This paper examines the outcomes of an anthropological study carried out with a small group of Mexican Muslims. The study’s aim was to inquire into how they understand indigeneity and Muslimness, 504 years from the fall of Tenochtitlán, modern day Mexico City, and the foundation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain by the Spanish Empire. Exploring the possibility of decolonization and reindigenization with this centuries-old background led to the group’s critical assessment of the roles played by racism and mestizaje in their own lives, as well as how they define and experience their own Muslimness. The reflections of Mohamed Abdou (2019), an anarcha-Muslim thinker, and those of Houria Bouteldja (2015), a French-Algerian thinker and activist, inspired the discussion presented here, and shed light into how conducting research around Islam can change the terms of the conversation relative to Muslim people, since one of Islam’s main tenants involves justice for all sentient beings in the worldwide community, pointing towards potential political implications of Muslim identities.
Islam, Indigeneity, and Reindigenization: A Political Reading
Through Abdou’s decolonial critique, notions of indigeneity from the approach of various Native American thinkers and activists —such as Robert Lovelace, an Ardoch Algonquin First Nation Chief, who is also Muslim— are weaved together with Islam, articulating what is indigeneity and how to enact processes of reindigenization. Following Abdou (2019), both indigeneity and reindigenization are aligned with the Islamic notion of fiṭrah, namely, the “originary nature of individuals to incline towards all that is communal and good” (Abdou 2019: 94). According to Abdou’s retrieval of Lovelace’s teachings:
[…] “anyone can become indigenous to a place” and this does not mean “everyone has to ‘become Indian’” or that we engage in white orientalized projects that entail our collective return to innocence[3] […] Lovelace argues for fulfilling acts of compassion (rahma), goodness (iḥsān) and intelligence, and adhering to non-statist, innate communal bonds and ethical-political, spiritual commitments. These are all synonymous with Islam’s notion of fiṭrah […] and associated with achieving an anarchistic interpretation of a global Umma and pluriverse spiritual world (Abdou 2019: 94).
Thus, recovering and embodying fiṭrah might entail a political reading, since this notion could enable an understanding of humanity and the rest of creation that goes beyond the classifying hierarchies which paved the way for racialization, genderization, fragmentation, and exploitation that were violently imposed since the so-called discovery of America in 1492.
Abdou has not been the only Muslim activist and thinker to advance the notion of indigeneity, and thus reindigenization, in a political sense. Previously, a movement that emerged in 2005, spearheaded by French-Algerian thinker Houria Bouteldja and French-Tunisian thinker Sadri Khiari, became the first French decolonial “political party” - the Party of the Indigenous [People] of the Republic [Le Parti des Indigènes de la République, PIR] - in 2010. By using the notion of “Indigenous,” the PIR invited Muslim descendants of colonial migrants to build an autonomous political movement as a means to expose and combat the French State’s racism, colonialism, and imperialism, while challenging the apparently solid French national identity based on so-called universalist values.
In Bouteldja’s 2015 text, Islam and modernity: Can we be Muslims in the West? [Islam et modernité : Peut-on être musulmans en Occident ?], she reminds French Muslims of the impossibility of conceiving Islam without focusing on the struggle for justice. Such a reminder is based on the fact that this sacred tradition has the potential to surpass any cultural expression that might be termed Islamic, thus proposing an expansive view of human relations guided by kindness, respect, and fairness. Bouteldja’s emphasis on becoming (devenir) Muslims and taking responsibility for any complicity with colonialism is evident in her words:
If you do not want to escape your conscience, you first must face reality in all its ugliness. This system’s first ugliness is that none of us are innocent. But we are not guilty either, because our world is a system that has preceded us, and will probably outlive us. We are not guilty, but we are responsible. We are responsible as human beings, we are responsible as a third people living in the North, and we are responsible as “potential” Muslims. In my opinion, it is based on this awareness and this objective situation, which conflicts with the principle of Islamic justice, that we must forge policy. I would like to make a distinction here between social Muslims and political Muslims. The former are cultural Muslims in the broad sense (they have inherited Islamic culture because they were born in an Islamic environment, they may or may not practice Islam, or they may be converts); the latter are those who, in addition to having faith, are aware of their responsibilities in a structurally unjust world (Bouteldja 2015, paragraph 4).
