reign and protection). In my early years of life, I was too young to understand the essence of this national philosophy. Nonetheless, it was imprinted on me.

Alongside cultural conditioning and formal education, I was heavily exposed to the global world through media entertainment and the early days of the Internet. Growing up in the 90s, the Disney Renaissance, in particular, played a major role in shaping my childhood understanding of right and wrong; Aladdin (1992) taught me that one’s skin color or general appearance should never be a criterion for one’s worth; Pocahontas (1995) taught me that diversity and differences are not necessarily deficits; Mulan (1998) taught me that no woman is less than a man, and that one should not be afraid to be oneself. I remember growing up noticing that some of the cultural realities in my environment were different from what Disney was teaching me. These realities included the association of skin color with social status, the pigeonholing of women into sidekicks and housewives, and the culture of “othering” people who did not live up to societal ideals. I did not understand what these conflicting experiences meant for me and how they contributed to my self-image and identity, but I quickly learned to see them as two different cultural worlds and to switch between them depending on the context (Azmi, journal entry 1, 2019).

Azmi saw his identities in opposite terms: on the one hand as a Brunei Malay Muslim whole, and on the other as a cultural Other to this very whole identity. The phenomenon of “one individual with two identities” is a major theme in the literature on biculturalism, transnational identity, and cultural hybridity. In this era of modern technology and globalization, it is not difficult to find individuals who are exposed to multiple cultural and racial experiences, whether due to traveling, living in diverse contexts, or living in more than one country through studying or working (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). People who live in between two different cultural frameworks have to create a dialog between their home culture and their host culture (Esteban-Guitart and Vila, 2015). Many research studies have shown that these bicultural individuals can manage two different cultural identities by separating and alternating between them in response to the context (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). Whether they see their dual identities as complementary or contradictory, the literature reveals a mixed picture. Many biculturals have a healthy bicultural identity and can successfully integrate their two different cultures into their everyday lives (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). However, many others are also aware of the discrepancies between their two cultures and are conflicted internally as a result; for this second group, it is easier to attach to one or the other identity, but not both at the same time (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). It should also be stressed that “bicultural” has now broadened beyond simply meaning two identities or two cultures. For individuals who develop a bicultural identity in the sense of having a local identity and global identity, one side of their identity is always rooted in their home culture, while the other side is derived from their awareness of how they relate to the global world (Doku and Oppong Asante, 2011). Therefore, they are not limited to two cultures or two identities.

Azmi shared with Le-Ha his excitement reading the literature on biculturals as he could relate to it so passionately. He wondered how a bicultural might differ from a transnational. He showed such wondering in his reflection journals. As a transnational scholar, Azmi considers himself “bicultural” in the sense that he enjoys “a local identity and a global identity” (Azmi’s reflection journal 2). He elaborated on his biculturalness as follows:

My local identity is no doubt rooted in my Malay Muslim Bruneian culture, having lived in this environment in the first 16 years of my life. My global identity is defined by my virtual and physical immersions in and exposures to the outside world through the Internet and my overseas experiences as student. Although I grew up thinking of my local identity and global identity as mutually exclusive identities, they have always interacted with each other (interview data with Azmi).

Azmi’s specific use of the term “bicultural” to refer to his local identity and global identity (as opposed to fusing them into one) reveals several important features of his understanding of the term and of his self-image. The first two journal entries here show that Azmi sees his local identity and global identity as two distinct entities, two distinct worlds, and two distinct cultures. Azmi admitted that he grew up thinking of them as “mutually exclusive,” but later acknowledged that they had always interacted with each other. This means these two identities both overlap and differ in specific ways. Given their bifurcation, each of these two identities is likely to embody—among other things—a unique language, a unique worldview, a unique way of feeling, and a unique way of expressing oneself, and a unique set of beliefs, values, and behavior. Azmi’s local identity, which he ties to his Malay-Muslim-Bruneian culture, encompasses the Malay language, Malay norms and values, and all the cultural knowledge that he inherited from his environment. His global identity, which he links to “the outside world,” encompasses any languages other than Malay, norms and values that he consider “non-Malay” (this is deduced from his comparison of Disney and the Malay culture in journal entry 1), and all the knowledge that he obtained from his immersions in and exposure to the outside world (this is taken from his interview with Le-Ha above).

This bifurcation shows that Azmi’s understanding of “local” and global” is largely geographical and cultural, and that he may compartmentalize his thoughts, memories, and experiences into self-created categories of “local” and global.” In the forthcoming sections, where the rest of Azmi’s journal entries are analyzed, the discussion will show how these two concepts of “local” and “global” bear essentialized connotations associated with the particularities and specificities of the three contexts that have impacted him the most—Malaysia, the UK, and Brunei.

The transnational scholar in the making

I left Brunei at the age of 17 in pursuit of higher education and did not return for good until I was 28. I was based in Malaysia for the first 4 to 5 years of this period and in the UK for the remaining years. During my time abroad, my cultural outlook on life was continuously questioned and challenged by beliefs, moral systems, values, norms, and ideals that were different from what I was taught to embrace. It came to a point where I had to dismantle the building blocks of my thinking and reconstruct it with a combination of old and new approaches in order to survive in the higher education setting and meet the scholarly expectations of these institutions.

