I am interested in themes of recognition, visibility and political claims-making among Muslim communities in Europe. My research examines how policymakers regulate and govern Muslim minorities, as well as how those communities themselves engage with state authorities. I am also interested in questions of Political Theory and Muslim political thought, as well as the interplay between figures in the Arab world and their European counterparts. Finally, I have written studies on qualitative methods in Political Science & Sociology, addressing the range of epistemological issues that inevitably arise from studying an oft marginalized and securitized minority group. My papers have been published in Ethnicities, Politics & Religion and the Journal of Muslims in Europe, and are currently forthcoming or under review with several journals in the fields of migration, religion and politics. For a list of my publications and working projects, please see below.
Publications
Dissertation/ Book Project
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This article discusses the history of and politics surrounding the Grande Mosquée de Bruxelles, using the mosque’s developments to reflect on Belgian state – mosque relations more broadly. I trace the mosque’s original construction as a pavilion to the 1897 Brussels International Exposition, reading this period through Timothy Mitchell’s concept of the “world-as-exhibition”. I then discuss the exhibit’s reconstruction into a mosque, highlighting the ways it has conformed with and departed from what Jonathan Laurence labels “Embassy Islam”. Finally, I examine the contemporary Grande Mosquée’s struggle for state recognition, paying particular attention to the state’s shifting priorities in the wake of the 2016 Brussels bombings. Throughout the article, I show how developments related to the mosque can be understood through the relationship between European representations of Islam and the lived realities of Muslim groups and demonstrate how governance of the mosque both reflects and has consequences for Muslim institutions across Belgium.
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This project investigates variation in state-mosque relations at the subnational level in Europe. I make two interventions in the literature on the state regulation of mosque-communities the West. First, I examine the behavior of state officials and mosque leaders in tandem, explaining how each set of actors responds to the other. Second, I focus in particular on Muslim elites, an understudied cast of political actors, demonstrating their dual roles as community representatives and state interlocutors.
In a contentious political environment, I argue that mosque leaders act to protect the reputation of their institutions before the general public. The best strategy for doing so, however, depends on the partisanship of local officials and how national policies are implemented subnationally. These practices can be categorized along a spectrum from cooperative to combative, reflecting how state actors present and enforce regulations to appeal to their core voters.
In cooperative contexts, typically led by left-wing officials, mosque leaders engage with reg- ulatory frameworks, viewing the state as a source of legitimacy and reputational protection. In combative contexts, associated with right-wing partisans, mosque leaders avoid the state in order to minimize the risk of public criticism from state officials who may frame mosques as dangerous or untrustworthy.
I test this theory in the Belgian regions of Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders, and the Swiss cantons of Vaud and Zurich. In both Belgium and Switzerland, I study the policy of formal state recognition for religious institutions. Analyzing the same policy across all cases highlights how state officials diverge in its implementation and how religious elites respond within a shared insti- tutional framework. I adopt a mixed-methods approach, combining medium-N analysis of mosque recognition data, semi-structured interviews with officials and religious elites, and qualitative case studies.
Ultimately, this research explains why state-mosque relations take different forms across - and within - subnational contexts. These variations are shaped by the partisanship of state actors and their corresponding regulatory environments, as well as by mosque leaders’ strategies to protect the reputation of their institutions. These insights have broader implications for understanding how Muslim institutions navigate public visibility, how local politics mediate national policies, and how securitization shapes the political behavior of state and non-state actors in Europe.
Under Review
Working Projects
“The Politics of Visibility: Muslim Leadership and Public Recognition in Belgium and Switzerland”, Ethnicities, Online AOP (2026)., Author’s Manuscript here.
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Across Europe, Muslim leaders face a dilemma in deciding whether to seek recognition and public visibility. Recognition can offer legitimacy, funding, and stability, yet it also exposes Muslim groups to scrutiny and political contestation. While existing research has documented divergent patterns of Muslim public engagement, it has paid limited attention to the decision-making experiences of Muslim leaders themselves, particularly as localized actors navigating subnational political environments. This paper argues that the choice to seek recognition is best understood as a calculation under uncertainty: Muslim leaders weigh the expected probability of success against the perceived risk of backlash that greater visibility might provoke. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and over 70 interviews with Muslim leaders and policymakers in Belgium and Switzerland, I develop the concept of institutionally mediated inference to explain how political structures shape the informational cues through which actors form these expectations. In Belgium, recognition is governed by regional executives whose partisan alignments provide clear heuristics of state openness or hostility. In Switzerland, recognition is filtered through practices of direct democracy, where the looming possibility of referenda renders outcomes unpredictable and heightens the perceived risk of backlash. The findings highlight that what appears as disengagement does not reflect indifference toward recognition, but rather a strategic response to the risks that visibility entails. By centering the interpretive agency of Muslim actors, the paper shifts analysis from state-centric accounts of recognition to the reasoning of those navigating it, bridging debates on political opportunity, secularism, and the governance of Islam in Europe.