Given its broad appeal, the PIR’s call —and, in particular, that of Bouteldja’s— transcends the French context. For instance, Roberto D. Hernández, famed Chicano[4] scholar, establishes the relevance of this decolonial proposal when he links it to the struggles of communities and othered peoples in the United States. In Decoloniality and Politics of Recognition Among the Indigènes de la République (2016), Hernández asserts that the PIR’s retrieval of “that which is Indigenous” through its political lens: “[it] helps to critically re-invigorate our thinking about Indigeneity with a grounding in a decolonial analytic beyond a Western-centric recognition politics frame that operates through the lens of nation-state sovereignty on the one hand or cultural recognition and autonomy on the other […]” (Hernández 2016: 258).
On the basis of Hernández’s contribution (2016), the political sense in recognizing oneself as “Indigenous” necessarily entails seeking to transcend the nation-State and the monolithic notion of identity it seeks to dictate and impose. This reflection is a subtle criticism of Leftist political parties that have demonstrated, time and again, how modern/colonial prisons (imperialism, capitalism, exploitation, ableism, racism, Cis-heteronormativity/morality, sexism, classism, and others) remain the norm. Such criticism shares a common spirit with the work of Black American feminist philosopher, writer, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Recovering the discussion about systems of oppression in Lorde’s essay (2007) “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” it is relevant to acknowledge how the nation-State and its limited notion of identity will stand unchallenged as long as the master —namely, any person, group, or institution that imposes, benefits from, maintains, and/or enforces such systems— keeps on being legitimized/naturalized and the master’s recognition continues to be sought.
With that said, this paper is a response to several research questions: How do Muslims in Mexico City conceive “indigeneity”? How do these perceptions contrast with Abdou’s proposal of reindigenization? Do these interpretations account for an expanded sense of Muslimness? Are there any political readings in such interpretations?
Participants’ Overview
In short, the 14 research participants can be characterized as people between 30 and 55 years old, who live in or outside of Mexico, and perceive themselves in a manifold of ways. In terms of their sex-gender and sexual orientation, the participants self-identify as cis-men, cis-women, non-binary, queer, heterosexual, bisexual/pansexual, or homosexual. With reference to their racialization, they identify themselves as white, white-mestizo/a, mestizo/a, or Indigenous-Afro-descendant. Their erotic-affective ties are diverse, as some of them live with their partner, with whom they may be married and/or raise children, while others have partners with whom they do not cohabit or are single.
The economic activities that the research participants partake in may or may not correspond to their level of education, or to their use of languages other than Spanish. As a result, during 2022 the trimestral economic decile in which they were situated concentrated between deciles 2 and 4, and deciles 6 and 10. Their income can be described as “secure” or “insecure,” depending on employment in public/private institutions or companies, or on having temporary employment/self-employment. With regards to the marking of the trimestral economic decile, during the focus groups and interviews most of the research participants stated that belonging to a social class in Mexico is no longer a credible indicator that points out the issues (or lack thereof) this country faces because of labor precarity.
Data from the exploratory questionnaire shows that the participants’ identifications reflect a wide notion of Muslimness. They self-identify as “Muslim,” “Muslim convert,” “Muslim revert,” “Sufi Muslim,” or simply as “Dervish.” It is worth mentioning that this identification is in no way directly linked to membership in a particular Muslim community: Some of the participants used to belong to a Muslim community and later on stopped attending, while others continue to attend to and participate in Islamic communities in Mexico City. In this sense, belonging to a community for the participants goes beyond formal enrolment or active/ongoing attendance.
These identifications stem from diverse understandings of what is a community, coupled with a variability in the commitment to it. Some participants expressed that they attend an Islamic community on a regular basis, while others mentioned that they only attend when there are Islamic festivities. However, experiencing their Muslimness can also be independent from community affiliation, given that some participants said they are not interested in being part of a particular Islamic community since attendance is unnecessary for them to feel Muslim, while other participants stated their preference for not attending a particular community because they do not feel comfortable being there.
Regarding their perception of Islam, the majority of participants stated that it is “a spiritual path and practice,” followed by saying that Islam is “a sacred tradition,” “a state of consciousness,” “a religion,” and “a cosmology.” Lastly, on the basis of the testimonies from the focus groups and individual interviews, it is shown that the participants’ Muslimness transcends normative and prescriptive notions of Islam. How they understand themselves responds to critical interpretations of what it means to be Muslim; what being part of the ummah (that is to say, the worldwide community) entails, beyond belonging to any particular Islamic community; and, most importantly, what Islam itself represents for their lives.