In Malaysia, I was introduced, for the first time in my life, to real-life manifestations of Muslim diversity. I was no longer surrounded by my fellow-Shafiite Muslims, as many of the professors and students in the university that I attended followed the other three major sects within Sunni Islam—Hanafi, Hanbali, and Maliki. Within the religious education system in Brunei, scholarly opinions and debates expressed by these three sects are not widely taught, given the country’s constitutional nation-wide adherence to the Shafie school of thought. In the Malaysian university that I attended, opinions and debates were constantly thrown in my face. I was overwhelmed at first, but I quickly learned to overcome this by replacing my preconceptions, biases, and assumptions with this actual knowledge.

In the UK, I had to learn, for the first time in my life, the academic values of detachment and objectivity. In my first semester, I was advised by my professors that my writings and projects lacked depth, objectivity, and critical thinking, and that I seemed reluctant to engage alternative strands of thinking (as opposed to that which I was born into) on a rigorous discussion of Islam. One of these professors, who was a fellow Muslim, told me that Islam never discouraged its followers from asking deep, critical questions about its fundamental tenets. He then reminded me that I was there primarily as a scholar of Islam, not a Muslim scholar. This distinction was initially difficult for me to understand, let alone accept, having been taught all my life to attach (not detach) myself to my Muslim identity and to accept that religion permeates all aspects of life with no exception. My struggle to differentiate a scholar of Islam from a Muslim scholar paralyzed me and made me feel less capable than my peers who were confident, articulate, and intellectually provocative in class. Although I knew I was free to say anything without repercussions if I wanted to, being that I was in the free West, the feeling of guilt was just too overwhelming.

Over time, I managed to overcome this dilemma. My studies in the UK enabled me to immerse myself in the writings of Western Muslim thinkers (e.g., Tariq Ramadan and Ingrid Mattson), whose modernist discourses showed to me that it was possible to be faithful to Islam and critical of Muslim thinking at the same time, for Islam and Muslims should not be seen as identical. This instilled in me a newfound confidence to reshape myself as a critical but faithful Muslim, after which I began a long, internal process of unlearning most of the local knowledge that I had inherited from my cultural upbringing (Azmi’s journal entry 3).

Initially, Azmi was tempted to analyze and interpret his experiences in the UK in particular in light of Oberg’s (1960) theorization of four stages of culture shock (honeymoon, crisis, recovery, adjustment) as he had seen it applied in countless other studies on international students, transnational academics, and (im)migrants. Indeed, during the “honeymoon stage,” Azmi was fascinated by the new cultures he was starting to get exposed to and was enthusiastic about the opportunities provided by them to learn and develop himself. Then, the “crisis” happened—cultural differences and expectations shocked him and knocked him down. Suddenly, he began to question his purpose and role as a foreign student. The process of “recovery” occurred not long after; he discovered that he was not alone in his thinking and found a new way to be both faithful to his beliefs and critical of how he understood his beliefs. The final process of “adjustment” was seamless—he adapted to the host culture and was able to make full use of his intellectual capacity.

As our interactions progressed and as Azmi reflected more on his transnational experiences, Azmi has found Oberg’s (1960) theory, while being helpful, problematic. Specifically, it does not take sufficiently into account layers, differences, diversity, disparities, disagreements, and differentiation within cultural and social communities and contexts. Relying on this widely used framework to make sense of his experiences has prevented Azmi from seeing beyond fixed dominant cultural meanings, and has lured him into appropriating dichotomous generalized stereotypes and beliefs about “the West” and his “local” community.

The transnational scholar: At home but out of place

Upon my return to Brunei, I was excited about the prospect of making contributions to the development of my society and nation. I felt that I could help make changes “from within” by being the change myself and empowering my people to do the same. However, I could not have been more wrong. As soon as I was back in my cultural environment, I started feeling “different.” In my intellectual discussions with my old friends and my colleagues at the University, my thinking on Islam stuck out like a sore thumb. People around me started advising me to tread my words carefully, to know my “audience” (Malay Muslim Bruneians) and adjust my thinking accordingly, and to blend in and follow the herd. Not long after, I found out that I had been described behind my back as “vocal” by my coworkers and “daring” by my students. At a conference on campus in 2016, where I gave a plenary presentation on Islamic Governance, a former government employee came up to me after my speech and said I was lucky to be working in an academic setting; according to him, had I been working in one of the ministries, I would have been silenced. Despite having received unambiguous comments on my “outspokenness,” I still did not feel that I had crossed any lines. I did, however, suspect that my boundaries for what was acceptable in public speaking in Brunei may have been a little too generous (Azmi’s journal entry 4).

Commenting on the above entry, Azmi referred to his homecoming experience after living outside for over 10 years as “reverse culture shock,” which is defined as “the process of readjusting, reacculturating, and reassimilating into one’s own home culture” (Gaw, 2000: 83–84). Returning scholars/academics typically face many issues including academic problems and identity conflicts, in addition to a wide range of tense emotions such as stress, anger, displacement, loss, disillusion, frustration, and depression (Chen, 2017; Gaw, 2000; Karakas, 2020 (this Special Issue); Phung, 2020 (this Special Issue)). What we would like to argue further here is that these emotions and experiences as expressed by transnational returnees result from the very dichotomous representation and projection of the global/transnational versus the local/home that they themselves also entertain and circulate in their own identification, research, pedagogy, and teaching (also cf. Alshaikhi and Phan, 2020; Kelley, 2020; Nonaka, 2020; and Windle, 2020 (all this Special Issue)).

