Distance and Refusal

This chapter, “Distance and Refusal,” continues Making Muslimness ’ two-chapter examination of post-attack performances of Muslimness, but with a different tone: that of detachment and rejection, especially through a snubbing of respectability and relatability politics. Drawing on two case studies – Manchester Central Mosque’s refusal to handle, inter, or pray over Abedi’s body and Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s performance poetry – this chapter reads them together to argue for and define a notion of radical absence: a negotiation tactic that British Muslims use after events of mass violence to sidestep the possibility of engaging the Muslim-as-terrorist narrative.