Racism in the Mexican Nation-State: A Roadblock to Reindigenization
The participants in this focus group chose five quotes from Abdou’s work (2019) that examine the character of indigeneity and reindigenization, on the basis of what this thinker recovered from the Native American knowledge of Turtle Island regarding Islam. The quote most relevant to this discussion stated how reindigenization and indigeneity are closely aligned with the Islamic notion of fiṭrah. Hence, Muslim reindigenization entails “fulfilling acts of compassion (rahma [Arabic term related to the uterus]), goodness (ihsān), and intelligence, and adhering to non-statist, innate communal bonds and ethical-political, spiritual commitments” (Abdou 2019: 94).
Reading Abdou’s words created an atmosphere of tension, accompanied by multiple silences, a quite different environment to that of previous collective discussions. “That which is Indigenous” was perceived as foreign and distant among the research participants, and even as an identity they had no right to claim, as doing so could be an instance of cultural appropriation. It is worthy of mention that, according to them, cultural appropriation in no way can be equated with having knowledge of or supporting the actual struggles carried out by the country’s native nations and peoples. In the collective discussion, Bashir explained the reasons why the word “Indigenous” itself seemed remote to him:
I think it has to do with the meaning that it has been given in fact, and with how it has been used in this sense of control, power, and marking otherness. In reality, Indigenous is simply “native,” “originating from,” period. In that sense, we would all be Indigenous. The context and use that has been given to it is what has really fucked us up [...] The struggles of Indigenous people are according to where they are from. So, the struggle of a Zapotec Indigenous person is going to be completely different from that of a Tsotsil, and these are not struggles that touch us in any way.
This lack of personal connection to the notion of Indigeneity in light of its ties to the homogenization of diverse populations and identities, and to control and power as exerted by the institutions of the Mexican nation-State, was also present in Rkia’s perspective:
Off the bat, I wouldn’t either identify myself with the word “Indigenous”, “indigeneity,” or “indigenism” [...] In the context from which I come, I see [the term] as part of a State discourse; it is the true forced inclusion: force-fitting wildly diverse people, with their own roots and traditions, into this square of borders and the delimitation of the State, its territory and its population, and erasing them in order to keep only the typical costume under this idea of “we are all Mexicans.” There is even a documentary that is called We are all Mexicans [Todos somos mexicanos], and it’s a thing from the 50s, from the National Indigenist Institute, about our Indigenous brothers, with a voiceover explaining to us why, even though we look so different, we are all brothers, and that we have to bring electricity and pavement, Spanish and health to these “poor Indigenous people” [...] The Indigenous people who recognize themselves as Indigenous do so in spite of the State or instrumentalize the State to obtain rights.
Suleiman stated that claiming to be Indigenous, as proposed by Abdou’s quote, “seems, it feels, like a usurpation” to him. He elaborated further: “I think the term wants to be used in a way that doesn’t resonate with anybody. So, it’s hard to get into the subject because the term is getting in the way quite a lot, because there’s an entire heavy burden about it that we grew up with, and it’s a thing none of us identifies with.”
These testimonies by Bashir, Rkia, and Suleiman point towards historically articulated racism at the hands of the Mexican nation-State from its inception. Several systems of oppression were introduced since the fall of the Mexica “city” of Tenochtitlán in 1521, when native nations and peoples of this territory started being subjected to hierarchical classifications, essentialist in character, by the Spanish Empire. This led, in the 16th century, to the construction of the “Indigenous” self as primarily related to a feminized other because, back then, the only referent of “lesser worth” which the Spanish conquerors and colonizers had at hand was “their” women (Ochoa Muñoz, in press).
Creating the feminized other subsequently derived in the construction of a racialized other, also conceived as “inferior”. According to the analysis of the Mexican feminist sociologist Karina Ochoa Muñoz (in press), these processes of othering are explained through the arguments made by several Dominican friars, in the 16th century, with regards to the so-called character of this territory’s native population. They “demonstrated,” before the Spanish Empire, that Spaniards themselves were the only ones qualified to “save” this presumed “otherness” through the imposition of different ways of “development” As a result, and from that moment on, nations and peoples native to this territory have been subjected to “being underage” and to having a servitude status, suited to the interests of the colonial administrators and their descendants.