The feeling of being at home physically but out of place psychologically and emotionally took a toll on me. I lost focus on my research interests and started working on half-baked projects that were wildly different from each other across various fields. In the process, I had to do yet another internal process of unlearning and relearning my values and principles in order to readjust to the expectations of my home culture (Azmi’s journal entry 5).

The pain endured by Azmi’s very transnational positionality is nothing like the dominant romantic and cosmopolitan narrative about transnational academic mobilities. It also correlates with the transnational experiences that Phung (2020, this Special Issue) reveals and engages with. This pain is real, physically, emotionally, mentally, and intellectually, as Azmi further asserted in his face-to-face interviews with Le-Ha. Azmi also acknowledged that his suffering and pain were excessive partly because of his tendency to polarize his perceived differences between what he categorized as home/local and as foreign/global values and practices. Likewise, Azmi’s tendency to give fixed meanings to these values and practices was observed by Le-Ha. Azmi’s sense of professional and intellectual self and prospects are, accordingly, largely shaped by such categorizations, which he now sees more clearly.

Unexpressed and internalized challenges, constraints, perceptions, and sacrifices

Keeping my intellectual discourses within the acceptable, and practicing self-censorship

One of the challenges that I continue to face since returning from abroad is keeping my intellectual discourses on religion and culture well within the bounds of acceptable thinking and behavior in Brunei. In my teaching and research on religion and culture, I am forced to choose my words carefully for fear of them being misinterpreted or taken out of context. However, in so doing, I compromise on my authentic self and my personal voice in my scholarship (Azmi’s journal entry 6).

The struggle Azmi expressed indicates that he perceives the “local” way of writing or self-expression as “limiting” and a compromise to his authentic self and personal voice. Taking his preceding journal entries into account, it appears that he believes his authentic self and personal voice are aligned with the norms of English academic writing, which, according to him, values critical thinking and outside-the-box thinking. This is supported further by the excerpt below taken from the interview between Le-Ha and Azmi.

My inability to think “outside the box” shows through the contents of my lectures. As you may recall, my students in the focus group admitted to me that the module that I co-taught with my colleagues on Islamic civilization was more a recapitulation (of what they had learned in school) rather than a new intellectual experience for them. They felt that online lectures on YouTube were far more interesting, thought-provoking, and relatable.

In one face-to-face interview with Le-Ha, Azmi alluded to the fact that he censored himself in order to be accepted and to be safe. However, he admitted that self-censorship affected his research and teaching negatively and took away the enjoyment of both. Azmi elaborated on this point later in his journal entries.

My students’ perception of the tutorials that I conducted, however, was very positive. One important distinction between the lectures and the tutorials in this module should be mentioned here. The lectures in this module are typically mass lectures delivered in a big auditorium for all the students in the class, whereas the tutorials are conducted in a typical classroom setting with far fewer students. In my experience, I tend to be more expressive in the tutorials due to a sense of security (even if this sense of security is false since my discussion with the students can be audio-recorded by them without my permission). This major difference in my confidence and sense of security shows that self-censorship affects not only my behavior and self-image, but also the quality of my teaching and research (Azmi’s journal entry 7).

The reported self-censorship and lack of academic freedom in relation to the experiences of transnational academics appear to be common in many contexts. Again, these notions are often conceptualized along the lines of East–West binaries surrounding control, power, governance, and collective identity. For instance, in his study of the experiences of foreign-educated Chinese academics working in HE in China, Chen (2017) explains that the Confucian tradition plays a major role in influencing intellectuals in China to become responsible for societal wellbeing and stability, unlike in the West, where there is a vibrant tradition of open criticism of the state. Chinese intellectuals, therefore, are expected to think and speak on behalf of the government, not against it. In the Malay-Brunei tradition, obedience and loyalty to the government or the highest authority is an indispensable value; local writings on MIB describe this value as one of the major determinants of the Malay-Muslim-Bruneian identity (Effendi, 2017; Tuah, 2002).

Azmi recognizes his tendency to self-censor his opinions, questions, and concerns as a learned fear response. After having been reprimanded repeatedly by academics and government officers around him for being too “outspoken” in public, Azmi has internalized deep within his consciousness an image of himself as the Bruneian who has forgotten his place and roots. In addition, he has formed a tendency to pin the blame for his “culturally inappropriate” outspokenness to his years abroad. Within Brunei, local writings about Malay culture often laud the inclination of Bruneians toward using Bahasa Berkias (Indirect or Analogous Speech) in order to show politeness and humility. Azmi cannot help but feel that his tendency to be forthright in his opinions and thoughts is a blatant betrayal to his culture.

