Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion Podcast

Race and Religion in South Asia &, well, Not-the-US

• Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Megan Goodwin • Season 2 • Episode 204

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In which Ilyse helps us think about the racialization of Muslims and why racialization of religions in not-the-US is both similar to and different from the American kind

Storytime: Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more!

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

This is Keeping It 101: a killjoy's introduction to religion podcast. This season, our work is made possible in part through a generous grant from the New England Humanities Consortium and with additional support from the University of Vermont's Humanities Center. We are grateful to live, teach, and record on the ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki, Wabenaki and Aucocisco peoples.

Megan Goodwin:

What's up nerds? Hi, hello, I'm Megan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions, race and gender. I am also the program director at Sacred Writes (W R I T E S), which is a Henry LUCE-funded project hosted, at my institutional home, Northeastern University.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Hi, hello, I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, a scholar of religion, Islam, race and racialization, and history. I help run the UVM's Humanities Center, write books, and parent in my downtime.

Megan Goodwin:

LOL, downtime.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That was a joke.

Megan Goodwin:

I know... you're doing great! Hi nerds! We'd ask"How are you?" but pandemic etiquette suggests that that is fraught. Anyway, we hope you're hanging in, surviving, maybe even finding places to thrive. Let's jump in. Okay, last time I talked your ears off about race and religion in the United States. This time, we are still talking religion and race, but we're going to focus on examples beyond the United States because guess what? (You can tell Ilyse wrote this part) Race and religion exist outside the United States, sometimes in different ways. Shocking, I know, fellow self-centered Americans (Steve Buscemi.GIF).

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Well, good news! While some of my research has touched upon the United States, the overwhelming majority does not. It's almost like we planned a division of labor.

Megan Goodwin:

Yay!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So today, we're going to think about race, religion, and Islam in particular internationally. I am well aware that Islam is not the only religion that is racialized, and that it is racialized differently in different places that are not the US. But, it is both my own area of expertise, and the way in which we can focus an episode that's supposedly about the whole world and racial definitions and religion. We gotta have some kind of things to hold on to. Okay, so the thesis today: race and religion isn't just a United States phenomena. Euro-American definitions of race fundamentally shaped (AND shape) the world's understanding of race, even if local varieties are homegrown. And for our case study: Muslims are racialized in meaningful, semi-consistent ways globally.

Megan Goodwin:

I'm ready. Don't slip out the back, Jack. We've got a new LESSON PLAN, Stan. I love this so much.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Today's lesson plan is to first trek back a little and talk about imperialism. I know, I know you're over my rants on all things pre-21st century but the thing is-

Megan Goodwin:

Never, never! I' never over those

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Okay, good, because the thing is that European imperialism helped popularize, spread, formalize, invent, not just modern categories of religion (like we've told you about before) but also scientific race theories. And straight up, for most European imperial powers, the global slave trade, rooted in notions of white, Christian, religious, and racial superiority, is the economic driving force behind enforcing these systems violently.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So after I do this, after I make sure that y'all know the big broad picture, I'm going to walk us through a few examples of how this imperial, colonial, post-colonial soup of ideas about religion and race manifest for Muslims. And I'm cautious to keep saying: this is broad strokes because, like, I'm drawing on so many scholars and archives and regions, but I- I will, I will get over my need for 400 footnotes per paragraph.

Megan Goodwin:

You will not get over that at all, at all. But we love you, we embrace and love your weird brain. Obviously, I, myself am never gonna be mad about wanting too many citations, but, I think footnotes are kind of a visual thing- and the podcast is an audio medium. I really like the plan of big picture then examples. Even if they are from a bird's eye view, even if they are not footnoted to infinity and beyond. So that is also why we have shownotes and we give homework.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Okay, I- I reluctantly-

Megan Goodwin:

You can do it!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

accept those terms... Okay, so just to give us another place to bite in, the thesis again is: eligion and race absolutely ave local nuances, the whole world over. But, religions are racialized beyond the United States. And second, Islam is racialized in ways that are locally inflected, but also part of global ideologies, histories, patterns.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, A) race and racialized religion happens not just in the United States, no matter what I think.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Check.

Megan Goodwin:

And- despite the fact that like, mm, Islam and Muslims, look, acts, are different, in different places all over the world, we see Islam being racialized all over the world. And there are some major patterns in the way that Islam gets racialized globally.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You got it.

Megan Goodwin:

Excellent. Good job me. Keeping it 101: ON TODAY. The segment where we do some professor-work. IRMF! Help us with big picture stuff. Why do we need to talk about imperialism again? Why, why, why are you like this!? Why!? I love you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I love you too. And a good- a good throttling every so often won't do me any harm.

Megan Goodwin:

Oh no!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But here's why. Okay, so you know how in the last episode, when we were talking about race and religion in the United States, you said that several hundred years ago, a bunch of Christian European dudes who are mostly British, French, Spanish, and Dutch showed up in the so-called"New World" and, you know, for funsies, did genocide and enslavement in the name of economic expansion, white Christian supremacy, and global conquest?