Added to this characterization of native people was the process of dehumanization and bestialization of Black Africans, who were brought to the American territories, without their consent, for the purpose of enslavement. A consequence of white supremacism, enslavement was introduced in these lands by the Spanish conquerors and colonizers since the supposed discovery of America in 1492. Following Mexican anthropologist Berenice Vargas García, who retrieves the contributions of Aph Ko, an Afro-descendant American writer and activist, white supremacism “is not only a ‘system,’ an ‘order’ or an ‘institution’ specifically manufactured to benefit whites through the control of power and material resources, [but] it is ‘a living, insidious, expansive and colonial force that works to ‘get inside,’ consume and destroy’” (Vargas García 2023: 130).
In turn, the Afro-descendant population have suffered an erasure from official national history which was still in place until a few decades ago. Despite current visibility endeavors, anti-black racism continues to have a presence in Mexican institutions, as well as in the memory and practices of a large part of the Mexican population. Afro-Mexican sociologist Mónica Moreno Figueroa explains the ties of racism and anti-blackness as follow: “The reading of bodies and the instability of skin color help us understand the necessity of anti-black racism for the mestizo project and Mexican society” (2022: 107). Consequently, and due to the imposition of whiteness as the only desirable complexion, a great importance is still placed in a person’s skin color not being perceived as “very dark,” “very moreno,” or “very prieto.”[5] Therefore, all along the 204 years that followed the process of independence of the so-called Viceroyalty of New Spain, completed in 1821, the essentialist, hierarchical classifications devised at the hands of the Spanish Empire for native and Black peoples have not been undone.
Against the backdrop of this context, the reflections of Bashir, Rkia, and Suleiman account for Mexican racism, which they term “indigenism,” historically disguised as a “unifying” national project that revolved around mestizaje. Their common perception is that “indigeneity”: a) “has to do with the meaning that it has been given in fact, and with how it has been used in this sense of control, power, and marking otherness” (Bashir); b) “is the real forced inclusion” (Rkia); and c) “[gets in the way] quite a lot, because there’s an entire heavy burden about it that we grew up with, and it’s a thing none of us identifies with” (Suleiman).
The shrinkage of the “Indigenous” population in Mexican censuses has not been an accident. Yásnaya Aguilar (2023b), Mixe[6] writer and scholar, suggests that the de-indigenization of the “Mexican” population responds to structural racism in the last 200 years. This is due to the fact that the Mexican nation-State “took away language, cultural elements and belonging from certain Indigenous people to ascribe it to a more whitewashed identity called mestizo, a Mexican identity built with mixed elements from different places, peoples and traditions” (p. 55). When Aguilar was asked, in the context of a virtual chat on November 17, 2023, what she thought about the term “reindigenization,” she said:
The danger that I see is that, [after all] de-indigenization gave you advantages, you use that privilege for cultural appropriation while denying [Indigenous] people those rights [...] It can generate these things, right? And because Indigenous is a colonial category, I think it should not be reinforced [...] So, we should have some caution there, I think (Aguilar, 2023a).
Aguilar’s standpoint (2023a and b) about these potential setbacks of reindigenization is directly linked to the following set of perspectives expressed by three research participants in the final focus group. Samira’s reflections deal with what is being Indigenous and with how that identity, in her opinion, means a relation to certain places, struggles, and life trajectories:
I don’t consider myself [Indigenous] because it would be like disguising oneself a little to belong [and] it seems to me that the word “Indigenous” is superimposed […] It seems to me that the idea that the author says about “reindigenization” and “indigeneity” implies a return to inner expectations. So, it seems to me that what he understands is not what we understand with the Indigenous question, which is something totally different [...] I understand that he’s referring to this part of “where I was born”, and that he’s referring to “how much I am identifying myself with this place.” In other words, it is the root of the place and not being Indigenous: like [being] Zapotec or Mixtec.
In turn, Abdullah explained his view as follows:
Reindigenization is a term [with which] I, to start with, obviously do not relate to, because to reindigenize would imply going back to being something that was already Indigenous [...] You can’t make me Indigenous again because I have never been [Indigenous], that is who I am as a person. [...] I’m more of a chilango,[7] I was born in Mexico City [...] If we’re gonna talk about reindigenizing and we’re gonna try to refer to that as reconnecting with “naturalness” or with “where you come from,” well, I’m native, a Mexico City native and critter.
