Pedagogy, Colonialism, and the Possibilities of Belonging: Twenty Years on

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Christian West’s antagonistic relationship with the Muslim world predates the rise of European colonialism, and is reflected in waves of Muslim-European encounters, such the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492 A.D.; the First Crusade’s siege of Jerusalem in 1099, which was predated by four hundred years of Euro-Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem; waves of prohibition of the practice of Islam and forced conversions of Muslims to Christianity and then expulsion of converted Muslims (Moriscos) in Spain, 1502-1614 A.D. See Jane I. Smith’s and S.V. R. Nasr’s works.

2 See the Center for Constitutional Rights’ factsheet on the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims and Cora Currier’s coverage of the FBI’s focus on Muslim student groups.

3 See Barbara Olshansky’s, Rachel Meeropol’s, and Kermit Roosevelt III’s scholarship on Muslims detained post-9/11.

4 The Campus Watch website launched in 2002 by Daniel Pipes invited students to report on faculty teaching favorably about Palestine and Islam and critically of Israel. Similarly, the neoconservative think-tank David Horowitz Freedom Center targeted colleges and universities for indoctrination by “the radical left and its Islamist allies” (About David Horowitz Freedom Center 2021).

5 See Amitava Kumar’s and Trevor Aaronson’s humanizing investigative reports on the FBI’s use of entrapment to create Muslim informants and instigators of FBI-constructed terrorist plots.

6 Kathryn Ruff’s article on the designation of Muslim charities as material supporters of terrorism is noteworthy.

7 See Deepa Kumar’s analyses of Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty.

8 See Sylviane A. Diouf’s and Ala Alryyes’s brilliant archival research on enslaved Muslims in the Americas.

9 See Vivek Bald’s groundbreaking work on South Asian Muslim migrants to America at the turn of the century.

10 See Kathryn Schulz’s article on Zarif Khan, an Afghan immigrant who arrived in Seattle, U.S., in 1907 and then settled in Wyoming.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maimuna Dali Islam

Maimuna Dali Islam is Professor of English at The College of Idaho, where she teaches postcolonial and immigrant literatures and fiction writing. Dali has written, presented, and taught on Islamophobia, encounters between the western and the Muslim worlds, and the absence of critical race theory in creative writing programs. More recently, her short story about negotiating Muslim identity in America (“Migrations to Medina”) appeared in Kweli Journal and her article on the institutional absence of radical nonwhite voices in creative writing programs appeared in Pedagogy journal. Dali has received a Palestinian American Research Center fellowship and a Vermont Studio Center residency fellowship in fiction among other grants.