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, I did. I did say that.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Well, I know you- I know that- I know that you didn't know this, but those British, French, Spanish, and Dutch dudes are acting on behalf of and in concert with their imperial regimes.

Megan Goodwin:

I like, mi-might have known it a little, I have met you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I'm just being a dick.

Megan Goodwin:

No, I like it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So, like, imperialism- imperialism was part of your story. And I'm- I'm picking on Megan, but it was part of the story we already told you last episode, dear nerds. And we just like, often forget to mention it when we talk about the United States because the United States is a weird case of colonialism. Right? The OG white colonizers eventually revolted and won. And because they were white, and because they had all sorts of goods that could be easily traded for (because they were white and Christian) this new nation state, this new empire of the United States, emerged from its colonization as a fully recognized country and ally to Europe, for the most part. As opposed to emerging after a revolution, in say, beleaguered, indebted, punished-and-shunned manners, which is what happened in places, uh, like Haiti.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, we fucked Haiti up good. We're still fucking up Haiti good.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Oh, yeah. So like the mean way of saying why the United States is really good at ignoring colonialism, or part of being part of imperial systems is that the American Revolution was about children gaining independence from their parents in order to run the family business and maybe like, live in the family beach house. Supes adult.

Megan Goodwin:

This is like when Will and Carlton, go live in the pool house, right?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Sorry, I'm in the middle of a Fresh Prince [of Bel Air] rewatch, so.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Which is to say that the United States, despite most American protests to the contrary (and our alarming ability to meddle in other countries' shit) is- is actually part of the international and European imperialism, and later euro-American imperialism, is simply the cauldron from which modern race theory and modern religions emerge at the same time. In tandem. From the poolhouse.

Megan Goodwin:

Horrible, horrible poolhouse.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

We've done some work on this before Megan, right? So like in episodes 103 and 104, when we talked about imperialism as the framework through which "world religions" and "major religions" were developed and codified. Can you remind our nerds what- what that was, so that- so that I could take a sip of water?

Megan Goodwin:

I can, and I will. Stay hydrated. Okay. So, way long ago in the before time that was season one (when we could still hug our friends), I definitely remember talking about how world religions- our world in relationship to (you're going to be shocked to hear this) Christians, and especially Protestants. So a bunch of white, European and European-descended white Christians got together and decided which religions were"actual" religions and worth paying attention to. Because, they were the people who made up the system as part of imperial expansion. Like, this is where you talked about Edward Said and his sense that imperialism had two sets of dudes to do the enforcing the new regimes. First dude (dude with guns), military showed up and controlled the population and enforced laws physically. But the second dude, the scarier, arguably more damaging long term, dude, was the dude with a pen, scholars, registrar's demographers, people responsible for classifying and categorizing and codifying, and telling non-white non-Christians why they weren't as good as everyone else and so should honestly be grateful that white European Christians showed up to, like, civilize them.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And those dudes made facts, facts. And when they showed up in, say, South Asia, and they said that Hindus were fundamentally different- not just religiously, mind you, but temperamentally different than Muslims- they didn't just say it, they proved it. They cited the Qur'an. They cited hadith (or, um, sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad). They noted how Muslims had ruled South Asia since 1226, implying that they ruled through might over Hindus who were therefore weak.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, so, sorry just checking in because you know I don't like to do things before 1980 (or like beyond the tristate area). So, the Brits show up in India in the mid-19th

century, and go:

"Okay, what are your religions? You're Hindu, you're Muslim, we're gonna call those religions now." And looked at a bunch of sacred texts, or things they decided were sacred

texts, and were like:

"Alright, well, Muslims, are clearly warlike, because they have been ruling since 1226 (a date I just learned) and Hindus must be weak because they allowed themselves to be ruled for the last 600 years."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, more or less. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Gross, okay.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I mean, like, in broad strokes, you got it.

Megan Goodwin:

That's, I- that's all I can do because of being an Americanist who doesn't like to talk about things before 1980. That's what you get.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

That's the one slide version.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Totally, one slide. I want to expand that slide a little bit, because...

Megan Goodwin:

Of course you do.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

It's not- it's not just South Asia. So you're totally right. They show up, um (well they show up a lot earlier than the mid-19th century in South Asia), but they start really stranglehold power around then. But, this- this set of documents they made, this facts about "why are Hindus different than Muslims?" "Why- what are Muslims inherently,""What are Hindus essentially." These aren't just like, internal documents for the local registrars to use in the municipality of Calcutta, or like, uh, like an annual evalu- evaluation they send home to Parliament. Now, the Brits ruled other places in the world at the same time they ruled South Asia and facts are facts, right?

