An Introduction to

Islamic Decoloniality

Dr Syed Mustafa Ali

The Open University (UK)
s.m.ali@open.ac.uk
 Research  Ali, S.M. (2013) Race: The Difference That Makes a Difference.
tripleC 11 (1): 93-106.
 Ali, S.M. (2014) Towards a Decolonial Computing. In Ambiguous
Technologies: Philosophical issues, Practical Solutions, Human
Nature: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on
Exploring entanglements of Computer Ethics –Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE 2013). Edited by
Elizabeth A. Buchanan, Paul B, de Laat, Herman T. Tavani and Jenny
race Klucarich. Portugal: International Society of Ethics and Information
Technology, pp.28-35.
 Ali, S.M. (2015) Orientalism and/as Information: The Indifference
religion That Makes a Difference. DTMD 2015: 3rd International
Conference. In: ISIS Summit Vienna 2015 – The Information Society
at the Crossroads, 3 – 7 June 2015, Vienna, Austria.
computing http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/isis-summit-vienna-2015-S1005
 Ali, S.M. (2016) A Brief Introduction to Decolonial Computing.
XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students – Cultures of
information Computing 22(4): 16-21.
 Ali, S.M. (2016) Algorithmic Racism: A Decolonial Critique. Tenth
International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
technology Conference.
 Ali, S.M. (2017) Islam between Inclusion and Exclusion: A
(Decolonial) Frame Problem. In The Future Information Society:
power Social and Technological Problems. Edited by Wolfgang
Hofkirchner and Mark Burgin. World Scientific Press.
2
Activism

3
Outline
1. Colonisation, Colonialism and Decolonisation

2. Coloniality and Decoloniality

3. Orientalism, Islamophobia and Anti-Islamism

4. Islamic Decoloniality
4
Colonisation, Colonialism &
Decolonisation
5
Terminology
• Colonisation (from the Latin colere, ‘to inhabit’) refers to an ongoing
process of control by which a central system of power spreads into
surrounding lands and takes control of ‘resources’ (people, animals
etc.) through a process of ‘settlement’, i.e. establishment of a colony.
• FOCUS: Expansionist migration

• Colonialism refers to the establishment, exploitation, maintenance,

acquisition, and expansion of a colony in one territory by a political
power from another territory. Crucially, it involves a set of unequal
relationships between the colonial power and the colony, and
between the colonists – or colonisers – and the indigenous
population – or colonised.
• FOCUS: Domination, Rule
6
History: ‘Classical’ Era
• Pre-colonial African empires → Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans
• In North Africa and West Asia, the Romans conquered what they
regarded as ‘civilized’ peoples. As they moved north into Europe, they
encountered rural peoples / tribes with very little in the way of cities. In
these areas, waves of Roman colonization often followed conquest.
• NB: absence of strict binary mapping

COLONIZER CIVILIZED

COLONIZED UNCIVILIZED
7
History: ‘Modern’ Era
• Modern colonialism starts with ‘Age of Discovery’ (1492 CE)
• Portugal and Spain ‘discover’ new lands across the oceans
and build trading posts or conquer large extensions of land
• Expropriation of land, people (labour), resources, knowledge etc.
• Indigenous genocide and slavery

• ‘New world’ lands divided between Portuguese Empire and

Spanish Empire, first by papal bull and then by Treaty of
Tordesillas and Treaty of Zaragoza (1529 CE)
8
History: ‘Modern’ Era
• 17th century
• French colonial empire and the Dutch Empire, as well as the
English overseas possessions, which later became the British
Empire; Danish colonial empire and Swedish overseas colonies
• 18th early 19th centuries
• German colonial empire and Belgian colonial empire
• Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 CE
• Late 19th century
• The 'Scramble for Africa'
9
History: ‘Modern’ Era
• Colonization linked to the spread of tens of millions of
Europeans all over the world. In many settled colonies,
European settlers formed a large majority of the population.
• Examples: the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. These colonies
were occasionally called ‘neo-Europes’. In other places, European
settlers formed minority groups, who were often dominant in their
places of settlement.

• By the 1930s, [European] colonies and ex-colonies covered

84.6% of the land surface of the globe.
10
Aside: The Invisibility of The ‘Other’
• When European settlers started to settle on lands such as
Australia, they regarded such landmasses as terra nullius,
Latin for ‘empty land’.
• Settlers treated the land as uninhabited and a ‘clean slate’
for colonization and colonial rule.
• However, the landmasses were often inhabited by
indigenous populations (e.g. Australia, Africa).
• Cartographers displayed unexplored landscapes as ‘blank
spaces’ awaiting colonists.
11
Decolonisation

• The Oxford English Dictionary defines decolonisation as

“the withdrawal from its colonies of a colonial power;
the acquisition of political or economic independence by
such colonies.”