“Facing Janus: Local Politics, Muslim Leadership, and Regulatory Outcomes in Belgium”, Politics & Religion, 19(1), 91-120 (2026). Available Open Access.
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Abstract: This paper examines the methodological and epistemological challenges that arise when researching the state regulation of Muslim institutions in Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Belgium and Switzerland, I explore how academic research and policymaking intersect in ways that shape both access to the field and the knowledge such research produces. I argue that this entanglement operates on two levels: structurally, through the growing involvement of scholars in advising or informing public policy pertaining to Muslim groups; and epistemically, through research practices that mirror the state’s own logics of classification and control. In tracing the effects of these entanglements, I show the ways in which they generate suspicion among participants and affect relationships between researcher and researched. I then turn to a discussion of positionality as both risk and remedy in this terrain. Depending on how it is navigated, a researcher's identity and self-presentation can either reinforce these dynamics by reproducing extractive relationships, or mitigate them by fostering more reciprocal forms of engagement. By situating these experiences within the broader politics of knowledge production, the paper contributes to debates on reflexivity, access, and representation in ethnographic research on Muslim minorities and state governance in Western Europe.
“Facing Janus: Local Government, Muslim Leadership and Mosque Regulation in Europe” (in progress). Dissertation available here.
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Abstract: This study examines the relationship between French colonial policies towards religious leadership and the incorporation of these leaders into post-independence governments in the Maghreb. Focusing on Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, I analyze how variations in French support for religious ulama—ranging from material and legal aid to suppression—shaped the role of religious figures in state formation after independence. Using a small-N comparative framework, the research codes French support (high, medium, low) for religious leadership and traces its influence on their integration into post-independence governments (low, medium, high). The findings reveal that divergent colonial strategies—such as active support in Tunisia, repression in Morocco, and fragmented approaches in Algeria—had lasting impacts on governance structures and the political incorporation of religious leaders following state independence. The findings speak to broader literatures on colonial legacies, postcolonial statebuilding, and the politics of religion, providing a nuanced understanding of how colonial policies can produce divergent political outcomes in otherwise comparable contexts.
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In this paper, I explore the interplay between the political thought of Abdelkader al-Jazairi and the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville in the context of French imperialism in Algeria. Abdelkader, remembered both as an anticolonial leader and as a Sufi scholar, mounted the first organized resistance to French imperial expansion in Algeria before becoming an intellectual force during his exile in Syria. His writings, rooted in Sufi theology, provide a lens through which to critique and challenge Tocqueville’s evolving views on empire and colonial administration. As Tocqueville sought to reconcile French liberalism with imperial domination, his portrayal of Abdelkader shifted from cautious admiration to framing the Emir as a “Muslim Cromwell,” underscoring the contradictions in French liberal justifications for colonial violence. By examining Abdelkader’s overlooked theological-political writings alongside Tocqueville’s imperialist “letters”, this paper demonstrates how the actions and ideas of Algeria’s first anticolonial leader challenged the narrative of French colonialism and its purported civilizing mission.
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This article proposes a theory of mosque regulation to explain why state-mosque relations vary at the subnational level in Europe, using Belgium’s regions as comparative cases. Focusing on Belgium's policy of formal recognition for mosque-communities, I argue that regulatory outcomes emerge from strategic interactions between local officials and mosque leaders, each responding to distinct audience pressures. I draw from original data on 270 mosques and 52 semi-structured interviews to argue that partisanship shapes regulatory practices: left-leaning governments pursue cooperative regulation to court minority voters, while right-wing officials adopt combative approaches to appease anti-Muslim constituencies. Mosque leaders, in turn, consider reputational costs when deciding whether to engage with the state, often pursuing recognition not for material gain but to signal trustworthiness to the broader public. These findings contribute to an emerging scholarship on the political behavior of Muslim leadership, as well as to broader literatures on minority incorporation and subnational governance.
“Representing Islam, Recognising Islam: A Single-Case Study of the Grande Mosquée de Bruxelles.” Journal of Muslims in Europe, 14(3), 334-362. https://doi.org/10.1163/22117954-bja10119, Author’s Manuscript here.