Papers by Uzma Jamil
The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race and Islam, Eds. Naved Bakali and Farid Hafez. pp. 19-35. , 2022
How do we make sense of increased incidents of Islamophobia in the past five years? What does it ... more How do we make sense of increased incidents of Islamophobia in the past five years? What does it show us about the relationship between Muslims as racialised and religious minorities and white majorities in Canada? In this chapter, I explore these questions by examining the racialised logics of Islamophobia as an expression of coloniality. Far from being isolated incidents, the violence behind Islamophobia is closely tied with the violence of past and present relationships between white majorities and non-white racialised minorities in Canada as a white settler society. I trace the xenophobic attitudes towards the latter, including Muslims, in the past, before turning to the present political context to consider the impact of the War on Terror and the securitisation of Muslims as racialised threats. It has facilitated the institutionalisation of Islamophobia through laws and policies, illustrating how Islamophobia is a structural problem in society, rather than only a problem of individual negative attitudes and behaviours. Lastly, I consider Muslim politics in its assertions of political identity and agency to fight Islamophobia.
T & T Clark Handbook of Political Theology. Ed. Ruben Rosario-Rodriguez. Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 389-400., 2019
In this chapter I discuss how the “problem” of Muslims in the West is framed as solely a “problem... more In this chapter I discuss how the “problem” of Muslims in the West is framed as solely a “problem” of religion. I critique the assumptions that sustain this view and discuss the role of religion and race in defining the racialized non-Christian other in the West, arguing that Muslims have long been part of the arc of Western history culminating today in their marginalization within white, Western nations. In the second part of this chapter, I critique the framing of Muslims as “religious” in relation to the West as “secular.” Drawing on the work of Talal Asad, I analyze how the construction of these categories makes possible the positioning of Muslims as perpetually alien to the idea of white, Christian nation. In the conclusion, I return to the question of coloniality and its implications.
Contending Modernities, 2021
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In this post, Uzma Jamil reflects on the dynamics of Islamophobia in Canada, and more specifically in the province of Quebec. She contends that recent legislation has sought to codify Islamophobia into law. Bill 21, for example, restricts those wearing religious symbols from receiving public services in the name of Quebecois secularism. This secularism, she shows, does not operate with neutrality towards race, religion, or ethnicity, but instead promotes a White normative order. Drawing on Charles Mills, she contends that this Whiteness functions within an “epistemology of ignorance,” or a willing refusal to acknowledge the role of Whiteness in Quebecois national identity formation and its impact on Islamophobia and the relationship between Muslims and the nation.
ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies, 2021
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ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies, 2021
These four interventions by Ivan Kalmar, Peter Mandaville, S. Sayyid and I, respectively, engage ... more These four interventions by Ivan Kalmar, Peter Mandaville, S. Sayyid and I, respectively, engage with aspects of Tariq Modood’s Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism (2019). Collectively, they open up a conversation about the sig- nificance of the Muslim question, broadly speaking, and its relationship to the emergence of Muslim political identity within multicultural political arrange- ments in the UK, Europe, and North America in the past few decades. Underlying this conversation is the contingency of this relationship between multiculturalism and the Muslim question, and why it continues to be significant today in Muslim- minority contexts in western countries. In this introduction, I contextualize the main themes that frame this conversation and their significance for Critical Muslim Studies (CMS) and its adjacent fields.
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We Resist: Defending the Common Good in Hostile Times. Eds. Cynthia Levine-Rasky and Lisa Kowalchuk. McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 48-53., 2020
Critical Muslim Studies Blog, 2019
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Critical Muslim Studies Blog, 2019
On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and s... more On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and shot and killed 50 Muslims. All over the world, vigils to mourn the dead were quickly organized to bring together communities in shock. In New York City, two NYU students, Leen Dweik and Rose Asaf, were present at a local vigil for the Muslim victims, as was Chelsea Clinton. White Women, Muslims and the Nation ABOUT US MANIFESTO BLOG REORIENT !
Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2014
This paper analyzes the relationship between Muslims and the west defined at a particular moment ... more This paper analyzes the relationship between Muslims and the west defined at a particular moment in post 9/11 America and the war on terror context through a conversation in the novel The Submission (2011) by Amy Waldman. It critiques the construction of knowledge about Muslims and how this knowledge functions as part of a hegemonic discourse of Orientalism. The novel is about a public competition for an architectural design for a memorial marking the site of the World Trade Centre attacks in New York City. Khan is the architect who wins the competition through a blind selection process. But when his identity is revealed, public controversy erupts. Claire, the other protagonist in this encounter, is a white woman with two children, widowed in the 9/11 attacks. She is also a member of the selection committee. While Claire's assumptions denote western, hegemonic representations that define Muslims in narrow ways, Khan's responses represent a critique of this Orientalist constr...