• Colonialism as a project of European political

domination involving settlement formally ended with
the national liberation and independence movements of
the 1960s.
12
Colonialism has ended. Or has it?

13
Postcolonialism

• Ongoing legacy of colonialism in contemporary

societies in the form of social discrimination
that has outlived formal colonialism and
became integrated in succeeding postcolonial
social orders
• Practices and legacies of European colonialism
in social orders and forms of knowledge
14
Coloniality
15
Colonialism and Coloniality (of Power)

• Violent bifurcation of ‘the world’ into

I. a ‘zone of being’ (Fanon, Wynter, Maldonado-Torres)
• The Core (Quijano, Grodfoguel)
• Europe (Mignolo, Hesse)
• ‘the West’ (Hall, Sayyid)

II. a ‘zone of non-being’

• The Periphery
• non-Europe
• ‘the Rest’
16
Coloniality (of Power) and Cartesian Space-Time

Core Human
SPACE (Geography)

(Europe) (Civilized)

Periphery Sub-Human
(Non-Europe) (Barbaric)
BEING (Anthropology)
Tradition Modernity
(Static) (Dynamic)
TIME (History)

17
Coloniality (of Power) – Anibal Quijano
• Structures of power, control, and hegemony that emerged during the
modern era, the era of colonialism, which stretches from the conquest of
the Americas to the present
• Racial, political and social hierarchical orders imposed by European
colonialism in Latin America ascribing value to certain peoples/societies
while disenfranchising others
• Colonial structure of power resulting in a caste (castas) system, where
Spaniards were ranked at the top and those they conquered at the bottom
on basis of phenotypic traits and culture presumed to be inferior
• Categorization results in a persistent categorical and discriminatory
discourse reflected in the social and economic structure of the colony, and
that continues to be reflected in the structure of modern postcolonial
societies
18
Coloniality (of Power)
• A matrix that operates through control or hegemony over
the following practical domains:
• Authority (political administration)
• Nation State
• Labour (production and exploitation)
• Capitalism
• Sexuality (personal life and reproduction)
• Nuclear family
• Subjectivity (world-view and interpretive perspective)
• Eurocentrism
Quijano, Anibal (2007) Coloniality and Modernity / Rationality. Cultural Studies, 21 (2-3): 168-178 19
Colonial Matrix of Power
• Global class formation • Epistemic hierarchy
• International division of labour of • Linguistic hierarchy
core and periphery • Aesthetic hierarchy
• Inter-state system of politico- • Pedagogical hierarchy
military colonial administrations
• Media / informational hierarchy
• Global racial / ethnic hierarchy
• Age hierarchy
• Global gender hierarchy
• Ecological hierarchy
• Sexual hierarchy
• Spatial hierarchy
• Spiritual hierarchy
The racial / ethnic hierarchy of the European / non-European binary transversally
reconfigures / inflects all other heterarchically-entangled global power relations
→ race / racism as structural organizing principle
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2011) Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial
Thinking, and Global Coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1): 1-37 20
Forms of Coloniality

1. Systems of hierarchies

2. Systems of knowledge

3. Systems of culture
21
Systems of Hierarchies
• Systems based on racial classification and difference
• A calculated creation by European and American colonialists

• Race / Racism / Racialisation as involving

1. Exclusion
• in groups/outgroups, self/other, us/them etc.
2. Hierarchy
• superiority/inferiority, dominance/subordination, being/non-being etc.
3. Naturalization
• Depoliticisation / decontestation of (1) and (2)
22
Exclusion, Hierarchy, Naturalisation

