Rhea Rahman, "Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown, and White" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown and White (U Minnesota Press, 2026) is 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

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Rhea Rahman, "Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown, and White" (U Minnesota Press, 2026) is an episode from New Books in Islamic Studies.

This episode is 65:06 long.

This episode was published on Apr 29, 2026.

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