A spiritual Ishmaelite

Toward a Muslim-World Analogue of DiAngelo: Fragility, Liberal Islamophobia, and Anti-Accelerationist Ethics

To aspire to become an analogue of Robin DiAngelo in the Muslim world is not to imitate her vocabulary or replicate U.S.-centric racial discourse, but to occupy an equivalent structural role: that of an internal-critical interlocutor who diagnoses dominant moral self-congratulation, names defensive epistemic reflexes, and reframes discomfort as a necessary condition for ethical maturation. The task is civilizational and pedagogical rather than polemical or performative. It requires translating DiAngelo’s core analytic moves into a Muslim-relevant register capable of addressing white fragility, liberal Islamophobia, and the moral pathologies of acceleration.

DiAngelo’s central contribution is often caricatured as moral accusation, but her actual intervention lies elsewhere. She names a defensive affect that protects dominance while denying its existence; she treats moral discomfort as diagnostic rather than punitive; and she systematically shifts attention from personal intent to structural function. Her work insists that defensiveness itself—denial, tone-policing, and appeals to innocence—is not exculpatory but evidentiary. A Muslim-world analogue must preserve this architecture while re-grounding it in postcolonial, civilizational, and epistemic asymmetries that shape contemporary Muslim–liberal encounters.

The first task, therefore, is conceptual translation rather than terminological reuse. “White fragility” cannot simply be exported into Muslim contexts without distortion. What is required is an isomorphic diagnostic category—one that captures the same function under different historical conditions. A plausible candidate is liberal moral fragility: the incapacity of secular-liberal actors to tolerate sustained evidence that their universalism is culturally situated, power-laden, and selectively applied. Closely related is an epistemic innocence reflex, whereby declarations such as “I support reform” or “I oppose extremism” are mobilized to pre-empt scrutiny rather than to invite it. These reflexes operate not as conscious hostility but as affective shields that prevent ethical learning.

Within this framework, liberal Islamophobia must be redefined away from individualized prejudice and toward structural paternalism. Liberal Islamophobia is rarely expressed as hatred or exclusion; it is more often articulated as conditional inclusion. Muslims are welcomed insofar as they perform reform, dissent, or self-critique in alignment with liberal priors, but Islamic normativity itself is treated as a residual pathology—something to be explained, therapized, or eventually dissolved. Agency is granted only when it confirms secular expectations; resistance is reframed as trauma, false consciousness, or identity politics. Like the racism DiAngelo critiques, this Islamophobia persists through civility, politeness, and moral self-assurance rather than overt animus.

An effective Muslim-world analogue must document the affective pattern that follows when this structure is named: denial of bias, accusations of silencing critique, tone-policing, and the rapid pathologization of Muslim interlocutors. As with white fragility, these reactions should be analyzed not as personal failings but as predictable systemic responses that function to preserve moral authority while avoiding accountability. The analytic posture must remain clinical and descriptive; moralism would only reinforce the very defenses under examination.

Where such a project can exceed DiAngelo’s contribution is in its ethical horizon. Liberal Islamophobia is inseparable from a deeper temporal pathology: moral acceleration. Contemporary liberalism often demands that Muslims rapidly conform to its ethical timelines—regarding sexuality, governance, epistemology, and spirituality—under the banner of progress. Resistance is read as backwardness, and slowness as moral failure. An anti-accelerationist ethic counters this by foregrounding moral metabolism: societies require time to integrate change without fracture, and ethical reforms imposed without civilizational consent often externalize their harms. From this perspective, Islam functions not as a defensive identity but as a counter-temporal moral tradition that privileges continuity, intergenerational responsibility, and slow wisdom over ethical venture capitalism.

Such an argument reframes Islam not as an exception to universal ethics but as a critique of universalism’s unexamined tempo. It insists that ethical maturity involves not only the direction of change but its pacing, its governance, and its downstream consequences. This move situates Muslim critique within broader debates on transition ethics, trauma-aware temporality, and institutional responsibility, thereby preventing its dismissal as parochial or reactionary.

Crucially, this role must be pedagogical rather than prophetic. Like DiAngelo, the Muslim-world analogue should speak to liberal institutions rather than merely about them, developing diagnostic essays, training frameworks, and analytic tools rather than manifestos. The aim is not to shame but to mature ethical universalism by exposing its blind spots. Discomfort is to be normalized as part of learning, while humiliation is avoided as counterproductive.

If successful, such work will provoke backlash: accusations of exceptionalism, claims of silencing critique, and attempts to reduce the analysis to identity politics. These responses should be treated as data rather than deterrents. As with white fragility, the backlash itself confirms the presence of the structure being named. The discipline lies in refusing personalization and returning consistently to pattern, function, and systemic asymmetry.

Yet this vocation carries its own ethical risk. To position oneself as the conscience of the Muslim world would replicate the civilizational narcissism under critique. Legitimacy must rest instead on analytical rigor, comparative scholarship, a willingness to critique Muslim pathologies without laundering liberal dominance, and a demonstrated commitment to responsibility alongside curiosity. The goal is not moral supremacy but ethical reciprocity.

In this sense, becoming a DiAngelo-figure for the Muslim world ultimately entails a quieter and more demanding task: naming the defensive affects of liberal power, insisting that moral self-congratulation is not moral maturity, slowing ethical time in an age addicted to acceleration, and inviting both Muslims and non-Muslims into a deeper, more accountable universalism. It is a vocation oriented toward reform rather than recognition—one that asks not whether modernity is ethical, but whether it is ethically grown up.