Hashim’s perspective, closely related to identity, continued the reflection with regards to how complicated it was for most of the research participants to connect with notions of indigeneity and, by extension, to define and enact reindigenization: “I want to start by saying that I do not identify myself with the word ‘Indigenous,’ because I am not Indigenous. That is, I am Indigenous in the etymological sense of the word, because, well, I was born in a place and I am Indigenous to ‘such and such’ neighborhood.”
The contributions of Samira, Abdullah, and Hashim not only refer to how impossible it is to retrieve an Indigenous identity (similar to what Bashir, Rkia, and Suleiman expressed), but they also show that assuming such an identity in Mexico City is difficult, in light of the personal history configuring them as city dwellers. However, there is a hidden history in these narratives that is connected to the efforts of de-indigenization as Aguilar (2023 a and b) defines them: An underlying and ongoing process of mestizaje, connected to both the whitening and whitewashing of identities, inextricably wedded to the ideological project of the modern Mexican nation-State.
The impossibility of identifying with the terms “Indigenous” and, therefore, “reindigenization” —as a process that could be experienced by the research participants— is also explained given two more reasons, besides the ones described in previous paragraphs. The first reason has to do with how the participants identify themselves in the exploratory questionnaire: four of them (Hashim, Rkia, Rihana, and Halim) self-identify as “white,” and four more (Layla, Latifa, Yunus, and Rami) state that they are “mestizos/as,” while only one person (Suleiman) selected two categories: “white” and “mestizo”. The remaining four people (Samira, Habiba, Bashir, and Abdullah) chose to refrain from ascribing to any markings.
From the 14 persons who participated in this research, Hussein was the only one who identified himself as “Indigenous” and “Afro-descendant,” since his family’s maternal side integrates two types of origins: That of the native peoples absorbed by the Azcapotzalco mayoralty of Mexico City, and the Afro-descendant root, stemming from the state of Veracruz. Hussein’s marking in the exploratory questionnaire results from a reflective exercise he began some years ago, triggered by how he perceived his family dynamics, contrasted to the way of life of some “whiter” families he knew. Hussein stated that living in an extended family meant that “the space of intimacy was not so defined, [and he had to] listen to things like such-and-such uncle was called ‘indio,’[8] or things of that nature.”
The second reason that made the participants distance themselves from or not identify with the term “Indigenous” and, therefore, with the process of reindigenization, can be attributed to the notion of indigeneity itself, as stated by Abdou (2019). This notion pertains to a different context, that of Turtle Island which, needless to say, entails a different colonization process to the one which unfolded in what we nowadays call Mexico.
However, what ringed true for the research participants is that reindigenization is not solely a metaphor. Understood as a global transnational project parallel to decolonization, according to Abdou (2019), reindigenization cannot be severed from the feelings and thoughts of those who could enact it locally, namely, from their own sentipensares. As a result, reindigenization inside the territory constructed as Mexico implies three steps to the participants in the last focus group: 1) to recognize, first and foremost, how “that which is Indigenous” was created in Mexico, thus dismantling the burdens that have been associated with the notion of indigeneity; 2) to assume how one has acted in relation to people classified as Indigenous, taking responsibility for the loads of conscience, for guilt and contempt towards them; and 3) to establish other linkages with Indigenous people, based on the recognition of the loss of personal indigeneity.
To the effect of how loaded the notion of indigeneity is in the Mexican context, Hashim expressed:
In English, the burden of [the word] “Indigenous” has 500,000 kilos less weight than it has in Spanish —and in Mexican Spanish. In fact, I even imagine that [Abdou] used that term, perhaps a little deliberately, because in English the word is used, but not so much, and I insist: with much, much less weight than here [...] I think that what happened was good, I think it also showed how much that term touches us on the inside.
Continuing in the same line as Hashim, Latifa tries out an assessment of what originated the debate about indigeneity in the first place during the final focus group:
I think that the controversy has a lot to do with this load of conscience, since there is guilt about the way Indigenous peoples are treated. And if you didn’t grow up there or you have already lost your mother tongue —which your mother or grandmother did speak— then there is a feeling of guilt and of saying: “I can’t call myself that”, or [of] feeling contempt as well. It is a term that has an enormous, derogatory, painful charge.