Megan Goodwin:

Facts are fact, subcontinent.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Exactly. So- so this "evidence," and- and I want you to hear that in both scare quotes and not in scare quotes, right? Cuz like, we know that this is baloney. But we also know that it is taken as fact. So this evidence that the British are using about Muslims being inherently violent, about Muslims being unable to submit to anything but Muslim rulers and therefore they are ineligible for citizenship, or proper subjecthood, Muslims as inherently rebellious... These"facts" became facts, not just in South Asia, where the facts were gathered, but everywhere British folk ruled. And this was a lot of places, Megan, I can't list them all both because, like, country names have changed and because we don't have all day. But here's a smattering of where Muslim populations would have been affected, and for our benefit, I'm going to use contemporary country names.

Megan Goodwin:

Thank you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania and Zanzibar in particular, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Singapore, parts of Malaysia, South Africa... I'm definitely leaving a lot out.

Megan Goodwin:

So like half the damn world, basically. They

looked at India and went:

"Muslims are like this" and then, took over half the damn world and went: "Muslims are like this everywhere."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I'm gonna say yes.

Megan Goodwin:

Gross.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So I want you to- I want you to like actually play with that with me. So I want you to imagine this one regime, one overarching set of legal, cultural, political, linguistic ideas deciding that a given population was inherently violent, incompatible with its statecraft, unruly, different.

Megan Goodwin:

Yikes.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That's what happened.

Megan Goodwin:

Yikes.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And this is, dear nerds, in part how Muslims become racialized. The British, deploying their dudes with pens, proved that Muslims were this one thing, and that their Muslim-ness, not their Indian-ness, or their Nigerian-ness, or their Iraqi-ness, was the most important thing to know about them. Never mind that these wide, wide swaths of humanity speak different languages, have different cultural norms, or different ethnicities even within one region, and are represented across a wide range of skin tone, physical appearances etc. All of that's irrelevant. Their 'Islam' defined them.

Megan Goodwin:

[blows raspberry]

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I know, fart sounds galore. I want to be clear here though, because I'm harping on the Brits because that is my wheelhouse. But the crucial thing about this period of time is that European empires fundamentally agree on race theory. They disagree on who should win global domination; they are all fighting each other(sometimes in the countries they colonized) for top-dog global ruler status, but, they straight up, flat out agree across the whole damned continent that white Christians are better than, and ought to rule, non-white, non-Christians the world over- at home and abroad. So while there are differences in how this worked in, say, French colonial spaces than British colonial spaces, the premise remained. Muslims=bad. So, I've got receipts for days nerds, but Megan said I'm not allowed to cite them all at you and I have, in fact, been filibustering.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, I love your brain, A). And B), we cannot have 24 hour long episodes. But-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

People would love it, it would- it would be like 24, but like, less Islamophobic.

Megan Goodwin:

Oh!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Okay fine, we won't do it, we won't do it.

Megan Goodwin:

I mean low bar but okay. You can have your show notes...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But I want to.

Megan Goodwin:

I know, I know. Well, and even as you're saying this, my brain is doing, like, a really pro sem thing where we'r reading David Hume, where he i helping create this idea o religion, but also explainin why white Christians are bette than everybody else and everyone else actually just really wants to be dominated, they don't know it yet. So that's gross. I hate it, yes t all of this. Uh, and also a rem nder to my fellow self-cen ered Americans / Americanists that this isn't exclusive to "n t-us," like we're not, not par of this process. This kin of religio-racial language nd thinking lingers to this v ry day in state and fede al documents and it's a big pa t of how agencies like the FBI g t their start. So I recommended n the last episode, Sylvest r Johnson, Lerone Martin has do e a bunch of this work too to s ow that the FBI had, let's call t a preferential option for w ite Protestantism, and the b ack Muslims in the United St tes have always been a target for state surveillance and viole ce because America as a st te imagines itself as white nd Christian. Or, even for f lks that don't, uh, think of t emselves as Christian or for ins itutions that don't think of the selves as Christian, you have to be not, not Christian. You c n claim to be not religious, bu you can't act in ways that w can prove are not Christian, a d therefore not American. P us, you can definitely see his Muslims=danger rhetoric exp essed in American foreign policy(whaddup Beth Hurd) and adopted by other states as wit China's insistence that they ha e to put Uighurs (ethnicall Turkish-descended Muslim popu ation in the northwest of China- putting Uighurs into conc ntration camps because they're Muslim and that means that th y're threats to state security.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. All of this, um, as I- as I have argued in the majority of my writing, is related to this expansion of race theory, imperialism and definitions of religion that we could trace- now, granted, they have different iterations and different pathways to where we are today- but that this is all related in- to the source code of that, like, venn diagram of race theory and religion. So, uh, I want to say this again and louder for the back. Just so you don't think this is all history, this is, as Megan points out, ongoing. When Muslim-majority states became decolonized, um, and exist in spaces of self-rule, it isn't like they got a clean slate. We still see the language of the untrustworthy British Muslim in- in debates about Brexit, for example. In France contemporarily, we see inordinate anti-Muslim laws, policies and etc. around burqa bans. And, um- and as we talked about before, that in COVID, you're mandat- mandated in France to wear a face mask, but also not mandated; you're not allowed to wear a face mask if it's religious. So it's not the mask, it's the person. And in Russia, which was- which was the one time center of the USSR, which controlled much of (if not all of) Central Asia, the anti-Muslim violence and rate of crime against Muslim and Muslim-affiliated people is, like, frankly, intense. And we're still-

