State of injury: liberal multiculturalism and the Muslim subject after prison

ABSTRACT

The liberal political project has come under scrutiny for its unfulfilled promises of freedom and equality for those at the margins of society. This contribution approaches the critical analysis of state-citizen relations through inquiring into how liberal secular governance enables, limits, and reshapes moral and ethical potentialities. It draws on a study of Muslim men under probation supervision in East London and their relationships with their empathetic probation officers to show how the state can direct Muslim-citizen subjects in virtuous and restorative ways but also in ways that mark ‘injury’, directing subjectivities towards cooperation with exclusionary state practices. Taking an intersectional approach and through attention to pain, this contribution argues that the state is intimately invested in subject formation, but its effects are uneven and polarised according to its own sovereignty and governing logics. The uneven subjectivities reflect the ‘precarity’ of governing Muslims at the margins directed towards inclusion and exclusion, assisting and controlling, care and punishment.

KEYWORDS:

• Muslim
• secularism
• multiculturalism
• racialisation
• social justice
• racial state

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge for supporting this work. An earlier version of this contribution was presented at ‘The “Ethical” and the “Everyday”: Interrogating analytical turns for/in the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe’ in November 2018, with generous funding provided by the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland. This contribution has benefitted greatly from the dialogue that ensued there, including feedback from Humeira Iqtidar and Pnina Werbner, and the invaluable input subsequently from Zubair Ahmad, Amin El-Yousfi, two anonymous reviewers, and Religion, State and Society editors.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. This research received ethical clearance from The Ethics Committee for the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge (2 December 2016) and from the National Research Committee (2016-389), National Offender Management Service (currently, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service). All participants gave consent to participate in this research and participant’s preferred means of informed consent was acquired, either written or verbal. Participants have been anonymised and personally identifying information has been removed or altered in a way that has not distorted scholarly meaning.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was supported by the Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge between 2016 and 2018 under project title ‘Re-Imagining Citizenship’.

Notes on contributors

Ryan Williams

Ryan Williams is a lecturer in Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland, Australia and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge. Trained as an anthropologist and sociologist of religion, Ryan works on topics that include Islam, state, and society; new religious and interfaith movements; and the anthropologies of ethics and moralities. Ryan’s current research explores moral experience, imagination, and Islam in the English Criminal Justice System based on ethnographic fieldwork in prison and probation contexts.