From Virtual Internment to Actual Liberation: The Epistemic and Ontic Resistance of US Muslims to the Ideology of (Counter)terrorism–Islamophobia/Islamophilia

Abstract

This paper draws from my radical qualitative research on the link between Islamophobia/Islamophilia and (counter)terrorism in the US. For my book, Decolonial Psychoanalysis, I interviewed 19 US Muslims asking them about not only their experiences with Islamophobia but also, and more significantly, how they resist it. My conclusion, based on the analysis, is that US Muslims resist Islamophobia in at least two distinct ways: epistemically and ontically. These forms of resistance constitute what I call “actual liberation”.