Ruminations

Reviewed by: Linda Hyökki, Ibn Haldun University, Türkiye

Published by: Bloomsbury Academic, London/New York, 2022, 258 pp. ISBN: 9781350198715.

As a female Muslim academic studying Islamophobia and Muslim minorities in Western contexts, I am personally connected to my field of study. I feel accountable to “my” community, i.e., the Muslim community in my native country Finland and wider Europe. For the whole last decade that I have spent working on my PhD thesis on anti-Muslim racism, I have aimed to produce knowledge that can be used for the betterment of Muslims’ societal and economic position and tackle discrimination and racism that we face in our everyday lives. My life trajectory has led me to develop an interest in doing what I do, and it can be said that it benefits me in terms of gaining a particular perspective and access to the lived realities within my community. However, my emotional and personal connectivity to my research topic – being someone who also has faced discrimination and anti-Muslim racism not only as a Muslim, but as a Muslim convert, as a Muslim woman, and as an activist – the work that I do from time to time takes a toll on me. The frustration of investing effort and energy into the fight only to see year after year new manifestations of anti-Muslim racism and discrimination passing the dinner table test, not to mention the national political legitimacy, can be depressing.