Banton, M. (1967) Race Relations. London: Tavistock. 23

Systems of Hierarchies
• In this racial structure inferiority and superiority was ascribed based
on phenotypes and skin colours, what colonialists claimed to be
innate biological traits
• This system was the outcome of a Eurocentric view that reinforced
the justification for the domination of non-Europeans by Europeans,
i.e. a race-based hierarchical domination system
• The importance of the systems of hierarchies was not merely
symbolic, but was instead economic.
• Racial division of labour built around hierarchies created, resulting in a system
of serfdom for the majority of native people. Existing differences exploited in
formation of these hierarchies.
24
Systems of Knowledge and Culture
• Coloniality of power based on a Eurocentric system of knowledge, in
which race is seen as naturalization of colonial relations between
Europeans and non-Europeans
• Eurocentric system of knowledge assigns production of knowledge to
Europeans and prioritizes use of European ways of knowledge
production
• Denial of knowledge production to conquered peoples and
repression of traditional modes of knowledge production, on basis of
superiority/inferiority relationship enforced by the hierarchical
structure
• Creation of cultural systems that revolve around a Eurocentric
hierarchy and that enforce Eurocentric economic and knowledge
production systems
25
Decoloniality
26
Decoloniality
• Decolonial thinking takes its lead from Wallerstein's world-
systems theory yet modifies it by re-conceptualizing analysis
of the world system from the (Southern/Non-European)
margins or periphery, rather than the (Northern/European)
core.
• This ‘decolonial turn’ retains the centrality of the long durée
of the 16th century in tracing the genealogy of this system,
but frames that genealogy as a globally-systemic ‘colonial
matrix of power’ in which coloniality expresses itself through
systems of hierarchies, knowledge and culture.
27
Decoloniality
• Decolonial interrogation of the world system readily exposes
the constitutive ‘dark underside’ of Western modernity as a
colonial order in which race as naturalised, hierarchical (or
taxonomic) exclusion, rather than capital, functions as
organizing principle (Walter Mignolo)

• This organizing principle structures multiple entangled

asymmetric power-relations including, but not limited to, the
epistemic, spatial, sexual, economic, ecological, political,
spiritual and aesthetic (Ramon Grosfoguel)
28
 What is Decoloniality?
“It is not an interdisciplinary tool but, rather,
a trans-disciplinary horizon in which de-
coloniality of knowledge and de-colonial
knowledge places life (in general) first and
institutions at the service of the regeneration
of life.” (Mignolo 2010, p. 11)
Mignolo, Walter D. (2010) Introduction: Coloniality of power an decolonial thinking. In Globalization and
The Decolonial Option. Edited by Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. London: Routledge, pp.1-21.
29
 What is Decoloniality?

• Critical thinking emerging in the colonies and ex-colonies

• Highlights racial discrimination

• Focus – “epistemic [and ontological] decolonization”

Mignolo, Walter D. (2010) Introduction: Coloniality of power and decolonial thinking. In Globalization and
The Decolonial Option. Edited by Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. London: Routledge, pp.1-21.
30
Decoloniality and Epistemic Delinking
• Consideration of the ‘geo-politics’ and ‘body-politics’ of
knowledge, engaging thereby with the material dimensions
of epistemology in contrast to the abstract / disembodied
‘theo-politics’ and, following secularization, ‘ego-politics’ of
universalizing Eurocentric epistemology by thinking from the
margins (borders, frontiers, periphery).
• Such ‘materiality’ is not that of the race-less / de-raced
structures of political economy or culture, but that of the
corporeal experiences of those who have been excluded
from the production of knowledge by colonial modernity.
31
Decoloniality and Border Thinking
• Necessity of experiences that disengage from the ‘obligation’
to see the world according to the ethnical experiences
hidden behind the epistemic universality of the hubris of
the zero point (i.e. the Eurocentric postulate of an objective
‘view from nowhere’ = ‘view from everywhere’)

• Decolonial thinking as the pluriversal epistemology of the

future – an epistemology that de-links from the tyranny of
abstract universals
Mignolo, Walter D. (2010) Introduction: Coloniality of power and decolonial thinking. In Globalization and
The Decolonial Option. Edited by Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. London: Routledge, pp.1-21.
32
 Universality as Pluriversality
• “A truly universal decolonial perspective cannot be based on an
abstract universal (one particular that raises itself as universal
global design), but would have to be the result of the critical
dialogue between diverse critical epistemic / ethical / political
projects towards a pluriversal as opposed to a universal world”
(Grosfoguel 2011, p. 3)
• “Decolonization should aspire at the very minimum to restore a
reality where racialized subjects could give and receive freely in
societies founded on the principle of receptive generosity”
(Maldonado-Torres 2010, p. 114)
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2011) Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking,
and Global Coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1): 1-37; Maldonado-Torres, N. (2010)
On The Coloniality of Being: Contributions to The Development of a Concept. In Globalization and The Decolonial Option. Edited by
Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. London: Routledge, pp.94-124. 33
Orientalism, Islamophobia and
Anti-Islamism
34
The Third Pillar of White Supremacy
GENOCIDE

