Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown and White

Date: April 13 | Time: 3:00 – 5:00PM | Location: OISE Room 5150, 252 Bloor St W, Toronto 

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Description:

An ethnography of Islamic Relief (IR), the largest Islamic NGO based in the West, Racializing the Ummah explores how a Muslim organization can do good in a world that defines Muslimness as less than human. Rooted in more than a decade of international research, Rhea Rahman’s study on the organization’s projects, methods, and limitations reveals how racial capitalism permeates all aspects of humanitarianism.

Beginning with a counterhistory of Muslims in the United Kingdom following World War II, Rahman analyzes IR’s mission and transnational activities in and across places including the UK, South Africa, and Mali in the broader context of global white supremacy. She shows how IR’s approaches often effectively secularize Islam to evade anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia, implicating concepts such as the “good” Muslim aid worker, who complies with War on Terror surveillance while attending to victims of Western colonialism. Meanwhile, Rahman theorizes the tactics of aid workers on the ground, who creatively draw on an Islamic Black radical tradition to drive real change.

Bio:

Rhea Rahman is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Her research engages global racial formations in relation to histories and enactments of Islamic practice and Muslim identity. Her first book, Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown and White, (Minnesota, 2026), frames international Muslim volunteerism, humanitarianism and development within intersecting racial logics of white supremacy, Islamophobia, and anti-Blackness, while also locating alternative visions of doing good that are grounded in Islam as the foundation of a revolutionary praxis.