Critical Muslim geographies through a critical geography of Islamophobia

Abstract

In this commentary, I focus on James Sidaway's contribution to critical Muslim geographies and his suggestions for moving beyond decoloniality that do not hesitate to take a stand against the current direction of mainstream studies on Islam and Muslims. While I agree with many of his points, I detail three critical thoughts around (i) the idea of integrating terminologies specific to Islam and Muslims into the scholarship of Muslim geographies to transcend existing colonial logics; (ii) the need to give a greater voice to Muslim geographers as Black and feminist geographies have done; and (iii) the difficulty of measuring the Muslim identity of geographers. Drawing on my critical thinking about the geographies of Islamophobia, I highlight how normalized structural practices have led to silencing the voices of even the greatest geographers in human history.

Sidaway's (2023) article offers a critical overview of Muslim geographies that represents a significant contribution to geographical understandings and studies of decoloniality. It highlights the need to move beyond the decolonial by integrating Islamic concepts, connecting to Black thought, and taking the works of Muslim geographers more seriously. As a Muslim geographer myself working on inequality and Islamophobia (initially in a hostile French academic environment; Hajjat, 2020; Najib, 2021), I understand many points raised in Sidaway's article, which I also personally detailed in my book on Spatialized Islamophobia published in November 2021. I met my colleague Professor James Sidaway in June 2023 in Leeds at the Critical Muslim Studies conference, which brings together any interdisciplinary work advocating for a reorientation of Muslim studies going beyond the existing hierarchy between the West and the Rest (Sayyid, 2014; see also ReOrient website). Knowing the context of academic geography, I was sure during this conference that I would meet very few geographers (or even none). But James Sidaway was there to co-present his work on Mecca partially quoting his 2023 article, and I was also there to talk about my book's concluding chapter entitled ‘Towards a Critical Geography of Islamophobia’. Both of us were very surprised to discover our respective contributions, especially me who had not even managed to cite his past works in my book. This is surely due to the fact that Sidaway rarely publishes on Muslim geographies despite his indisputable knowledge and commitment to it. Although his recent contribution raises important questions about the state of geographical studies on Islam and Muslims, I nevertheless have some critical thoughts.

The first one relates to the idea of studying Islam and Muslims with a significant distance that might make the whole scientific contribution problematic. Sidaway explains that Muslim geographies have imposed frames that render ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ as mere ‘adjectives and objects of scrutiny’ due to existing colonial logics, and he suggests the need to transcend such simplistic categorization. I have also warned in my work against the dangers of studying a topic concerning vulnerable populations with too much distance by emphasizing the importance for researchers to show their positionality and motivations. Researchers need to think critically about their positionality, so as not to let the ‘researched’ populations believe that they are being exploited as ‘laboratory rats’ without further consideration (Najib, 2021). The religion of the Muslim ‘researched’ must also be respected, because otherwise, such neglect can lead to an increased risk of voyeurism and a tendency to describe Islam and Muslims as the ‘Other’. To avoid all this, Sidaway does not clearly emphasize his positionality but rather suggests the need for a more holistic understanding of Islam (and its principles) by integrating terminologies specific to Islam and Muslims into the scholarship of Muslim geographies. For example, he proposes the Arabic term Dîn (which would describe the totality of Islam) to better transcend the colonial logics into which Muslim geographies seem to fall.

To better grasp how to study the geographies of Dîn, I tried to transfer this idea to the geographies of Islamophobia to which I have contributed more. Islamophobia is an injustice, and Islam is firmly committed to greater justice. Therefore, to study Islamophobia with a more holistic Islamic understanding, I should maybe try to study the geographies of Adalah, which means ‘justice’ in Arabic (and even the justice of God). But other Islamic terms can also be found in the Quran like Qist or Insaf, for example. Consequently, such a task seems very daunting even for Muslim geographers and even those most knowledgeable in Islamic studies, because a new problem arises requiring the engagement of Arabic translators and Islamic experts. Does Dîn really replace Islam (and its totality) or a religion or a faith or all religions or even something else? Here, geographers and social scientists interested in Muslim geographies will need to engage with Islamic scholarship and its different traditions and schools of thought that very often use multi-faceted terms. Although there is an undeniable need to give Muslim geographies a place beyond decoloniality, I still wonder if it is an appropriate solution to move towards Islamic concepts, because this will bring additional complication to the study of the subject. These complications are very likely to arise, because Muslim communities are very diverse, and therefore so too are Islamic conceptions. In my opinion, the most important point is to respect the diversity of Muslim populations, which will necessarily impact the way in which we rethink and rewrite about them and their religion.