SLAVERY ORIENTALISM

COLONIALISM

CAPITALISM WAR
35
What is Orientalism?
• Historical construction of images (conceptions) of
the ‘Eastern’ – and especially the Islamicate –
civilizational ‘Other’ by Christian, European and
‘Western’ travel writers and thinkers, and the
utility of such images in the establishment,
maintenance, expansion and refinement of
European domination of the non-European world
• Weak – misrepresentation, distortion
• Strong – representation, constitution
36
Exoticism and Eroticism

37
The Muslim Peril

38
Pre-Colonial Era: The Islamic Threat

39
Orientalism Contested
• “The contemporary focus on Orientalism that deals with the
stigmatization of Islam, as an alternative imperial monotheistic
order to that of the West, has completely and strategically displaced
the far more totally exclusionary system of stigmatization placed
upon Indians and Negroes…” (Wynter 2011, p. 332)
• Orientalism as too late / too recent (18th century CE)
• Hence, need to shift from postcolonial to decolonial frame
• Colonialism as 16th century CE phenomenon
• Centring of Indians and Negroes
• However, crusader anti-Islamism as pre-dating (11th century CE) and
providing template for both colonialism and Orientalism

Wynter, S. (2003) Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human,

After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument, CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), pp.257-337. 40
 ‘Big Bangs’ of Race and Religion
‘Big Bang of Race’
Fall of Granada
Columbian Voyages of Discovery
Columbus as ‘crusader’

imago Turci

1095 1453 1492 1550-1551

‘Big Bang of Religion’ Fall of Constantinople

Launch of Crusades to Ottomans
by Pope Urban II
Valladolid Debate
Las Casas vs. Sepulveda
41
Decoloniality Otherwise
• “Lumping together the Saracen with the Jew or Cathar or,
later, with an African animist or an Inca priest – as all
‘different’ and ‘inferior’ because they refused ‘the universal
and rational message of Christianity’ – may make a point
against ‘European denigration of the other’ [yet] such an
approach does little to elucidate the nature of power in
Western Christendom and the role of the image of the
Saracen in articulating that power. In my view, the image of
the Muslim alone was integral to the articulation of power
in the Christian West.” (Mastnak 2004, p.571)
Mastnak, T. (2004) Book review of John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European
Imagination, Speculum, 79(2), pp. 568-571. 46
 Aside: Anti-Blackness and Indigeneity
• The primacy of Orientalism /
GENOCIDE Islam / war to European identity
formation vis-à-vis power issues
neither entails nor justifies the
marginalization and/or lessening
SLAVERY ORIENTALISM of the significance of anti-black
racism and indigenous genocide
COLONIALISM to the establishment,
maintenance, expansion and
refinement of colonial
modernity / White Supremacy
CAPITALISM WAR
43
The Anti-Islamic Origins of Europe

• “Europe as a unity that [emerged from Christendom

and] developed a ‘collective identity’ and the ability
to orchestrate action … was, as a rule, articulated in
relation to Muslims as the enemy … [Crucially,]
European identity was formed not by Islam but,
predominantly, in the relationship … to Islam.”
(Mastnak 1994, p. 3)
Mastnak, T. (1994b) Islam and the Creation of European Identity. CSD Perspectives. Centre for the Study of
Democracy, Research Papers, Number 4, University of Westminster Press, UK 44
The Sedimentation of Anti-Islamism
• “As an ideal and as a movement, the Crusades had a deep, crucial
influence on the formation of Western civilization, shaping culture,
ideas, and institutions. The Crusades set a model for ‘expansionist
campaigns against non-Europeans and non-Christians in all parts of
the world.’ The ideas, iconography, and discourse associated with the
Crusades made a profound imprint on ‘all Christian thinking about
sacred violence’ and exercised influence long after the end of actual
crusading. They continued to play a prominent role in European
politics and political imagination. In fact, the crusading spirit has
survived through Modernity well into our own postmodern age.”
(Mastnak 2002, p. 346)
Mastnak, T. (2002) Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim world, and Western Political Order.
University of California Press, USA. 45
Entanglements of Race and Religion
• Race and religion are thoroughly entangled, perhaps
starting with a shared point of origin in modernity, or
in the colonial encounter. If this is the case, religion
and race is not just another token of the type ‘religion
and,’ not just one approach to the study of religion
among many. Rather, every study of religion [or race]
would need to be a study of religion and race. (Lloyd
2013, p.80)
Lloyd, V. (2013) Race and religion: Contribution to symposium on critical approaches to the
study of religion, Critical Research on Religion, 1(1), pp.80-86. 46
Critical Islamism
Islamic Counter-Racism
Islamic Decoloniality
47
Islamic Decoloniality