Megan Goodwin:

I mean, we're seeing it in-. Oh, sorry. Go I was just gonna say, um, not to like get in your ahead.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

No, go ahead. territory. But we're seeing this in India too, right? Where like,[Indan Prime Minister Narendra] Modi's regime is using very specific anti-Muslim language suggesting that they're inherently- that they can't be true Indians. And that's why they have to be treated differently by the state- or should I not talk about that because that's going to get us in trouble? Well, like, we will get the trolls, the trolls love that. But you should talk about it. That is absolutely on there. I just- I just didn't want to use India as an example again.

Megan Goodwin:

I know, but like, I knew a thing! I knew a thing!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I know, I'm so proud of you!

Megan Goodwin:

Thank you.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

All of which is to say, that we're still grappling with the ways that race theory made Muslims a racialized "Other-" the way that, um, white folks using race theory made Muslims a racialized"Other-" even if those iterations look different in different places, and over time. Regardless, Muslims have been racialized, and even the idea that shows up in a lot of people's common rhetoric, um- the idea of the "Muslim world," as if it's another place... like a separate globe, just for Muslims.

Megan Goodwin: The Muslim World:

a whole new world, if you will.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Exactly! Yeah. The Muslim World's capital is definitely Agrabah.

Megan Goodwin:

Sorry. Sorry, you were saying?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

As I was gonna say, um, one of my favorite historians and just all around rad human Cemil Aydin has argued, um (and he's- spoiler alert- he's going to be our storytime later), but Cemil Aydin has argued that the"Muslim World" reflects the racialization of Muslims in our daily speech patterns. Because why would we assume that Nigerians and Indonesians and Bangladeshis and black Americans and Turks and Arabs and Kurds, and and and and... are all part of the same so-called "world" that is definitely not "ours"?

Megan Goodwin:

Oh, wait, I know! I know! It's race and racialization, isn't it?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

It is, you got it.

Megan Goodwin:

I learned a thing. Good for me.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

In the spirit of good scholarship, though, I also want to point out that racialization of Muslims as a particular group has interesting side effects and frankly, isn't all bad. Muslims, too, use the "Muslim world" as Aydin shows us, to really try to figure all this stuff out: How can we resist colonial power? How can we get a seat at the table? How can we opt out of this shit altogether? How can we address some of the- albeit racist- critiques levied at us? What internal resources do we have to do this? Are we united? Can we be? So this idea of the "Muslim world" as an evidenced space of racialization becomes really important to Muslims. It becomes part of how Muslims, especially intellectuals (if we're following Aydin's work here) in the 19th and 20th centuries, start to talk about themselves and each other. So in a weird way, the racialization modality so, like, assuming all of your empire's were basically- all of your empire's Muslims were basically the same, created a scenario in which Muslims themselves started to use that logic, often for the work of both anti-colonial activism and within-the-system gambits for representation, usually across national, ethnic, linguistic lines. It's where we start to see movements that you may have heard of before, like pan-Arabism, or pan-Islamism, which really, really briefly, are movements meant to put regional, linguistic, and theological differences aside in order to work for a common good where Arabs or Muslims are at the center. And for the record, I'm not saying that all of these movements did great work or even work I like, but I want us to hear how racialization became a space of creative and innovative thinking for Muslims, even while they experienced imperial violence in differing and vast empires.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay, so I want to pause and make sure that I am following. Here- here is what I hear you saying: Number one, European empires did their gross stuff across the globe, and since they ruled or came to influence nearly the whole globe, Muslims experienced that rule in specific ways. So like, European empires showed up in a place, went "Muslims are like this in this one place," and then went, "Oh, all Muslims must be like that."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, you got it.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah? Okay. That,"all Muslims must inherently be like this" is racialization. They get understood as one group unified by religious affiliation, despite the fact that they're all over the world speaking a bunch of languages, look nothing like one another, have specific characteristics specific to their locations.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Check. Got it.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay. Cool, cool, cool. But also, because people have agency and use that agency to find creative ways to flourish in the world, some Muslims found innovative spaces within that racialization and redefined and rethought (and are still redefining and rethinking ideas) about global, Islamic belonging. About something inherent to Islam that, like, unites Muslims, regardless of language or location.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, check.

Megan Goodwin:

Cool. What did I miss?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Not much. But I think- I think maybe I just want to also add that, um, because we're living in a moment of heightened Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence, that I want to be clear that anti-Muslim, um, vehemence is longstanding, and it's tied up with different things in different places. So, the reasons people give (if we allow them those reasons) for being anti-Muslim, for being Islamophobic, for seeing Muslims as one group, those really vary. And I would be remiss not to mention, say, for example, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, which is both about ethnic identities that are local and longstanding, as well as broader tensions around race, Muslim compatibilities within states, and nationalism.