My second point addresses this need to give a greater voice to Muslim geographers in order to generate a new direction for more emancipated Muslim geographies, in the same way that Black and feminist geographers have done for Black and feminist geographies. Although Black geographer Katherine McKittrick (and others) introduced concepts and methods inspired by Black thought (such as plantation logics) into the dialogue on Black geographies (McKittrick, 2011), she did something even more empowering. She filled the existing gaps in traditional geography through her work and her simple presence. Therefore, the visibility of Muslim presence and contribution is an urgent issue for decolonizing geography. Without this, colonial logics will always be observed in the knowledge produced, publishing practices, and the corridors of geography departments (Najib, 2021). In the light of Tuck and Yang's (2012) work, Sidaway reminds us that decolonization is not simply a metaphor. This is a strong position that requires radical practices and actions, and in this sense, the discipline of geography must become more ‘beautiful’ (Springer, 2016) by addressing this radical question of its decoloniality (Mahtani, 2014; Radcliffe, 2022). Decolonization involves changing the terms of debates by dismantling the colonial order through radical liberation movements.

To achieve true decolonization, Sidaway suggests that Muslim geographies should make more room for Muslim geographers who are underrepresented. But he does not sufficiently emphasize that Muslim geographers from both the Global South and the Global North who work on such topics are less recognized and cited, especially when they are part of the most marginalized categories in academia, such as women, women of color, Black Muslim women, or visibly Muslim women (Harding, 2004; Mir, 2014; Spivak, 1988). Sexist, racist, and Islamophobic structural practices are very present in academic geography, and the way in which Muslim female geographers experience their academic career through precarious positions should raise further concerns. In this context, it is important to understand what kind of knowledge this marginalization produces in Muslim geographies and related fields. Developing a critical Muslim geography with greater Muslim presence and contribution is essential, but only if we are all careful not to reproduce systems of domination that would exclude the most marginalized among us. Otherwise, adopting this approach without such considerations will not prevent serious injustices in an academic context dominated by whiteness, patriarchy, and secularism. Certainly, the Muslim identity of geographers is important, but it must be associated with other equally oppressed intersectional identities. It must also be associated with its measurement indicators because we may wonder how we can measure it. Is it really the Muslim identity that is crucial in this enterprise of developing critical Muslim geographies or is it its markers?

This brings me to my last point which refers to markers of Muslimness through my critical thinking about the geographies of Islamophobia, since Islamophobia is a process of racialization concerning Muslimness more than Islam and Muslims per se (Sayyid and Vakil, 2010). Post-1990s studies on Muslim geographies have mainly focused on the geographies of contestation, conflict, and politics. After 9/11, the transition to the geographies of Islamophobia was therefore logically framed in the context of negotiating sociopolitical and spatial boundaries, and geographers researching Muslim identities naturally began contributing to studies on Islamophobia in the 2000s (Dunn et al., 2007; Dwyer, 2008; Hopkins, 2004). The geography of Islamophobia is still a new area of research, and I wondered why it took so long to concretely theorize the spatialized dimension of Islamophobia (Najib, 2021). I answered this critical question in many ways and especially by showing that mainstream geographers do not really focus on studies related to racial and religious discrimination mainly because it is a predominantly white discipline (Delaney, 2002). I raised important concerns about the whiteness of academic geography and the great difficulty of studying oppressions from the perspective of the ‘oppressed racialised Muslim’. Other Muslim female geographers have also raised similar concern about how visible Muslim women's bodies are subjected to harm in academic spaces (Fernandez and Johnson, 2020; Johnson, 2020). This whiteness of the discipline of geography produces a dominant knowledge, which frames the possibilities of debate and ultimately disrupts the analysis of geographies of Islamophobia as well as Muslim geographies.

Sidaway's suggestions to develop strong connections with Black and feminist geographies to better decolonize Muslim geographies are already explored in the study of the geographies of Islamophobia. If these links are less obvious with Black geographies, they seem well established with feminist geographies as evidenced by the work of Claire Dywer, Banu Gökariksel, Carina Listerborn, etc. Many of these contributions cite Henri Lefebvre (1996) to highlight the ‘right to the city’ of Muslim populations excluded from certain spaces, while Sidaway emphasizes the Orientalist approach of Lefebvre's work on urban theorization. The real question here is not why we cite Lefebvre, but rather why we do not know the works of Muslim geographers. Why do geographical studies today seem to show that there are no ‘prominent’ Muslim geographers? Are we saying that the last leading Muslim geographers date from the 12th to 14th centuries (such as Al-Idrisi, Ibn-Battuta, or Ibn-Khaldun)? Besides, what happened to their own contributions? Their major findings are largely unknown in the West precisely because they were eclipsed during European colonization and Christian missions (Kong, 2009). The fact that even this knowledge coming from the most influential Muslim geographers in our human history is difficult to access is in itself revealing. As an example, I can speak from my own experience as a French geographer who never had access to the influential work of Frantz Fanon during my university studies in France. I discovered his work by reading scientific articles in English, and I ironically bought his original books in French. Access to Muslim geographers’ works is in fact not facilitated due to normalized practices silencing their voices, which critical geographies of Islamophobia, critical Muslim geographies, and more generally critical Muslim studies seek to undo. The situation of Muslim studies as well as Muslim populations is shaped through the lens of structural exclusion, and this situation does not spare the greatest Muslim geographers of the past and of today.