“A spiritual-political project aimed at

resisting, undermining and eventually
replacing the contemporary Eurocentric
world order with a multiversal or pluriversal
system informed by an Islamic perspective.“

48
Why the need for an Islamic Decoloniality?
• Decoloniality aim: forging a pluriversal new humanism
• From Eurocentric ‘Man’-God to secular / ‘de-godded’ human being
• Fanon, Wynter, Gordon, Maldonado-Torres etc.
• Is new humanism compatible with Islam?
• Is it – can it be – Islamic?
• Does the decolonial commitment to forging a new humanism itself
need decolonizing?
• ‘Post-secular turn’ (Asad, Mahmood etc.) / post-‘de-godding’
• What is Islamic?
49
‘Answers’ – Islamic as Practice

50
On the pre-modern/pre-colonial Islamic
• “Prior to modern times, the term ‘Islamic’ was almost never used
to define the provenance, status, or substance of things.

• No such thing as ‘Islamic art’ (fann islāmīyy), ‘Islamic economics’

(iqtisād Islāmīyy), or even ‘Islamic law’ (fiqh Islāmīyy).

• ‘Islamic,’ in other words, had no clear descriptive nor prescriptive

power but was used as a throwaway for those who in one way or
another associated themselves with Islam.” (pp. 154-155)

Jackson, Sherman A. (2005) Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third resurrection. Oxford: OUP
51
On the modern/colonial Islamic
• “The encounter with the modern West … changed the status of
‘Islamic’ … [T]he rise of the West converted the achievements of
Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel … into explicitly ‘Western’ ones [and]
engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the
non-Western ‘other’. The Western provenance of the modern
neologism ‘Islamic’ is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to
connote both geography and ethnicity. ‘Islamic,’ in other words,
connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a
religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people
in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both
descriptive and prescriptive force.” (p. 155)
Jackson, Sherman A. (2005) Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third resurrection. Oxford: OUP
52
Coloniality and ‘the Islamic’

• Coloniality as ‘horizon’ (ontology, epistemology)

• Islamic as signifying an ‘othering’ by coloniality

• Islamic as body-political and geo-political

• NB: theo-politics ‘masked’ / occluded / hidden in post-
Christianity (‘secularism’, the ‘de-godded’ world)

53
Decoloniality and ‘the Islamic’

• Decoloniality as ‘horizon’ (ontology, epistemology)

• Islamic Decoloniality as signifying

1. co-option of signifier ‘Islamic’ by ‘other’
2. re-signification through re-alignment with Islam
3. re-formation of decolonial project

54
What Islam is not
• Islam is not a religion
• Islam is not a civilization
• Islam is not a (discursive) tradition
• Islam is not a religio-legal tradition
• Islam is not a language
• Islam is not a master signifier
• Islam is not a nomocratic order
55
What Islam is
• Islam is an existential power-transaction (Arabic ‫ د ي ن‬Dīn)
• Basic senses:
1. Indebtedness / requital
• Dīn etymologically related to dayn (debt)
2. Submissiveness / obedience
3. Judicious power
4. Natural inclination or tendency (custom, habit)
subdues