Megan Goodwin:

We see it in Myanmar as well with the Rohingya. Right, where it is- it gets framed in international media coverage as just a"Budhists v. Muslims" issue, but it's also about ethnicity, and understandings of how they relate to the state. Right?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That's exactly right.

Megan Goodwin:

Okay.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And you already talked about both China and in India, where we're seeing renewed and local iterations of anti-Muslim oppression, with concentration camps in China, and out-loud, super violent pogroms in India. And so while all this stuff looks differently, they share a similar understanding of their Muslim-minority populations as being incompatible with the government and its regime. And, also, I want to underline something you said before, which is we see American foreign policy-

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

if not outwardly cosigning this kind of anti-Muslim treatment, then, like, tacitly supporting it. And we do both, America.

Megan Goodwin:

We sure do. And we do it out loud, like when the current president of the United States tells China and Xi Jinping to go ahead and build those camps. And also, when we see American corporations being like, "Gosh, China, I wish you wouldn't put people in concentration camps, but I guess we'll go ahead and just ignore that and keep manufacturing in your factories cuz it's cheaper."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Right.

Megan Goodwin:

Gross. Sorry.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And I would- I would just- I would frankly, close this out by saying that both of these- China and India's- contemporary regimes are bolstered by a global devaluation of Muslim experience, religion, and life, this many years, of course, into the so-called American-led "War on Terror." But also this many years after white Christian empires set about racializing brown and black Muslim folks as part of the project of dominating them.

Megan Goodwin:

So many years. Okay, so to close out our professor work here, racialization of religion is obviously not exclusive to Muslims, as Ilyse has been saying all along. But, we're focusing on Muslims, one, because that's where Ilyse's expertise lies, and, because it's a big fucking problem and has been for literal centuries. But again, when we're talking about race and racialization, we're never just talking about state violence or cultural oppression. Muslims and other racialized religious groups have also responded to racialization in ways that rethink and reshape the world in new, important, radically creative ways that reimagined community and belonging and meaning.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You've heard from us. Now let's hear about us. It's PRIMARY SOURCES.

Megan Goodwin:

[singing] Primary sources! It's never not funny to me.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I just- I like that the song and the giggle is just the soundbite. Like it's not just one or the other.

Megan Goodwin:

Thank you, so silly! Alright, so I'm cheating a little bit / spoiler-ing storytime except Ilyse already spoiled it so I don't feel bad. My primary source for today is my ongoing frustration with the phrase, the "Muslim world."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Ooh, tell us more.

Megan Goodwin:

I shall. I was a Mellon postdoc at Bates from 2014 to 2016, and another postdoc invited me to guest lecture on Islam and gender in her history class. So Bates, if you don't know, is a small liberal arts college. It was founded by abolitionists, it talks a pretty good social justice game, and a lot of the students and faculty and staff are on the team. But it is also an elite small liberal arts college in New England, so, it means another big chunk of the student body are wealthy white kids who just want to skii, I am not kidding. So, I'm leading the discussion that anyone who does anything on Islam and gender fucking hates to do the, "UGH. Fine, I will explain AGAIN, why your 'but the women!' bullshit critique of Islam is, and always has been, bullshit." Did I mention that it was bullshit? And one of the students whomst-(such bullshit, and, like, I do this lecture because I know...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

...Islamists straight up have to do it all the time. And like it's my- my way of trying to share the load.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Aww, well I appreciate that, that's

Megan Goodwin:

It's so stupid. I try) Alright, and so one of so nice. these students, whomst I believed to have been a polisci major (pregnant pause...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

We hear that pregnant pause.

Megan Goodwin:

Mmm), kept using the phrase the "Muslim world." And I flagged it a couple of times, but he kept using the"Muslim world" to signify this specific region where Muslims were, and what they did there, aside from, uh, hate us, and presumably our freedoms, they were also oppressing their women. So I did the thing that I do and kind of did for y'all,

which is:

the Muslims are everywhere in the damn world, Muslims have been in the US since before there was a US, people everywhere oppress women- this isn't just a religious problem, it is a people problem. And specific to the readings that he was supposed to have done for the day, mm, attempts to liberate Muslim women both harm Muslim women, and distract us from attending to all the other ways America harms women and other vulnerable people. And this kid was not having it to

this like:

"Well, I disagree." It was like- and- and then I,

who had also had it, said:

"That's fine. You're wrong. Let's move on." One of those moments where like...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yep. No, sometimes they're just wrong. And teaching means telling them that they're wrong.

