Queer Worldmaking and Islamic Selves in the Global South

On 12 February 2026, Dr. Ali Kassem (NUS Sociology & Anthropology) presented a talk titled "Queer Worldmaking and Islamic Selves in the Global South."

Event Details

Date and Time: 12 Feb 2026, Thursday, 2.00pm to 4.00pm
Venue: NUS FASS Research Division Seminar Room, AS7 06-42

About the Talk

This paper examines the ambivalent everyday negotiations queer Muslims across Southeast Asia and the Arab region imagine and enact through interpretive qualitative research. Centering their lived experiences, I analyze how they navigate tensions between Islam’s claimed normative structures and their queer subjectivities, while engaging with broader sociopolitical landscapes particularly marked by nationalism and postcolonial modernity. The paper accordingly develops participants’ articulation of a ‘queer Islam’ drawing on diverse traditions and imagined/imaginable histories. From this, it challenges dominant Eurocentric paradigms that equate queer emancipation with secular modernity or a linear rupture from religious tradition. Proposing a kaleidoscopic prismatic lens, I trace how queer ex-Muslims reconfigure agency, community, and meaning, operating both alongside and against the grain of hegemonic religious and secular frameworks. By exploring how queerness and Islam can accordingly be mutually reimagined, the paper illuminates decolonial possibilities that emerge from these contested spaces. In doing so, it contributes to critical debates on sexuality, secularity, and South-South relationalities under modernity/coloniality.

About the Speaker

Ali Kassem is a Lecturer in Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. Ali was previously postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Al-Waleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh where he also taught at the School of Social and Political Science. He obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University of Sussex, UK and has recently held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Helsinki, the Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich and the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, among others. His first book is titled Islamophobia and Lebanon: Visibly Muslim Women and Global Coloniality (I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) and he is currently editing a book titled Colonial Legacies and Arab-Majority Region(s): From Contemporary Conditions to Alternative Futures (Bristol University Press, 2026).