GOD DĪN HUMAN

(Master) (Slave)
submits
Izutsu, Toshihiko (2002) God and Man in The Qur'an: Semantics of the Qur'anic Weltanschauung. Kuala Lumpur: IBT Books
Al-Attas, S.M.N. (1978) Islam and Secularism. Lahore: Suhail Academy. 56
Race / Coloniality as (Onto-)Theology
“I will speak of race creation (an act of anthropic gods) and of racial
constitution. Race creation emerges out of the creations – the
fabrications – of real social actors in their constructed reproductions
and transformations of established discursive formations and
expressions. These creations are products of actual relations: It is real
people, after all, who express themselves by means of a discourse or
set of discourses, who make meaning and history.
These social (self-)creations come as though given, fixed from on high,
seemingly natural phenomena imposed almost unchangingly upon an
innocent and so non-responsible social order. Racial constitution is
what gives one racial identity, what makes one (up as) a racial member,
what inscribes one racially in society and in the law and identifiably
gives substance to one's social being.” (p. 83)
Goldberg, D.T. (1993) Racist Culture: Philosophy and The politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell.
57
White Supremacy as ‘Second Creator’
“Today, at least in the Western world, it is neither graven images nor
idols that pose the greatest challenge to God's monopoly on
divinity; it is false mysterium tremendum, second creators and the
socio-political reality these produce. As such, it is against these, and
not against idols, that modern men and women are likely to find the
deepest meaning and resonance in Islam’s foundational principle:
‘There is no god except God (lā ilāhā illa Allāh).’ And, on this
understanding, the proper response to the problem of human
contingency is not to seek to overcome it but to resist and oppose
false mysterium tremendum and ‘re-creation’, both as subjects and
as objects.” (p. 182)
Jackson, Sherman A. (2005) Islam and The Blackamerican: Looking Toward The Third Resurrection.Oxford: OUP
58
Qur’anic Roots of Islamic Decoloniality
• Colonial cartography is epistemic (and ontological)
• Epistemology linked to the gaze / the eye under colonialism
• Blindness is a condition of the heart, not the eye (22:46)
• Therefore, the heart must be the site of decolonization
• The heart (qalb) is a ‘revolutionary organ’, not a site of ‘stillness’
• Supplication of Prophet Muhammad:
• “O Turner of the hearts [which revolve]! Make firm my heart on your dīn”
• Could this mean that what is sought is a firmness of revolutionary
commitment that is rooted in the power-transaction (dīn)?
59
Qur’anic Roots of Islamic Decoloniality
• Decolonization takes place in the heart (22:46)
• Decolonization involves a call from The Divine and a
possible response by the human (8:24)
• However, the human also calls upon The Divine who responds
and calls upon the human to respond (2:186)
• Human response to the Divine call transforms an implicit
existential relationship into an explicit existential
relationship
• This relationship centres on The Divine not the human
60
A Word of Warning (from a Victim of Racism)
• “The challenge to religion ... is to make sure resistance remains a
means rather than an end in itself and that it is exercised in
consideration of goals that lie beyond self-serving quotidian interests.
Otherwise, there is little that separates religion from secular
movements and utopias.” (p. 171)
• “God, not ‘the man’, emphatically must occupy the centre of religious
consciousness.” (p. 193)
• “A commitment to God-consciousness (taqwa) and personal piety will
have to maintain their place above and beyond the revolt against
‘second creators’ and false mysterium tremendum.” (p. 197)
Jackson, Sherman A. (2005) Islam and The Blackamerican: Looking Toward The Third Resurrection. Oxford: OUP
61
A Word of Warning (from a Racial Suspect)

62
Qur’anic Branches of Islamic Decoloniality
• Colonial modernity / global white supremacy is an ‘abyss’
established, maintained, expanded and refined by ‘monsters’
– White Supremacists (Racists)
• Need to revive and centre the Islamic concept and practice
of adab / ta’deeb (discipline, respect) so as to inform the
way(s) in which decolonial jihād is waged against WSR
• Adab / ta’deeb as comporting oneself in a balanced (just and
correct) way in relation to
• Self
• Others (both human and non-human)
• God / The Real 63
Conclusion: Supremacism and Nobility
• “The Western worldview is essentially about the pursuit of
hubris [i.e. arrogance / superiority / supremacism which
masquerades as nobility] as understood by the Greeks
which is no longer understood in Western society [i.e. the
nihilistic will-to-power].” (Palmer 2014)
Contrast this with the Islamic worldview as presented in The Qur’an:
“We have honoured / ennobled the Children of Adam…” (17:70)
“…the most noble of you in the sight of God/Allah is the most God-conscious
of you…” (49:13)

Palmer, Kent D. (2014) Sufic Philosophy: A New Beginning... Unpublished Draft. 64

Conclusion: Islam as Counter-Supremacism

(28:83) That home of the Hereafter We assign to those who do not

desire exaltedness upon the earth or corruption. And the [best]
outcome is for the righteous.
• A profound rejection of supremacism – of whatever stripe – since God/Allah
alone is The Supreme / Exalted (Al-'Aala)
65
Conclusion: Islam as Counter-Supremacism
“Muslims are not alone in this struggle. They cannot continue
to think that their fight is carried out to the back of the rest of
the planet, or in terms of an Islamic supremacy. An ideology
that separates the world between Islam and the West, or
among believers and nonbelievers does not have anything to
offer … The revolutionary potential of Islam has to be put to
the service of humanity, and not to the service of the Islamic
cause. We have to think in terms of diversity and syncretism,
not in terms of supremacy.”
Prado, Abdennur (n.d.) The Need for an Islamic Liberation Theology.
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