Megan Goodwin:

Right, right. Right. And it was that moment of like, you are wrong, you did not do the readings, and you are no longer having conversation. You are- you are interested in my time, but not my perspective. So, dear nerds, he was wrong. Muslims live everywhere. Muslims are of every race, every gender, every sexuality, and even if they are too polite to say so- they are tired of your bullshit. So knock it off. P.S., this kid definitely followed me out of the class and tried to give me notes on my pedagogy. I vividly remember it, I was standing next to this beautiful tree on Bates campus and it smelled wonderful

and he launched into this:

"So I think you're really great teacher, but a thing that you need to keep in mind is..." Like out of my mouth (as is my wont) comes: "Are you trying to give me notes on my pedagogy?" And he's like: "Well, you could be really great at this if you..." and I was like: "Yeah, no." And

he's like:

"Well, you weren't respectful of me." And I said:"Do you think you were respectful of me?" And he said:"GROW UP MEGAN" and stormed off. So, as I learned to say in North Carolina, bless his heart. Uh, American imperialism dies hard, y'all. The end.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I mean, also if you're gonna, like, yell at someone, you should- it's- it's- it's Dr. Goodwin, like, get it together.

Megan Goodwin:

Well, that's- I think what I tweeted after it happened was like, my one regret in the exchange was that I did not follow up with "That's Dr. Goodwin to you."

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Like, seriously. Get outta here,

Megan Goodwin:

Too late.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

If you're gonna be a dick then you need to be like- right? It's like when you talk to the ref and you only say sir, like- just, do it better. Anyway.

Megan Goodwin:

I would have settled for ma'am.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That was a primary source and a half.

Megan Goodwin:

Yep, yep.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Oh that was a lot. Alright. Well, I'm gonna keep this stupid short, but I obviously teach a lot about race and Islam.

Megan Goodwin:

Oh, do you?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And, uh, I locate myself as a white person. And I think that one of the most, um, challenging sets of teaching experiences I've had at UVM has been that quite a lot of Burlington- quite a lot of the Muslims in Vermont- have historically been, um, Bosnian refugees. It was the first Muslim community- not the first Muslim community in Vermont- but one of the first, like, really established, deep-roots, long time here, kinds of communities. Um, and the way that refugee relocation works mean- is that, like, once that community was well established, then the government was happy to, like, distribute more Muslims here. So-

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah we have the same thing in- oh, sorry. I was just gonna say we have the same thing in Maine where we had Somali Muslim, um, asylum seekers in Lewiston and that, yeah, that community now has a really vibrant and also vexed relationship with the town of Lewiston.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, so what's interesting about the Muslim community in Vermont (and this might be further afield than anyone wants to be) is that it's like actually, really both pluralistic- like, it is a hodgepodge of people from the world over with different ethnicities and languages and backgrounds- but also that creates tensions internally, right? Anyway, one of the things that's vexing at UVM is that quite a lot of the Muslim students are white.

Megan Goodwin:

Hmm.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Right, because Bosnians are European. And many of this second-generation

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yup. of like the children of, um, asylum- new Americans and asylum seekers, is just now, and like, for the last couple years, being college-aged, and, like, a little bit older, but like fully second gen, not 1.5 gen. Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And so in a lot of classes, we will have very tense exchanges about what Muslims "really are." And what my (predominantly white) students want to say is brown, Muslims are brown, which is, again, problematic, if not altogether incorrect. But when you talk about it, and then watch students fundamentally not believe that Muslims that are not converts could also be both European and white. It's the moment where I'm like, Uh huh. Uh huh. The thing that we were gonna do in this class was talk about art. But the thing that we are doing is now talking about the racialization of Islam, because that thing that you just said, dear racist student, needs to be, like, nipped in the bud.

Megan Goodwin:

Yup, yup.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And we need to- we need to unpack your assumptions, here. And like, that's how we know Islam is racialized, because it can't be this thing that it is.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah. Yeah. And I could talk for days... Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

...a out how, um- the violence of tha. It is the thing I talk about very single semester with my Bo niak students, because imagine h ving your family, um- definitio ally, you are here because y ur people experienced genocide,

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

and to be so erased from a common knowledge that not only does no one know about that trauma, they fundamentally cease to believe that you exist.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

It is such a violent space that we talk about, often in ways that, you know, when I taught in North Carolina, that simply wasn't the demography of who is in our classrooms. And so it's a different challenge. But for me, the primary sources, I watched this play out in really fascinating ways, just given the wealth of- of humans that come through my class at UVM.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, that's hard. I- I am reminded of having a conversation shortly after the 2016 election with a Turkish colleague, who was baffled that he was stopped at the airport, flying back from Turkey. Um, and I said: "Well... yes, that is what happens to- to folks who are racialized as Muslim, uh, at

the airport." and he said:

"But I'm Turkish, I'm white." And I said, "Not at the airport you're not." And...

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Have we got books for you.

Megan Goodwin:

We have so many books for y'all.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah.

Megan Goodwin:

Anyway, uh, religions are racialized, the"Muslim world" is, and is not, and is, and is not, a thing. And, uh, if you're gonna be a dick, you have to call me Professor Goodwin. The end.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

That was primary sources.