Throughout his years abroad, he was trained intensively to be “unequivocal,” “articulate,” and “logical” in his thinking and expression, as if without those years he would have remained “irrational, illogical, and uncritical.” During his study in the UK, he was showered with compliments by his professors (Muslims and non-Muslims, but all lived in the West), who said he was “talented” for being able to expand beyond his Muslim self. In this context, these compliments can also be seen as an approval of the “other” for demonstrating recognized “Western” virtues (i.e. abilities to push boundaries, and critical and analytical thinking). They can also be interpreted as a form of being patronizing and exoticizing the “other” (Luke, 2019; Phan, 2017; Said, 1978). Azmi then naturally concluded that being unequivocal, articulate, and logical in thinking and expression was “right,” and that self-censoring was “wrong” and against his principle. Therefore, his experiences of being reprimanded for his directness in Brunei have provoked him into revisiting his frame of reference for “right” and “wrong” in relation to his self-image, personality, and character as both an academic and an individual. While it cannot be established whether Azmi’s tendency to self-censor is caused by actual cultural expectations or by his self-perception of it being culturally expected, it is clear that he struggles in striking a balance between being forthright and self-censoring.

Azmi’s problem articulated here may not be unique to him or his home academic culture in Brunei. It must be remembered that another layer of Azmi’s problem is tied to matters of culture and religion, or more specifically, those of Malay culture and the Islamic religion that had been projected to him. Malay-Bruneian culture is a subset of the broader Malay culture in the Malay world, and the Malay-Bruneian understanding of Islam, while unique in some respects, largely complies with the universal Islam observed by the global Muslim population. Contemporary issues within the Muslim tradition may be contextually diverse, but their theological underpinnings are mostly monolithic. Apostasy (renunciation of a religion or a political belief, whether officially or personally), for example, is a controversial issue anywhere in the Muslim world. Although less than half of the Muslim countries worldwide legally consider it a punishable crime, it is still uniformly perceived as morally wrong and blasphemous by Muslim states due to Islam’s unambiguous position against it. Therefore, during the process of self-censoring, it is likely that Azmi’s concerns and thoughts are centered around not just locally distinctive sensibilities, but also universal Muslim sensibilities.

All these matters of culture and religion, coupled with Azmi constantly being asked by his professors overseas to detach himself from his Muslim biases for his own intellectual growth as a scholar of Islam, and then Azmi’s tendency to self-censor, are vivid examples of binary thought. We want to point out that binary thought, despite its known limitations on social theory and limits on our capacity to imagine and conceptualize (Jöns, 2018; Phan, 2017), is dominant, pervasive, and articulated at every single point in one’s socialization and (transnational) educational journeys. This reality has its own life and is nurtured by its army of transnational beings, encounters, norms, expectations, representational systems, and social theories, as we continue to show below.

“I am Westernized: I almost believed so”

Another challenge that I continue to face is criticisms of my so-called “Western” thinking and values. As an overseas-trained scholar, I am (and have been) an easy target for being accused of being “Westernized” and trying to impose my “Western” values on my fellow Muslims. The principles of objectivity and detachment that I practice in my teaching and research on religion and culture have been met with some resistance by my fellow co-workers, students, and friends in Brunei.

I once had a minor disagreement with my research student, who was unhappy with my suggestion that he stop referring to Muslims in his work as “we” and propagating his personal belief that Islam is the true religion. I stressed to him the importance of “keeping some distance” from his study, but he dismissed this as a “Western” approach that should be resisted by Muslims. After we came to terms with each other’s perspective, he agreed to accept my advice. However, I started questioning my own thinking and could not stop worrying that I may have been unfair and a little too imposing in my mentoring approach. For a short while, my self-esteem plummeted, and I almost believed that I had been “Westernized.” Instances like this occur frequently in my everyday life, particularly at work where I am surrounded by my fellow Muslim academics and intellectuals (Azmi’s journal entry 8).

Azmi’s PhD student’s dismissal of the principle of “objectivity” in research methodology for Islamic Studies as “Western,” and the fact that it caused Azmi to self-question whether he had been “Westernized,” reveal that a mental divide between “East” and “West” was at play within Azmi’s and his PhD student’s consciousness respectively. With Azmi’s status as a foreign-educated scholar, he perceives himself as automatically at risk of being accused of and associated with being “Westernized.” Being Western-trained/Westernized has been deemed problematic yet simultaneously desired—a paradox in transnational space that Bauder et al. (2018) and Phan (2017) discuss.

There are other transnational scholars working in the same university with us in Brunei. Azmi has also found himself being subjected to these scholars’ views of what being Westernized might entail, as seen below:

In one conference on Islam that was held on campus some years ago, where I gave a paper on the fundamentals of Islam, a French colleague of mine remarked that my thinking was distinctively “French” despite me being educated in the UK. This threw me even deeper into my identity crisis—I felt like I had gone too far from my roots (Azmi’s journal entry 8).

This incident points to the vague, plural, and contested nature of the grand term “West/Western/Westernized.” Azmi stated to Le-Ha “How come everyone can see me being Westernized, whatever that may mean, but all too foreign to my roots?” We later wondered if the problem might have had to do with that transnational mobile colleague who did not seem to be able to comprehend and appreciate Azmi’s work without attributing it to “the French way,” a version of “the West.” This transnational encounter at home indicates another layer of deeply rooted polarized thinking, which transnational scholars could draw on to justify their own presence and differentiate their significance.