The question of what went missing and what remained in relation to being Indigenous made itself present in Rami’s reflection. “I was left wondering at which point, for example, did I lose my Indigenous part?”, Rami stated, as he pondered about his own family history:
I do recall that my great-grandmother spoke Maya, and I know that language is one of the identity elements to say “I am from this group.” They [Rami’s great-grandmother’s family] lived in a village where everyone spoke Maya. So, I kept thinking, at which point do I lose it, at which point do I not keep it? Yes, it is also a process of agency, I guess... I think that, maybe, this is what we were missing, and that came to me much later [...] If all Muslims in Mexico City are connected in one way or another with Indigenous people, how do we bond among ourselves?
Finally, also on the basis of reminiscing about her heritage, Rkia explained:
I remember my same-old topic and my obsession of “what I can indeed talk about is the whiteness that was imposed on me,” but it is undeniable, it is part of who I am [...] I think the word “Indigenous” made noise to many people, and I was talking about “let’s look for our origin geologically”; that is, where do we come from. I don’t remember who said “my mother or my grandmother identifies herself as Indigenous.” How interesting there’s talk about moms...
The reflections of Hashim, Latifa, Rami, and Rkia give an account, once again, of how the Mexican nation-State attempted to “unite” a diverse territory, inhabited by likewise diverse peoples, under a single country through implementing a process of de-indigenization/mestizaje/whitewashing. Centered on the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, the Mexican nation-State sought to recover “the good things” of the conquest, colonization, and the colonial order that followed, all based on white supremacy. These so-called positive elements of mestizaje were imposed and naturalized, in contrast to the erasure of the “the bad things,” represented by recognizing oneself as a descendant of people classified as “Indigenous” and, therefore, as inferior to Spaniards and not as worthy as them. On the basis of what Ochoa Muñoz (in press) advances, this view of de-indigenization/mestizaje/whitewashing also attempts to conceal the sexual violence suffered by those among the native people read as “women” ever since the conquest and colonization of these territories.
During the collective discussion, Hashim said that what had happened in the last focus group had been necessary. He went further by stating that it would have even been desirable that “the gang [his friends participating in the study] would have had the ability to get rid of the personal commitment of what happens to them with the word.” Rami and Rkia, on the other hand, stated a relevant fact during the collective discussion: How the process of de-indigenization/mestizaje/whitewashing, that has been present in their families for generations, has marked their lives and continues to impact them because of the attempts to erase any Indigenous root in their genealogy. Hence, Rami questions himself, both in the discussion group and in his individual interview, about ways in which the relations with people classified as Indigenous could be generated, in light of what it means to experience guilt with regards to losing an Indigenous background and, consequently, acquiring certain “white” privileges. In the course of her interview, Rkia expressed a similar position, given that she is quite cognizant of the weight of de-indigenization/mestizaje/whitewashing in her acknowledgement that the women on her maternal side sought, perhaps intentionally, to relate themselves erotically-affectively with European men, so as to offer a better standard of living and a greater access to resources mostly to their female descendants.
In closing, the following testimonies from individual interviews refer to how the process of reindigenization could be viewed and enacted in the Mexican context, as well as which might be its potential obstacles. On the one hand, Hussein is certain that this process “can indeed work, in the sense that it returns you to an original space and […] it opens yourself to everything you had closed off.” However, the process of reindigenization thus conceived also generated certain unease for him:
It causes me conflict, because I believe that these cultural elements —which are identitarian— lead some people to a point. Then, feeling that you only displace [these elements] to get to zero once more, to that fiṭrah that seems to be like a tabula rasa... I don’t know, I’m a little skeptical about that. I think it’s both simultaneously, because even [Abdou] makes use of Islamic language. For example, Rumi did [this process of reindigenization] while being a Muslim. He never stopped being a Muslim nominally, and I don’t think anyone gets to that [namely, to that level], but I think [reindigenization] can allow you to realize many things that you take for granted, and that are, in fact, illusions.
Halim also pointed to the personal challenges involved in reindigenization as follows:
It’s difficult for me to say how this process goes through me, with that name —given what it implies for the State—, but this part of “creating communal links, non-statist ones, with ethical, political, and spiritual commitments” is an invitation, a little on the basis of activism, for me to ask myself: Who am I? And not just who am I, but: Where do I come from, and also what do I represent for other people? I think it’s brave work to say: “Well, I’m this and I feel this, and I’m angry about this, and you are angry about something else —or about the same thing— and there doesn’t have to be uniformity, in the sense of ‘we all have to be equal,’ but there has to be respect and awareness that nobody is better or worse than...” I think it remains to be said: “Ok, let’s talk about racism through a spiritual lens.”