Megan Goodwin:

[singing] primary sources! Don't believe us check the book. It is STORY TIME.

Krusty the Klown:

Hey, kids it's story time.

Megan Goodwin:

Ilyse what do you got for us?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Okay, so we've been talking about Cemil Aydin's book, both directly and surreptitiously, and so I want to read a little bit from it. It's Cemil Aydin's 2017 book "The Idea of the Muslim World: a Global Intellectual History", and I am drawing here from pages five and six. It's a really great pull quote that I will put most of on the show notes but that I'm not going to read the whole thing because reading you a page and a half of stuff is boring, I will read you the relevant bits. Ready?

Megan Goodwin:

As Tim Good would say, edit.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Exactly. Aydin writes, "The idea of the Muslim world is inseparable from the claim that Muslims constitute a race... The rendering of Muslims as racially distinct- a process that called on both "Semitic" ethnicity and religious difference- and inferior aimed to disable and deny their demands for rights within European empires" [pg. 5](And then I'm going to skip down a little bit and say) "Racial ssumptions also ensured that ater subaltern and nationalist laims for rights would be ramed in the idioms of Muslim olidarity and an enduring clash etween Islam and the West, iving rise to the Islamism and slamophobia of the 1980s and eyond" [pg. 6]. What do you ake of that, Megan? And then'll- and then I'll do my thing.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah, yeah, do it. Um, well, I mean, let's just start with like, Cemil is so fucking smart. Like, we both write about- you and I- both write about racialization and Muslims a lot, but Cemil just like nails it and having his work to cite makes our work both, like, possible, and- and so much smarter. So like this is another moment of just being grateful for smart folks sharing their smartness with us. Um, this passage, I think, highlights the points we've been

making since last season:

religion and empire aren't separate, and race especially can't just be a day on your syllabus if you're teaching religion. Race and religion are, as we have been saying, coconstitutive. You are not understanding religion if you're not thinking about race, and how race and racialization created and continue to create religion, and vice versa. Plus, the cranky Americanist in me wants to pay particular attention to the way that we instrumentalized racialized religion. Racialization of religious groups as a way of insisting that "those" people are fundamentally different from"us" (who were taught to think that we were American, and many of whom were taught to think that we were white). So "those" people are different than "us," and thus somehow less important, their lives less valuable, their resources not truly their own. Racialization is often a strategy of dehumanization. So, like, reminder, when we're talking about religion and race and gender and sex and all of those other things that make up a human. We are always, always, always talking about power.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Yeah, yeah. And we should say out loud that we know- we know Cemil Aydin, which is why we're using his first name after just pitching a fit about not being called Dr. Goodwin.

Megan Goodwin:

Dr. Aydin,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Dr. Aydin.

Megan Goodwin:

My bad!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

He is a friend of the pod.

Megan Goodwin:

He is a friend of a pod.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Um, yeah, this book is really, really important and, um, teaches beautifully for those of you nerds who need a book to teach in a class on modernity or empire or race. But, I think for me, all of this stuff about racialization and power is really, really important. And I- I also want to point out that what Aydin does so well is that he is really clear about how the racialization of Muslims starts as an imperial project, but then imperial subjects rally in some ways around this phraseology. So you have people writing their own histories that go back in time, above and beyond, what- what the "Muslim world" as a phrase had ever done in real life, and remake their worlds around it. And I think that- I think that what I'm so- what I like about this passage, what I like about this book so much, is that it is so clear that the process of racialization is cataclysmic, it changes everything. And yet, it changes things, like, in ways that are innovative, and creative and interesting, and that aren't just violent and oppressive and horrific. Which isn't to say that we should be excited about and, like, "Oh, yeah, that- that created this thing and that's good." No, no, no, no, dear nerds. But I think that why I value Aydin and why I picked this selection is that he makes no bones about the legacies of- of racialization where you get Islam-versus-everyone, like get out of here, but also that it becomes this unifying factor. And one of the major drives of anti-colonial movements was this idea of like, well, if we're all the same, then, like, we should have a meeting! Like what if, we had this meeting and we, like, wrote letters and we thought with each other because this- this fucking regime shit sucks! Like, what if- what if we united against that? And- and- and you know I love a union, so...

Megan Goodwin:

There is power in a union.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But yeah, this idea that race and religion are not separable is crucial for any of us who talk about Islam and so if you are doing that, stop it.

Megan Goodwin:

Don't pack up your stuff yet, nerds! You've got HOMEWORK.

Simpsons:

Homework? What homework?

Megan Goodwin:

Nerds, you know by now that talking too fast is kind of our thing. So if you missed anything, don't forget about show notes where we stash our links, our citations, things you might have missed, things Ilyse tries to smuggle past me, and we do our best to make sure that there's no paywalls. Or if there is, because accurate citation, that we find you other, not-paywall things. Plus, transcripts. IRMF, you are up, what do you want to assign for today?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

So much, I guess. And all this stuff I mentioned above I'll put in the show notes. But let me start with some real homework assignments. So Daryl Li's "The

Universal Enemy:

Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" is a super smart book.