Azmi’s concern over being labeled “Westernized” and his fear of being convinced by his own thinking that he indeed had been “Westernized” had a negative impact on his self-image as a Malay Muslim Bruneian. He could not help but feel that his years abroad may have contributed to what he described to Le-Ha as “detachment” from his roots. While he was being trained to be objective in his research and to distinguish his identity as a Muslim from his academic role as a scholar of Islam, he had to peel several layers of his identity, unlearn what he had learned during his formative years, and replace the void with what he felt were foreign elements of thinking, feeling, and doing. These elements included the principle that nothing is immune to critical reflection, the recognition that Muslims and Islam are not identical, and the power and value of forthright expression. Upon his return to Brunei, these “foreign” ways of thinking, feeling, and doing, which he had now accepted, internalized, owned, and gotten accustomed to, suddenly became a source of conflict between him and scholars working in the same field and a source of suspicion for people around him who were sensitive to what they deemed unconventional in the Bruneian context and the Muslim context in general. Azmi then began to be described with words that bear negative connotations in his culture, such as “liberal,” “modern,” and “Western/Westernized.”

Again, the above findings and analysis show the institutionalized mentality of oppositional thinking accompanied by concepts, assumptions, and educational practices that continue to place the West/Western as being superior and desirable yet dangerous to the global South Muslim local/home. Azmi has come to realize that the whole package of being critical, objective, secular, detachable, logical and confident imposed on him by his transnational educational encounters had carried an assumption of him and his prior socialization as being dichotomously deficit. This assumption is also held by his own diverse local Bruneian academic communities, which may view him as being dichotomously unconventional. And Azmi himself has participated in these acts of dichotomization in making sense of his transnational scholar self, scholarship, and teaching, as the next part further demonstrates.

Azmi, his classroom and students: Transnational pedagogy and teaching in dialog and reflexivity

We now would like to invite readers to Azmi’s classrooms in Brunei, as depicted in Azmi’s detailed responses to Le-Ha’s questions in the interviews and in his journal entries.

In the tutorials that I conducted this semester, my students and I discussed many difficult topics related to contemporary Muslim dilemmas. To encourage them to use critical thinking, I would share with them some of the most thought-provoking and controversial beliefs and ideas within contemporary Muslim thought and ask what they thought of them. Throughout the semester, I noticed that my students were exhibiting the same tendencies and emotional cues that I now have as I try to reconcile various sets of values that I have inherited and learned from my upbringing and my time abroad (Le-Ha—Azmi interview).

During the first two weeks of the semester, none of my students were “objective” and “critical.” When asked what they thought of certain Islamic rulings or cultural realities and the wisdom behind them, they all gave the same answer, which was along the lines of “Islam says so. We just follow” or “it’s just the way it is with us.” I tried to probe them into thinking and pondering by asking “why?,” but only one or two students would step up to try and explain their thinking. Even so, these few students would show remarkable caution in their responses; they would speak slowly as they structured their answers and searched for the right words to use, and they would apologize to me and the whole class for speaking their minds. I know this feeling of apprehensiveness too well (Le-Ha—Azmi interview).

To help us (Le-Ha and Azmi) better understand and make connection between Azmi’s own account of his identity as a transnational Muslim scholar of Islamic Studies and how that may have (re)shaped his pedagogy and teaching in Brunei, we jointly carried out a small-scale qualitative research study with Azmi’s nine undergraduate students, using focus group discussions. Those students had taken core courses from Azmi and they were from diverse majors across the university. These discussions were conducted in English, and were vibrant, open, and honest throughout.

Azmi’s fears, concerns, and aspirations validated by student responses

The students’ descriptions of their experiences in the classroom validated some of Azmi’s fears, concerns, and aspirations about his teaching approaches and their effect on his students. They reported that many of the discussions in Azmi’s tutorial sessions made a huge impact on them. They also gave specific examples to remind the group of such discussions. One participant recalled the moment when Azmi clarified to the class the complexities and nuances involved within the Islamic ruling on touching and keeping a dog. Most of the students in the class had always believed that touching or keeping a dog was categorically forbidden by the religion until it was explained to them that there are certain conditions whereby doing so may be permitted (e.g. using dogs for hunting and sniffing narcotics). Another participant recounted his shock in class, when Azmi confessed to having been asked by his non-Muslim friends during his university years in the UK whether being Muslim was his own rational choice made in complete freedom. According to this participant, no other Bruneian would dare to discuss the notion of freedom in Islam so freely in public.

Some participants expressed that Azmi “articulated” their deepest feelings and struggles, which they had always kept hidden from everyone. Some others saw Azmi as “refreshing” the way they think about religion and culture and thus encouraging them to be critical in their thinking. As the students were reflecting on Azmi’s teaching and pedagogy and praising him for creating an empowering and engaging learning experience for them, Azmi did feel somewhat uneasy. Deep down inside, as Azmi opened up to Le-Ha later, none of his students seemed to know that he had been self-censoring his thoughts and ideas in his teaching. Sounding a little sad, Azmi repeated what the students had said—they described me as “daring.” For the students and most of his Muslim colleagues and fellows, Azmi is a “daring” and “Westernized” scholar, as evident in the ways he delivered his teaching, the discussion he led in class, the manners in which he presented ideas, the questions he asked, the answers he gave, the topics he pursued, and perhaps the dilemmas he could not hide. Azmi admitted to Le-Ha that he may have failed to keep his thinking “well within the bounds of what is considered ‘normative’ in Brunei.”

