Rendering Islam Liberal: Secularism, Sexuality and the Politics of Muslim Self-appropriation in Germany

The intensive public and institutional engagement with Islam in Europe regarding notions of secularism and sexuality, not merely constructs Islam as an antithesis of liberal western values. Rather, it postulates the rendering of a “progressive” Islam that can be appropriated to secular liberal settings and co-opted in the framework of the modern European nation state. Through an ethnographic micro-perspective supported by historical inquiries into the genealogies of the liberal in relation to the religious, my project tries to investigate the modalities of embracing a “liberal Islam” in contemporary Germany as well as the processes of subject formation of organized liberal Muslims. Beyond the dichotomous paradigms of constructing Islam as reconcilable or irreconcilable to traditions of liberal thought, reasoning and practices, this project studies the politics of reconcilability narratives themselves – and the power dynamics they underpin- as expressed by Muslim subjects within a secular context and a German/European Wertegemeinschaft.

 

 
First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Shirin Amir Moazami

Second Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum

Publications

Abdalla, Iskandar. Abdalla, Iskandar A. 2025. “Living in Ghurba with Divas.” Cinema of Commoning, September 24, 2025. https://cinemaofcommoning.com/2025/09/24/living-in-ghurba-with-divas/

Abdalla, Iskandar. “Al-Zaman al-Gamīl Refigured: Jews and the Re-Narration of the Nation on Egyptian TV.” In Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media, edited by Brahim El Guabli and Mostafa Hussein. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2024.

Abdalla, Iskandar A. “Hijacking Absence: On Queer Viewing Practices of Arab Films.” In Malaffat, Vol. 3, edited by Nour El Safoury, 2024.

Abdalla, Iskandar. “al-Ṣūra lā tizāl fī rā’sī: Thanāʾiyyāt al-Hazīma wa-l-Naṣr fī Sīnimā Uktūbar.”
(الصورة لا تزال في رأسي: ثنائيات الهزيمة والنصر في سينما أكتوبر). In Dhākirat Uktūbar: Tajalliyāt al-Ḥarb fī al-Thaqāfa al-Miṣriyya, edited by Khaled Mansour. Cairo: Dār al-Marāyā, 2024.

Abdalla, Iskandar. “Striving for Transparency: Mosques as Sites of Public Interrogation in Germany.” In The Politics of Replacement, edited by Sarah Bracke and Luis Aguilar. London: Routledge, 2024.

Abdalla, Iskandar A. “The Visual Nation: Film, Soft Power, and Egypt as a Community of Spectators.” In Cinema in the Arab World: New Perspectives, New Approaches, edited by Philipp Meers, Daniel Biltereyst, and Efdal Elsaket. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.

Abdalla, Iskandar A. “On Framing and De-Framing the Queer Arab.” In Arab Berlin: Dynamics of Transformation, edited by Hanan Badr and Nahed Samour. Bielefeld: transcript, 2023.

Abdalla, Iskandar A. 2022. “Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s Ode to Queer Love in Berlin.” The Markaz Review, September 15. https://themarkaz.org/mohammad-shawky-hassans-ode-to-queer-love-in-berlin/

Abdalla, Iskandar. „Spuren, die sich dem Blick entziehen: Jüdisches ‘Kulturelles Erbe’ Ägyptens zwischen Erinnern und Vergessen.” In ‘Ausgestopfte Juden? ’, edited by Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Hannes Sulzenbacher. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2022. 

Abdalla, Iskandar A. “Rendering Islam Liberal: Time, Space and the Imperative of Intelligibility.” In Muslims in the UK and Europe V, edited by Paul Anderson and Julian Hargreaves. Cambridge: Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, 2020.

Abdalla, Iskandar. 2020. “al-ʿUbūr al-Jinsī fī al-Sīnimā al-Miṣriyya: Mirʾāt li-Dhukūra Dhāʾifa wa-Unūtha Maqhūra.” (العبور الجنسي في السينما المصرية: مرآة لذكورة زائفة وأنوثة مقهورة؟) Jīm, April 9, 2020. https://jeem.me/culture/379

Abdalla, Iskandar. 2020. “al-Mushāhada al-Kuwayriyya ka-Fiʿl li-l-Taḥarrur.” (المشاهدة الكويرية كفعل للتحرر) Jīm, March 12, 2020. https://jeem.me/culture/371

Abdalla, Iskandar A., ed. 2020. Milaff Mushāhadāt Kuwayriyya li-l-Sīnimā al-ʿArabiyya (ملف مشاهدات كويرية للسينما العربية). Jīm, 2020. https://jeem.me/queer-cinema