On the Discursive and Methodological Categorisation of Islam and Muslims in the West: Ontological and Epistemological Considerations

Abstract

This article reflects on the ethical and epistemological challenges facing researchers engaged in contemporary studies of Islam and Muslims in the West. Particularly, it focuses on the impact of the constructions and categorisations of Muslims and Islam in research. To do this, it considers the entwinement of public discourses and the development of research agendas and projects. To examine this complex and enmeshed process, this article explores ideological, discursive and epistemological approaches that it argues researchers need to consider. In invoking these three approaches alongside an analysis of a collection of recent research, this article contends that questions of race, religion and politics have been deployed to reinforce, rather than challenge, certain essentialist/orientalist representations of Islam and Muslims in the West in research. As this article shows, this practice is increasingly threatening to compromise, in a Habermasian communicative sense (i.e., the opportunity to speak and be heard for all concerned), the ethical and epistemological underpinnings of social science research with its emphasis on inclusion and respect.

“I Discovered I Love to Pray Alone Too”: Pluralist Muslim Women’s Approaches to Practicing Islam during and after Ramadan 2020

“…By adopting such a focus, this article adds to the small but growing body of literature on the ecology of broadly understood pluralist Islam that has the potential to address the methodological neglect of Muslim populations that cannot be categorized as visibly pious in social scientific study of Islam. 3 In addition, by focusing on pluralist Islam as a less visible and thus less represented mode of living and doing Islam, we wish to complicate the term "Muslim" as an ascribed category of practice in Western discourse (Mansouri 2020). The hyphenated preferred identifications used by the respondents (such as "Sunni Palestinian", "Kashimiri American", "loosely Sunni", "queer Muslim") clearly demonstrate the significance of intersecting religious, political, ethnic, and biographical identities.…”

Australian Muslims’ Visibility: The Politics of Oppression and Recognition

“…One identification of Muslimness is via individuals' religious and cultural features (Colic-Peisker et al (2019). Another form of identification is through the social category of Australian Muslims as a racialised and homogenised group (Poynting 2015;Mansouri 2020b). In this paper, Muslims' visibility is approached as the visibility of the socially and discursively constructed category of Muslims, particularly, members or representatives of Muslim community organisations.…”

“…The intensifying post-9/11 security agenda caused the relatively invisible religious identity of minorities in the West to be at the forefront of political, media, and public contestations (Mansouri 2015). Subsequently, an imposed, racialised, and homogenised religious identification of minorities as 'Muslims' replaced their earlier demographic identification and placed them within a problematic field of social categorisation and politicised visibility (Mansouri 2020b). Consequently, discourses of the 'enemy within' and the 'war on terror' post-9/11 manifested discursively at the government, media, and public levels casually associating terrorism with Muslimness and intensifying the visibility of Muslims as a problem minority.…”

"You Need To Let Go of Control”: Critical Reflections of a Participatory Action Research Doctoral Project with Muslim Women in Britain

“…They were asked if anyone had any prior experience conducting or taking part in research, to which two replied they had participated. As studies show that Muslim women may be suspicious of research (e.g., Mansouri, 2020), and to understand the women's initial feelings toward the project, I asked the group to share their thoughts on research conducted about Muslim women. The general feeling amongst the group was that traditional research tended to be focused on the researcher's agendas and lacked real impact for the communities involved.…”