The student participants admitted to being inspired by Azmi’s forthright and rigorous thinking, although they were sometimes caught off guard by his ideas and statements in class. This can help explain Azmi’s inner conflict with regard to “right” and “wrong” in his pedagogy and teaching his course. What he believes to be “right” (e.g. being logical, critical, and authentic) has backfired on several occasions, and what he believes to be “wrong” (self-censoring for the sake of conformity) seems to be a cultural given. Therefore, the pressure Azmi feels to self-censor is also self-induced, in the sense that he allows his fears and concerns about negotiating “right” and “wrong” to affect his pedagogy and teaching.

We have also observed that strong emotion expressed by the students in Azmi’s class and those in the focus group discussions may have reinforced his personal fears, concerns, insecurities, and aspirations about his pedagogy and teaching, as well as his identity as a transnational scholar. Azmi’s students’ non-verbal cues in response to his teaching approaches, from facial expressions of shock and confusion to hand and leg gestures signaling discomfort, cause him to self-censor or second-guess his statements and decisions. On the flip side, Azmi’s self-censoring and second-guessing tendencies may be taken as an implicit affirmation by his students that certain taboos should remain undiscussed.

The transnational scholar’s self-censorship and implications to his pedagogy and teaching

The focus group discussions provided insights into not just the concerns and aspirations of both Azmi and his students, respectively, but also into how the experiences on both sides of the teacher–student interactions influence, affirm, and reinforce each other. The discussions also showed how his own projection as a transnational Muslim scholar of Islamic Studies may have (re)shaped his pedagogy and teaching in Brunei.

To begin with, it is difficult to ascertain whether the cultural expectations of pedagogy and teaching in Brunei to which Azmi struggles to readjust are real or perceived (or both). Azmi’s experience of being reprimanded by Bruneians of different backgrounds on several different occasions for having crossed a “line” in his thinking and expression shows that there must be some kind of in-group sensibilities around which Bruneians build their understanding of taboos about culture and religion. One of the participants in the discussion kept pinning the blame for his fear of verbalizing his thoughts and opinions to what he described as “cultural constraints” in Brunei. Another participant said he had gotten used to bottling up even his most troubled emotions due to his “restrictive” cultural environment. However, the “line” that Azmi was assumed to have crossed was not clear-cut, but appears to be (re)drawn by his perceived dichotomies of values, norms, and discourses.

Then, Azmi’s pride in his pedagogy, teaching, and creative thinking was somewhat dented when the student participants confessed that they all watched online lectures/talks on Islam delivered by Muslim intellectuals of diverse backgrounds around the world, which are available on YouTube. The students saw these lectures/talks being “far more interesting,” “authentic,” and “beneficial” to them than the traditional face-to-face lectures in the module that Azmi co-teaches with his colleagues. One statement made by a participant about the module startled him—“the module felt more like a recap than something really new.” In talking to Le-Ha later, Azmi admitted that the students’ confession caused him to question his weaknesses (imagined or real) and wonder if these lectures could have been more effective if he had not resorted to self-censorship. He believes that he could be more creative and critical in his approach to the module if he was not pressured by the need to self-censor. Indeed, his students’ thoughts and knowledge are diverse, complex, intellectually informed and on par with many of his classmates during his education in Malaysia and the UK, all of which was clouded by Azmi’s self-censorship and dichotomous views of “local Bruneian students,” as he later realized.

In a subsequent interview with Le-Ha, Azmi explained that his decision to self-censor or be forthright in the class hinges on his students’ response to his statements and ideas. This means that, in every lecture or tutorial session that Azmi conducts, he undergoes a continuous and dynamic process of adjusting himself and adapting to his students’ “expectations,” which he may subsequently correlate with the expectations of his culture and environment and hence process them in polarized terms. His students may also be involved in the same process of adjusting themselves and adapting to what they probably assume to be Azmi’s “expectations” through his verbal and non-verbal cues, which they may subsequently correlate with the expectations of their culture and environment.

The challenges experienced by Azmi and his students further accentuate the nuances of transnational academic mobilities. As both sides interacted and engaged in delivering and responding to content knowledge and the manners in which such knowledge was conveyed, they also participated in the dichotomization of knowledge systems and self-censorship.

Transnational as struggling, divided, self-imposed, painful, uncertain, and generative

The article has paid specific attention to nuances underlying transnational academic mobilities—the complexities and day-to-day realities experienced by transnational scholars that are still rare in existing literature. It has shown the importance of contextualizing the particularities and specificities of “home,” “host,” “workplace,” and academic discipline. Azmi’s struggles as a foreign-educated Bruneian scholar in reconciling his transnational self with the dominantly projected religio-cultural particularities of his origin and of his very area of expertise and scholarship—Islamic Studies/Islamic Thought—show that transnational academic mobilities can create sites of contestation where the geopolitics of the East–West binary, the global–local divide, and contradictory boundaries of religion and faith are accentuated and their stereotypes enforced. In Azmi’s case, the multi-layered conflict that stemmed from the different disciplinary approaches and differing pedagogical and teaching perspectives and styles he has encountered and has been subjected to at the foreign universities where he completed his education and the university where he now works has expanded into a crisis of identity, a self-questioning of right and wrong, and a decline in self-esteem and motivation.

