Writing Histories of Collaboration in the Age of Islamophobia

When Donald Trump’s four-year long ‘Muslim ban’ was lifted this January, scholars of Muslim origin found relief in an academy fraught with obstacles for many minority groups. I initiated the naturalization process the day Trump instituted the ‘Muslim ban’ in January 2017—fearing impediments to my scholarship and separation from my American-born infant daughter. I naively perceived Islamophobia to be a bureaucratic federal prejudice that I would remain insulated from in progressive West Coast public universities as I study South Asia’s shared Mughal past and global early modern science. However, academic Islamophobia lurks as a transcendental specter of cultural suspicion—despite years of intellectual excellence, consistent accomplishments, public interventions challenging religio-nationalist narratives and complicating uni-directional histories of scientific exchange.

Reactions and reservations range from indignance at studying South Asia’s medieval past in the distant United States to incredulity that histories of collaboration—between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians and Jains—are not just present but pervasive. A pronounced manifestation is the vulgar insinuation of “Islamophilia”—including misplaced skepticism about whether a Muslim-background historian can critically assess their “own” past, veiled gatekeeping as well as indirect interrogation to gauge where “our” fealties lie. If such criticism was levied against Black and Jewish scholars for studying “their” respective pasts we would rightly contest it citing the need for both minority and majority scholars to research and author these crucial histories. 

Anti-Islamophobia has not fully arrived in the academy.  ‘National security’ anxieties—stemming from the Patriot Act—are geared to frustrate and push Muslim-origin scholars away from scholarship into adjacent applied fields. Challenging Islamophobia and maintaining silence can have both professional and emotional consequences translating into what therapists and researchers consider a protracted ‘public health’ crisis. Therefore, the converging Islamophobias of popularly-elected and narrowly-ousted fascists across continents necessitate intellectual resilience by writing histories of collaboration. 

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Mariam Sabri is a PhD Candidate in History with a Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Their dissertation focuses on time-telling as a collaborative practice amongst entangled communities of astronomers, bureaucrats, poets and artisans who shaped everyday life and imperial administration in South Asia (1500-1900). Sabri’s dissertation research is supported by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Commission. Sabri is a recent recipient of UC Berkeley’s Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.