Table Of ContentCONTESTING ISLAM, CONSTRUCTING
RACE AND SEXUALITY
Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought
Series editors: Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone
This series interrupts standardized discourses involving the Middle East and the
Islamicate world by introducing creative and emerging ideas. The incisive works
included in this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of theory,
theology, philosophy, literature, and criticism through investigations of vast
experiential typologies—such as violence, mourning, vulnerability, tension, and
humour—in light of contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate thought.
Other titles in this series include:
Gilles Deleuze, Postcolonial Theory, and the Philosophy of Limit, Réda Bensmaïa
The Qur’an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: From Taha to Nasr,
Mohammad Salama
Hostage Spaces of the Contemporary Islamicate World, Dejan Lukic
On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman
The Writing of Violence in the Middle East, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism, edited by Lucian Stone
Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question, by Zahi Zalloua
Sorcery, Totem and Jihad, Christopher Wise
Orientalism and Imperialism, Andrew Wilcox
Traces of Racial Exception, Ronit Lentin
Transgression and the Inexistent, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem
Plural Maghreb: Writings on Postcolonialism, Abdelkebir Khatibi
Revolutionary Bodies, K.S. Batmanghelichi
CONTESTING ISLAM, CONSTRUCTING RACE
AND SEXUALITY
The Inordinate Desire of the West
Sunera Thobani
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Sunera Thobani, 2021
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In memory of my mother, Roshan
The strength of her spirit runs through my life every day, in ways that
even I don’t quite understand.
vi
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter 1
THE IN/HUMAN SUBJECT 37
Chapter 2
WESTERN CONSTITUTIONS: RELIGION, RACE AND COLONIALITY 77
Chapter 3
SEX/UALITY IN THE ISLAMIC ORIENT 107
Chapter 4
FEMINISM AT WAR 139
Chapter 5
REMAKING THE WEST: SOVEREIGNTY, WHITENESS AND
THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN 169
Notes 193
Bibliography 232
Index 253
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work began in an entirely unanticipated manner. Following the 9/11
attacks, I made a speech at an anti-violence feminist conference urging women’s
organizations to oppose the then looming invasion of Afghanistan, and the war
on terror in general. The hatelash that followed – a small taste of things to come
– pushed me into a deeper and far lengthier study of the issues mentioned only
briefly in that speech. This book is the result of that larger study; it has pulled me
in directions I had never before imagined taking.
The journey has been long and hard, but also exhilarating at precisely the right
moments. The arguments presented here are not palatable to many: I have lost
friends and colleagues along the way. But I have also been met with unbelievable
generosity from family and friends, from previously unknown fellow travellers,
who have given me such comforts – big and small – that they continue to enrich
my life beyond measure. Exactly the right person showed up, exactly the right
experience had to be undergone, exactly the right reference came my way at
exactly the right moment on this journey. Serendipity? Coincidence? Fate? What
I do know is these gifts I would have never been fortunate enough to receive had I
not travelled this particular path.
My deepest thanks go to Malinda Smith, Shelina Kassam, Hanifa Kassam, Dana
Olwan, Sedef Arat-Koc, Mustafa Koc, Suvendrini Perera, Sara Ahmed, Meyda
Yeğenoğlu, Mahmut Mutman, Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, Cavlan Erengezgin,
Yuezhi Zhao, Radha D’Souza, Aziz Choudhry, Huma Dar, Seemi Ghazi, Benita
Bunjun, Parin Dossa, Simrita-Gopal Singh, Farah Zeb, Itrath Syed, Farida Akhtar,
Farhad Mazhar, Fatima Jaffer, Zool Suleman, Habiba Zaman, Susan Boyd, Dara
Culhane, Jin Haritaworn, Geeta Sondhi, Akbar Thobhani, Monya Thobhani, Zaibby
Sheikh, Rabab AbdulHadi, Nahla Abdo, Sami Zubi, Michelle Hartman, Shimona
Sharoni, Mridula Thanki, Imtiaz Popat, Alnoor Gova and many others for standing
with me during some of the most difficult challenges I have faced working on this
project. I was fortunate enough to be invited as a Visiting Scholar and Speaker
at a number of institutions while I was working through the ideas presented in
this book. I am deeply thankful for the warm generosity, and spirited exchanges, I
experienced at each of these sites. Again, I was lucky enough to have spent just the
right amount of time during these visits and learn enough about the conditions,
debates and concerns relevant to my study unfolding there to see how directly and
intricately these were interconnected. I would like to thank all the colleagues and
friends who facilitated my visits to Bilgi University, Delhi University, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, Aalochana, the London School of Economics, UBINIG, the
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Pune University, Banaras Hindu University,
University of Dhaka, Jamia Millia Islamia University, University of Westminster,
Acknowledgements ix
Concordia University, McGill University, Duke University, the Doha Institute for
Graduate Studies, Syracuse University, and the Communication University of
China.
Sitara continues to be my guiding star, my sisters Munira and Karima have
loved and supported me in ways too deep to untwine, in the ways only sisters
can. David Hacker and Christopher Schweitzer have been incredibly generous,
welcoming me without reservation whenever I arrived on their doorsteps. The
warm-heartedness of all our extended families, Thobanis, Jiwanys, Hackers,
Coxalls, Imirsids, Kassams, have provided me with care and sustenance, including
much good food and too much good cheer, during the writing of this book. ‘This
book of yours, when will it be finished?’, my aunty Laila admonished me far too
many times to count, keeping me plodding on even during those times when I just
wanted to run away from it. I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
This study would not have appeared as a book without the labour and support
of Cavlan Erengezgin and Faisal Nahri, who went well above and beyond the
call of duty in helping me clean up and format the manuscript to meet various
deadlines. The comments of the anonymous reviewers helped me sharpen my focus
and analysis; I am grateful for the time they have taken to read my work. Many
thanks to Jason Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone, the Series Editors for Suspensions:
Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought, for their enthusiastic
support for this work. At Bloomsbury Press, Liza Thompson and Lucy Russell
have been terrific to work with, their assistance has made the publication process
so much smoother for me. My thanks also to the Design and Production Teams.
Arax Nazari’s painting, which appears as the book’s cover, captures perfectly the
issues, relations and histories of violence studied in this book. I am very thankful
for her generous consent for the use of this work.
I have received funding for this project from the Social Science and Humanities
Research Council, UBC Hampton Fund, as well as UBC VP – Research Fund. I am
grateful for this support.
The following publishers have kindly given their permission for reprinting
early versions of the arguments presented in this book as cited below: Feminist
Theory, borderlands, Hypatia, University of Toronto Press, Routledge and Between
the lines. I would like to thank them for this support. A very special thank you to
Copyright (c) 1970, 1992, Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press for use of Malcolm
X’s quote, and the Journal of Islamic Sciences for use of Talal Asad’s quote, that are
the epigraphs to this book.
All under-readings, over-readings, misreadings and outright errors are, of
course, my responsibility. I knew I was venturing far afield: this had to be done.
Journals
‘The Secularity of Empire, the Violence of Critique: Islam, Race and Sexuality in the
Politics of Knowledge Production’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Vol. 32,
No. 3. (Summer, 2017) 715–30.