The diverse, in-depth, and rich data sources we have drawn on have given us a foothold for arguing that transnational academic mobilities, despite their glorified perks and romanticization, can lead transnational scholars to nuanced and complex realities and circumstances depending on the particularities and specificities of their contexts of “home,” “host,” and “workplace.” Transnational academic mobilities and their underlying experiences are neither equal nor neutral, and thus must not be taken at face value. We also argue for the need to feature more autoethnographic studies in scholarly work, particularly because of their power to bring to the surface complex experiences and accounts that academics go through but rarely acknowledge and conceptualize. These accounts and experiences are central to knowledge production, identity formation, and classroom practices, as demonstrated in this article.

Importantly, we maintain that dichotomous thinking is much more closely associated with transnational academic mobilities than what existing scholarship recognizes. Indeed, the mental divide associated with the “East/West,” “global/local,” and “foreign/home” dichotomies can be found in many educational and academic encounters, as we have showed thus far. Azmi’s professors in the UK are of no less guilt when they demanded he detach himself from his Muslim biases should he want to be a scholar who could think critically. This demand is a perfect example of the mental divide and dichotomous thinking operated in the professors’ worldviews and epistemologies. One of us, Le-Ha, has discussed extensively how the constructed “East–West” binary in education and knowledge production has continued to be employed to justify reform, change, pedagogy, methodology, internationalization, and commercialization of education by all stakeholders whenever convenient (Phan, 2017). At the personal level that sometimes involves identity politics, this binary has also been an ego-asserting means, which tends to project one group with certain values and tags as the more desirable target for the rest, as Luke (2019) powerfully shows.

Azmi also admitted he sometimes felt that his years abroad as a student and the training that he had undergone to become a critical thinking scholar may have been a waste of time and energy. Nonetheless, while acknowledging his tendency to self-censor or detach to be accepted by his multiple scholarly communities at home and abroad respectively, Azmi has also recognized that academic freedom and critical thinking are value-laden and imposing concepts—the concepts that could create a fake sense of empowerment for anyone thinking they enjoy them. Being a transnational scholar can, indeed, also be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the transnational scholar is able to and expected to bring something “new” and “fresh” to the system by integrating multiple ideas, perspectives, and experiences into his or her pedagogy and teaching. On the other, the transnational scholar is under considerable pressure (imagined or real) to not venture too far outside the box and blend into the status quo. The transnational is divided and appears homeless though the transnational is attached to a physical base.

It seems one of the pivotal points of Azmi’s and Le-Ha’s experience of transnational academic mobilities and identity-making is the place, relationship, and potential conflict of secular and non-secular knowledge. Indeed, as Azmi revealed to Le-Ha, “my professors in the UK most of the time forgot I was from Brunei. They only said ‘Muslim’.” This secular and non-secular conflict and divide are as crucial as the East/West, indigenous/foreign, and local/global constraints. For Le-Ha, the very places in which Le-Ha has been studying, living and working—Vietnam, Australia, and the US—all promote secular approaches to education and knowledge production, though in different ways and driven by different ideological motives. Having no religion, hence, has hardly been a problem for Le-Ha in all those places. Moving to Brunei, being non-Muslim/non-Malay/non-Bruneian seemingly frees Le-Ha from having to adhere to the kingdom’s ideological, religious, and cultural norms and expectations. Hence, the ways in which Azmi and the colleague Le-Ha mentioned below in her diaries relate to and identify with Brunei are very different from that of Le-Ha. The particularity of the place and one’s relationship with it play an important role. This aspect, nonetheless, often gets sidelined in much scholarship on transnational academic mobilities.

As we were about to leave the room in which we had conducted the focus group discussion with the students, a colleague of Azmi walked in. We greeted each other. That colleague is also a transnational scholar of Islam Studies, a non-Bruneian Muslim, as he introduced himself. He then asked about my background and religion. These questions are rather common among colleagues here. I didn’t find his questions confrontational, unusual or intrusive, particularly after the admirably honest discussion we’ve just had with the students. I said “I am Vietnamese and I don’t have a religion.” As Vietnamese, we hardly ever declare our religion in any paperwork and official documents such as CV or Birth Certificate. The automatic answer when it comes to religion for many of us is None (Le-Ha, diaries, 2019).

We further argue transnational space is ambiguous yet generative and empowering. While his struggles continue, Azmi has also been thriving in his scholarly work and leadership, as evident in the increasing demand for his expertise and knowledge from universities and government bodies. Likewise, his seemingly “provocative,” “unconventional,” and “daring” thoughts and ideas have not been silenced by any authorities except by his own regulated efforts and perceived fears, as a transnational scholar. In the same vein, his ways of teaching, particularly in his tutorials, and the kinds of “controversial” and “taboo” topics and issues he has introduced and invited students to discuss and reflect on, have appeared to strengthen their intellectual understanding and appreciation of Islam as a religion of inclusivity, wisdom, and tolerance, as the students confirmed during the focus group discussion with Azmi and Le-Ha.

Azmi’s pedagogy has also evolved and been adjusted, as our interactions take place. His continuing reflections have helped both of us see below-the-surface complexities and growths that have moved beyond the predominant dichotomous thinking initially observed.