These perspectives reveal that reindigenizing, as a continuum, would imply two parallel paths: Recovering Islam as a way to transcend the veils of illusion that subject people to certain cultural elements without criticizing their existence and necessity, while equally appreciating that the diverse embodiments of people cannot escape participation in multiple contexts. Therefore, as Halim stated, talking “about racism through a spiritual lens” is paramount, so that the implications of living in a contextual, holistic body can be recognized, and the existence of those labeled as other can be valued.
Partial Conclusions
As can be seen in my text, on the basis of the data collected in the three phases of the study and its analysis, the research participants conceive indigeneity in such a manner that problematizes and goes beyond Abdou’s contributions (2019). This critique of the notion of indigeneity is explained due to the participants’ embodiment inside the racist Mexican nation-State, as they continue to bear the burden of de-indigenization/mestizaje/whitewashing, making them try to dodge and avoid the wound that this modern/colonial process inflicted in how their family genealogy was configured. Hence, the necessity to acknowledge a possible new jihad —namely, an inner effort with external manifestations— arises. This jihad would aim at transcending the process of colonial feminization/racialization leading to a manifold racism that not only impacts the participants’ daily lives, given their possession of a fragmented whiteness, but also impinges on their very identity, on how they perceive themselves contrasted to what they “are not.”
As people who recognize themselves as Muslims or students of Islam in its different expressions in Mexico City, the participants in this research are evidently not entirely to blame for the consequences of the fragmentation, exploitation, and hierarchical classification to which human and non-human beings have been subjected since the so-called discovery of America in 1492. Regardless, they are indeed responsible for such consequences if they seek to approach Islam in order to become (devenir) political and “potential Muslims,” in Bouteldja’s definition (2015). Therefore, becoming political Muslims implies that the participants acknowledge the conscious and unconscious denial of what is classified as Indigenous, as a result of the creation of the Mexican nation-State; likewise, this devenir means that the participants are able to contemplate how “indigeneity,” in its political sense, would not seek to claim the recognition of the master, but rather its elimination through mutiny ensuing from the exercise of spiritual activism, as understood from an Islamic perspective (Parti des Indigènes de la République 2005; Bouteldja 2015; Hernández 2016; Abdou 2019).
Somehow, the research participants have already begun to take the first steps in this work: They recognize that Islam and Muslimness might be defined and practiced in a broad, non-normative manner, which accounts for performing an anarchic ijtihad, albeit under the weight of racism as enacted and enforced by the Mexican nation-State. Undoubtedly, they are aware of how racism, in its multiple dimensions, is manifested in their everyday life, despite the fact that the totality of its impact remains blurry when personal family genealogies are recovered. Hence, the relevance of the reflective processes that some of the participants have already begun emerges, because the sentipensares emanating from their different self-identifications endow those very self-identifications with a political meaning. In this manner, the research participants constitute themselves as theorists of Islam’s becoming (devenir) in Mexico City, 504 years after the fall of Tenochtitlán.
Bibliography
Abdou M (2019) Islam and Queer Muslims: Identity and Sexuality in the Contemporary World. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. A thesis submitted to the Department of Cultural Studies for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Aguilar Gil Y (2023a) Diversidad lingüística y tradición de la memoria. Seminario de Literatura y Feminismos Descoloniales. Available at https://www.facebook.com/selidecofem/videos/3226728804297841 Accessed April 2024.
Aguilar Gil Y (2023b) Tëkëëk piky. Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano, Mexico.
Bouteldja H (2015) Islam et modernité : Peut-on être musulmans en Occident ? Available at https://indigenes-republique.fr/islam-et-modernite%E2%80%AF-peut-on-etre-musulmans-en-occident%E2%80%89/ Accessed September 9, 2017.
Brookman P (2019) Looking for Alternatives: Notes on Chicano Art, 1960–1990. In: González J A, Chavoya C O, Noriega C, and Romo T (eds) Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology. Duke University Press, London, pp. 19-29.
Cañas Cuevas, S (2015) The politics of conversion to Islam in southern Mexico. In: Khan A (ed) Islam and the Americas. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, pp. 163-185.