Megan Goodwin:

I wanna read that one. I haven't read it yet.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I think you should grab and, um, I will put up- for all of these books, y'all, I'm gonna put up some interviews with the author. So, like, those will not be paywalled, but the book is a book, so I don't have that.

Megan Goodwin:

But maybe your library does.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

But your library might. Nazia Kazim's book "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics" centers the US in a lot of ways but it's definitely worth it. Uh, Nadine El-Enany's really new book (like, I think it came out two months ago) is called"(B)ordering Britain: Law, Race, and Empire" and it's super smart, and I wonder if our listeners in the UK wouldn't mind a rec about their contemporary spaces?

Megan Goodwin:

Oh!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And then, um, Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana have an edited volume that is chock-a-block with awesome essays about Muslims, racism, and empire. It is called "With Stones in Our Hands: Muslims, Racism, and Empire." Uh, and if this British example about racialization and Muslims titillates in any way... that's- that's the entirety of my book, and I feel silly continuing to plug it, but that is like literally the entirety of my book. So I will link to maybe some podcast interviews that I've given about it.

Megan Goodwin:

Love it!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

And you can- you can check those out. I'll stop there.

Megan Goodwin:

I'm kind of impressed that we made it through an entire episode about Muslims and Brits and racialization. And you didn't mention the East India Company or rifles. So-

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

I'm, you know, I know what you can't handle anymore. And it's not-

Megan Goodwin:

The fucking rifles. I read all of Ilyse's book and so should you. Obviously, also Dr. Aydin's "The Idea of the Muslim World" so good, so smart, read all of that. Uh, friend of the pod Simran Jeet Singh did a piece last year for Religion News Service called "A pat-down at the airport passes the shame of racial profiling to my 3-year-old", where he talks about... being racially profiled at the airport in front of his three year old and it is devastating but also shows the way that racialization of Islam is slippery and doesn't just harm Muslims. Yeah, so I have a thing in the journal the American Academy of Religion, uh, which I don't think I have recommended yet, um, that looks at the racialization of Muslim women in Atlanta specifically, and how a Georgia lawmaker tried to make covering a reason that they were a threat to Good Order and national security and that[they] shouldn't be allowed to drive among other things, so that's trippy, it's in the JAR, which means it's paywalled but like maybe get in touch and I could probably hook you up. We have recommended both of these before but they're too good to

come back to:

so both the Islamophobia is racism syllabus, and the black Islam syllabus specifically have really good, really smart sources on the rac- racialization of Islam. And to veer slightly away from Islam for a moment I want to shout out the work of folks like Tia Noelle Pratt and Shannen Dee Williams, who are working to recover voices of black Catholics in the US, as American Catholicism has frequently been racialized as white. So Tia has a black Catholic syllabus that she is continually building and compiling. Shannen's forthcoming"Subversive Habits" looks at black nuns in the US (super excited about that). But she also has a great piece in"America" last year, so I will make sure that you get a link for that. Also, friend of the pod Matthew J Cressler just had a piece come out in The Journal of Religion and American Culture called "Real Good and Sincere Catholics" that looks at the resistance to desegregation of congregations in Chicago. And last one, Richard Newton (also friend of the pod) had a recent piece come out on the way that religio-racializing the US as a white Christian space, justifies or gets used to justify violence against black folks. It also has among my favorite academic titles ever, it is called"Scared Sheetless"

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Oof.

Megan Goodwin:

Yeah. Uh, it is- that's a- a [Klu Klux] Klan joke that- and, just in case you missed it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

Jokes are funny when you explain them.

Megan Goodwin:

Jokes are always funnier when they have to be explained. And that is available in the Journal of Religion and Violence. So, I will see if I can get you some public-facing, um, auxiliary work to give you a sense of what both Cressler and Richard are working on. They're good. They're smart. You should read them. Uh, well, gang, that's it for us today. Thank you for listening. Thank you to our transcription Captain Katherine Brennan whose work helps make this podcast accessible. As usual, come yell at us or with us on Twitter.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst:

You can find Megan on twitter@mpgphd and Ilyse, that's me,@profirmf or the show@keepingit_101 find the website at keepingit101.com, that's where we stash all the goodies. And with that, peace out nerds.

Megan Goodwin:

Do your homework, it's on the syllabus.

Eddie Izzard:

And we built up empires, we stole countries that's what you- that's how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags, yeah. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in."I claim India for Britain.""You can't claim us, we live here! 500 million of us!" "Do you have a flag?" "We don't need a bloody flag- this is our country you bastard." "No flag, no country, you can't have one. That's the rules that I've just made up. And I'm backing us up with this gun that was lent from the National Rifle Association."

People on this episode

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst

Co-host
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Megan Goodwin

Co-host