Unlike my professors in England who made me learn to distinguish “a scholar of Islam” from “a Muslim scholar,” I’ve never said anything about “detachment” and “objectivity” to my undergraduate students. What’s held me back was my fear that my intention could be misconstrued. While “detachment” does not mean renouncing Islam and discarding its teachings, I’m concerned that the idea of “detaching” oneself from their Muslim biases would still be difficult for these students to fathom. The closest I could get to conveying the importance of “detachment” and “objectivity” was telling my students to exercise “balanced thinking” and learn to “see the grey shades between black and white.” What worked for them was my reassurance to them that they could ask any questions about religion and culture in my class, and that there would be no judgment from anyone in the class. All this, I believe, generates a unique kind of knowledge, as I have now realized. Over time, our discussions became intellectually vibrant and empowering. My students began to find the courage to ask difficult and thought-provoking questions actively and voluntarily in the classroom, to engage me in debates on theological concepts and controversial issues such as predestination and apostasy, and to freely express their own thoughts and opinions instead of uncritically subscribing to my views. I no longer have to go out of my way to ease them into doing these things (Azmi’s journal entry 9).

Azmi has humbly revealed, “the transnational is transforming; and my home context is transforming me.”

Further thoughts: Ethics, reflexivity and humility in writing on transnational academic mobilities

Being a non-Muslim transnational expatriate scholar moving to Brunei from an established appointment in the US does give me many advantages. Later I told Azmi that listening to his presentation in 2018 brought back a younger Le-Ha in me—the Le-Ha in 2005, fresh from my PhD. It was then when I found myself obsessed with knowledge mobility, positionality and transnational mobile scholar identity and the idea of “Asia on the rise.” When Azmi confessed to me how happy and pleased he was after I had come up to him and congratulated him on an amazing and spirited presentation, I recalled myself anxiously and sincerely hoping for some endorsement from the audience at a seminar I delivered in Melbourne and later in Sydney around 2007/2009 on my own journey as a Vietnamese mobile scholar working in Australia and how that had been shaping my epistemology and identity making. I did get a lot of endorsement and interest from the audience in my own account and narrative. . . . I remember feeling proud and celebrated as an upcoming “globally-minded,” “locally-aware” transnational scholar from Vietnam—the attributes that the audience had given me. I wasn’t aware of the dichotomous nature of my thinking . . . (Le-Ha, diaries, 2018, written during her data collection with Azmi).

In talking to Azmi, I’ve realized I am not different from Azmi and many other foreign-trained colleagues on campus. We are all navigating through many evolving expectations and practices in this shared space, which is perhaps so much more diverse than many campuses in the Global North—the often-promoted diversity model that others are expected to mimic (Le-Ha, diaries, 2019).

Invited to Azmi’s transnational interface of simultaneous unspoken pain, heightened anxieties, and dedication to knowledge and teaching, Le-Ha has found herself (re)visiting seemingly settled space. She does not see her role as enabling Azmi to question his own assumption of censorship and/or to challenge his tendency to self-censor and to categorize the world into dichotomous “East” and “West,” and “local” and “global” when it comes to norms, values, self-identification, teaching, pedagogy, and knowledge production. Rather, Azmi’s critical reflections and the trust that has been built between Azmi and Le-Ha in the process have generated unexpected space for both to make sense of their evolving transnationalness. Le-Ha finds herself as marginal, empowered, enlightened, confident, assertive, centered, and confused as how Azmi may find himself. Like Azmi, her own scholarly journey has also been caught in the constant “East–West” dichotomous representation of the world and knowledge systems (Phan, 2011; 2017).

Le-Ha sees herself in Azmi’s autoethnography, although the stance and sentiments expressed in the ways Le-Ha has entertained and fed off such dichotomies are often opposite to his. Azmi appears to be cautious and self-withdrawn in his research, scholarship, and teaching, as a result of him being labeled “Westernized,” “critical,” and “liberal” by his community in Brunei; whereas Le-Ha has appeared to be rebellious in engaging with these tags as a Vietnamese working transnationally. Le-Ha’s positionality has benefited from working in Australian and US universities, where being “Asian” in certain pockets of academia is somehow sympathized and even romanticized, as she has acknowledged in her earlier work (Phan, 2017).

We were completing this article in December, while Azmi was away in Europe “for a much-needed break and freedom,” while Le-Ha decided to stay in Brunei for the holiday period. Azmi felt at home in Europe, he admitted. He had expected that he would enjoy the break tremendously. Surprisingly, toward the end of his holiday, Azmi revealed to Le-Ha that he badly wanted to return to Brunei. Europe suddenly did not feel as inspirational as it previously had. Brunei as home was calling. Never did he feel so strongly affectionate about this Brunei home. Perhaps, both Le-Ha and Azmi have found new meanings of home and transnationality, as both have engaged in honest sharing and the ethics of humility and reflection.

Our honest sharing keeps taking us to new reflections and new insights. What we thought we had already known—the identity of ourselves as mobile transnational scholars—has been broken down and found itself embarking on a new beginning again. The utmost honesty, soulfulness, sincere sharing, confusion, vulnerability, and fragility from Azmi have reminded Le-Ha of humility, trust, ethics, and reflexivity in academia, knowledge production, and scholarship—those values that are these days pushed to the margin, as aggressive self-branding practices are strongly promoted. Transnational academic mobilities and the transnational scholar status, after all, must not be privileged.