Muslim Public Self-Presentation: Interrogating the Liberal Public Sphere

I n this article I want to address a number of issues thrust into the open by different manifestations of Islamist politics and the intersection of religion and identity politics in Western societies. This intersection should be read in conjunction with the emergence in Muslimmajority societies of forms of political activism that ground themselves in Islamic doctrines and invoke religious traditions as frames of reference. It is necessary in reading the contentions surrounding Muslim identity politics in Western settings that we take into account factors shaping the dynamics of interaction between Western countries and Muslim societies, not least among which are the long-standing historical relations associated with the colonial experience and its aftermath. In this paper I argue that the contentions surrounding Muslim public self-presentation in Western public spheres arise in conjunction with the historical traditions of discipline and normalization in relation to which Muslims are proving to be recalcitrant subjects. Further, the projections of Muslim subjectivities in liberal public discourses are underpinned by assumptions about subject populations rooted in colonial discourses and practices. The liberal project of government in colonial settings rested on assumptions about the colonized, in particular relating to matters of sexuality, gender, and morality. Contemporary Muslim interrogations of the liberal public sphere face off with forms of government and discipline that hark back to the relations between the colonizer and the colonized. On one hand, the dominant groups in Western societies tap into historical constructions of the Other, while Muslim minorities, among others, in the West are informed by the legacies of colonialism. In its earlier phases Islamist politics in Muslim-majority societies was anchored within the boundaries of the nation-state and, as such, its implications for non-Muslim societies, in particular Western ones, appeared to be of secondary nature.1 The situation changed when certain kinds of Islamist activism shifted locale and targets and moved to the West. At this point, the challenge of what came to be termed radical Islam became a major preoccupation of public opinion and policy-makers alike. I want to suggest that the concern with the challenge of militant Islamism, while in some respects justified, is often collapsed with another separate, but related challenge posed by certain forms of politics that Muslims engage in. Of these forms I want to focus on Muslim public self-presentation in the liberal public sphere and the questions that this puts to liberal norms and values. But before I do that, I will make two digressions. First, I will overview some assumptions about the liberal public sphere. Second, I will highlight how these assumptions have been negotiated by Muslim-majority societies historically and in the present. Following that, I will turn to the terms in which Muslim public self-presentation in secular Western societies interrogates the liberal public sphere.