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Old Epistemic Vices and Islamophobia in Martha Nussbaum's The New Religious Intolerance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2024

Tasneem Alsayyed Open the ORCID record for Tasneem Alsayyed [Opens in a new window]
Tasneem Alsayyed*
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Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON. Canada Email: talsayye@uwaterloo.ca
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Abstract

Martha Nussbaum in her The New Religious Intolerance (2012) commits several old forms of epistemic vice including exclusion, orientalism, and colonial discourse. Unsurprisingly, as a result, her text contributes to the production of ignorance about Muslims and Muslim women despite her intention of combating Islamophobia. In this article, I specifically critique Nussbaum's anti-burqa-ban arguments and her pro-airport-profiling stance. To do so, I draw on the work of Audre Lorde and other feminist scholars and scholars of color to express the harms of excluding Muslim voices and misusing Western/white voices in their place. Recalling Edward Said, Marilyn Frye, and María Lugones, I argue that Nussbaum's text is a classic example of orientalism and various forms of colonial discourse.

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Hypatia , First View , pp. 1 - 23
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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