“I’m Muslim, What Are You?”: Reflections on Positionalities, Knowledge Production, and Alliances in Scholarship on Muslim Identities and Minorities

In this essay I address some critical methodological and epistemological questions pertaining to the geographical study of religious identities and communities, with particular focus on Muslim identities and geographies in Western contexts. Feminist scholars within geography have reflected extensively on researchers’ positionality and knowledge production with focus on gender, race, and sexuality, but religious identity, or lack thereof, remain an unexplored area. Few publications provide reflections on the religious or non-religious positionality of the researcher and its implication on the research process. I argue that scholars’ relative silence on their own religious positionality may reinstate power hierarchies as well as possible “otherness” on behalf of the religious interlocutors. The essay addresses this gap by exploring my own religious positionality and “researcher subjectivity” (Whitson, 2016), including biographical particularities and formative experiences in relation to my research and scholarship on Muslim identities and everyday life as a white, non-Muslim, and non-religious researcher. The essay considers some possible reasons for the lack of academic discussion and publications on scholars’ faith positionality in their research and the avoidance of the religious dimension. I point to possible effects this can have on the scholarship on Muslim identities and minorities and how the prevalent socio-political context of anti-Muslim racism and civil rights violations inform the knowledge production of Muslim geographies.