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ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies, 2017
This article analyzes this process of securitization, how Muslims are constructed as terrorists, ... more This article analyzes this process of securitization, how Muslims are constructed as terrorists, and threats to national security, through a discussion of three books that illustrate how violence, politics, and state power are intricately related in the production of the “war on terror.” It advances a critique of the relationship between state power and the construction of knowledge about Muslims as terrorists, whether in the US government-supported counter-radicalization industry or in the documentation of Muslim experiences as prisoners in Guantanamo Bay’s prison. Last, this article discusses Muslim agency and the position of racialized scholars in the “war on terror” as a question of authority and scholarship. It notes the gap between those whose voices are legitimized as “experts” on “explaining Muslims” in ways that conform to accepted assumptions about Muslims as threats, and the voices and experiences of racialized scholars whose expertise is considered not “objective” enough.
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Regent Park was built with great optimism in the 1950s as a public housing neighbourhood in Toron... more Regent Park was built with great optimism in the 1950s as a public housing neighbourhood in Toronto. Over the years, however, it has come to be seen as a failure of this ideal and stigmatized as a poor, crime-ridden, violent neighbourhood with large numbers of visible minorities and immigrants. Recent urban revitalization efforts have aimed to transform the physical space as well as to re-brand the neighbourhood in more positive ways as part of a diverse, multicultural city. This paper critically considers the construction of meaning of Regent Park as a place, between the external representations of the city’s urban developers and the internal, “lived experiences” of its Muslim residents. It analyses the construction of meaning of Regent Park as a Muslim place within the representation of Toronto as a Canadian, multicultural city.
Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(13) , Oct 1, 2014
Canada is often characterized as a multicultural country with two official languages associated w... more Canada is often characterized as a multicultural country with two official languages associated with two official population groups: the national majority of white, anglophone Canadians and the national minority of white, francophone Quebecers. Racialized minorities, including immigrants, are situated as the third node in the construction of Canada as a multicultural society. While there is often discussion of the minority/majority relationship between the national majority and the national minority, or the national majority and racialized minorities, there is much less attention given to the relationship between Quebec and racialized minorities in the province. This paper examines the construction of difference in this relationship through the experiences of Pakistani Muslims living in Montreal.
Jamil, U. 2017. "Good Muslims and White Academics." In Stories from the Front of the Room: How Hi... more Jamil, U. 2017. "Good Muslims and White Academics." In Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy. Eds. Orly Clerge, Frederick W. Gooding Jr, Michelle A. Harris, & Sherrill L. Sellers. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 133-136.
Announcements by Uzma Jamil
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Papers by Uzma Jamil
In this post, Uzma Jamil reflects on the dynamics of Islamophobia in Canada, and more specifically in the province of Quebec. She contends that recent legislation has sought to codify Islamophobia into law. Bill 21, for example, restricts those wearing religious symbols from receiving public services in the name of Quebecois secularism. This secularism, she shows, does not operate with neutrality towards race, religion, or ethnicity, but instead promotes a White normative order. Drawing on Charles Mills, she contends that this Whiteness functions within an “epistemology of ignorance,” or a willing refusal to acknowledge the role of Whiteness in Quebecois national identity formation and its impact on Islamophobia and the relationship between Muslims and the nation.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/reorient.6.2.0202
Available open access: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/reorient.2.2.0175
Announcements by Uzma Jamil
ReOrient is a new peer reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal. It is a platform for a sustained collective thought experiment that seeks to explore the consequences of producing knowledge that is no longer organised around the axis of West and non-West.
ReOrient is published by Pluto Journals and distributed internationally by JSTOR. For more information please go to
http://www.jstor.org/journal/reorient
In this post, Uzma Jamil reflects on the dynamics of Islamophobia in Canada, and more specifically in the province of Quebec. She contends that recent legislation has sought to codify Islamophobia into law. Bill 21, for example, restricts those wearing religious symbols from receiving public services in the name of Quebecois secularism. This secularism, she shows, does not operate with neutrality towards race, religion, or ethnicity, but instead promotes a White normative order. Drawing on Charles Mills, she contends that this Whiteness functions within an “epistemology of ignorance,” or a willing refusal to acknowledge the role of Whiteness in Quebecois national identity formation and its impact on Islamophobia and the relationship between Muslims and the nation.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/reorient.6.2.0202
Available open access: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/reorient.2.2.0175
ReOrient is a new peer reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal. It is a platform for a sustained collective thought experiment that seeks to explore the consequences of producing knowledge that is no longer organised around the axis of West and non-West.
ReOrient is published by Pluto Journals and distributed internationally by JSTOR. For more information please go to
http://www.jstor.org/journal/reorient