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Rhea Rahman will discuss her new book "Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown, and White." She will be joined in conversation by Eman Abdelhadi and Darryl Li. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.At the Co-op
About the Book: 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.
About the Author: Rhea Rahman is an associate 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. She is working on a new project that explores Muslimness, Queerness, and abolition in the US.
About the Interlocutors: Eman Abdelhadi is an organizer, writer and scholar. She is assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where her research focuses on gender, migration, and religion. Her academic work has appeared in Social Forces, Gender & Society, the British Journal of Sociology, and other outlets. She is also a columnist at "In These Times" magazine and coauthor of the sci-fi novel: "Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune," 2052-2072 (2022). Abdelhadi organizes with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UChicago and Sociologists for Palestine, among other formations.
Darryl Li is associate professor of anthropology and associate member of the law school at the University of Chicago. His first book, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" (Stanford University Press, 2020) was an ethnographic study of "jihadist foreign fighters" thinking about questions of universalism and solidarity. He is currently writing a book theorizing captivity through the lens of Guantanamo and other sites of enforced holding under the U.S.-led War on Terrorism in an attempt to connect questions of abolition and anti-imperialism. As a member of the bar in New York and Illinois, Li has been involved in litigation against War on Terror practices and has volunteered as an intake attorney for abolitionist bail funds in the Chicagoland area. Outside of his formal academic work, he also writes about colonialism, racialization, and law in Palestine.
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5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60637
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