Cañas Cuevas, S (2006) Koliyal Allah Tsotsunkotik. Gracias a Allah que somos más fuertes. Identidades étnicas y relaciones de género entre los sunníes en San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. CIESAS, México. Master’s degree thesis in Social Anthropology.
Del Val J (2004) México. Identidad y nación. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,Mexico.
González J A (2019) Introduction. In: González J A, Chavoya C O, Noriega C, and Romo T (eds) Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology. Duke University Press, London, pp. 1-12.
Grosfoguel R (2010) Epistemic Islamophobia and Colonial Social Sciences. Human Architecture: Journal of the sociology of self-knowledge, vol. VIII, no. 2, pp. 29-38.
Haraway D (1995) Conocimientos situados: la cuestión científica en el feminismo y el privilegio de la perspectiva parcial. In Ciencia, ciborgs y mujeres. Ediciones Cátedra, Spain, pp. 313-346.
Hernández R D (2016) Decoloniality and Politics of Recognition Among the Indigènes de la République. Tabula Rasa 25, pp. 249-265.
Hidayatullah A (2014) Feminist edges of the Qur'an. Oxford University Press, New York.
Hine C (2015) Ethnography for the internet: Embedded, embodied and every day. Bloomsbury Academic, London.
Howlett M (2021) Looking at the ‘field’ through a Zoom lens: Methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic. Qualitative Research 00 (0), pp. 1-16.
INEGI (2021) Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020. Available at https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ccpv/2020/default.html#Tabulados Latest access April 29, 2024.
Leyva Cortés S, González Calderón S T, and Quintana Noriega M C (2023) La da’wa chiapaneca. Retrospectiva histórica y antropológica sobre el desarrollo del islam en San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. In: Paz-González E A and Espino Reyes R J (coords) Entre cruces y protestas. Sobre la investigación religiosa en Centroamérica y el sur mexicano. Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso (SEMIR) and Red Centroamericana de Investigadores del Fenómeno Religioso (RECIFRE), México, pp. 141-183.
Lorde A (2007) The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. In: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Pres, Berkeley, California, pp. 110-114.
Moreno Figueroa M G (2010) Distributed intensities: Whiteness, mestizaje and the logics of Mexican racism. Ethnicities 10, no. 3, pp. 387–401.
Moreno Figueroa M G (2022) Entre confusiones y distracciones: mestizaje y racismo anti-negro en México. Estudios Sociológicos 40, pp. 87-118.
Morquecho G (2004) Bajo la bandera del Islam. Un acercamiento a la identidad política y religiosa de los musulmanes en San Cristóbal de las Casas y algunas expresiones de conflicto que se han presentado durante el proceso de construcción de la comunidad islámica en Chiapas. Ediciones Pirata, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Morquecho G (2013, November 29) Reacomodos en la comunidad islámica en San Cristóbal de Las Casas. América Latina en Movimiento. Available at http://www.alainet.org/es/active/69409 Latest access August 18, 2017.
Murata S (1992) The Tao of Islam. State University of New York Press, New York.
Ochoa Muñoz K (in press) Sobre los desplazamientos en el entendimiento del poder y las violencias: Feminismos en la encrucijada. In: Rodríguez Mancilla M, Zenteno Torres E, Tello Soto A, et al. Feminismos latinoamericanos en la encrucijada. Editorial Quimantú, Santiago.
Parti des Indigènes de la République (2005) Nous Sommes Les Indigènes de la République.Available at https://indigenes-republique.fr/le-p-i-r/appel-des-indigenes-de-la-republique/ Latest access April 24, 2024.
Population and Housing Census (2020) Panorama sociodemográfico de México 2020. Available at: https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/productos/prod_serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/nueva_estruc/702825197827.pdf. Latest access April 29, 2024.
Prado A (2018) Genealogía del monoteísmo. Akal/Interpares, Mexico City.
Schenerock A (2005) Más allá de velos y peinados: Las reelaboraciones étnicas y genéricas de las chamulas sufís en San Cristóbal de las Casas. Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, Chiapas. Master’s degree thesis in Social Sciences.
Vargas García, B (2023) Desprecio encarnado. Redes sociodigitales, racismo antinegro y captaciones sensibles de la caravana africana de migrantes en México. In: Masferrer León, C V et al. Racismos entrelazados: intersecciones de las opresiones racistas en México. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Secretaría de Desarrollo Institucional, Mexico, pp. 119-148.