Can Muslims negotiate a space in the Western body politic? In the inaugural essay for Autumn 2026, Beyond Fear & Subversion: Muslims Negotiate Western Public Life, editor-in-chief Ahmed Askary (@pashadelics) explores the Nietzschean dichotomy that confronts the Western diaspora. In their state of gurbet (or estrangement), Muslims inherit what Nietzsche calls the condition of “late culture and broken lights”: conflicting religious, cultural, and Western inheritances that can produce either a longing for the repose of a settled identity or a stimulus for creating new forms of belonging. Beset by what Abdal Hakim Murad calls Lahabites and Tanfiris, the diaspora is pulled between two mutually reinforcing extremes: those whose hatred insists Muslims can never belong in the West, and Muslims whose own repellent, reactionary posture appears to confirm precisely that claim. Between gurbet and hijra (self-remigration) lies a third possibility: accepting responsibility for the place in which one actually lives, and engaging with its institutions, arguments, and reciprocal obligations as a participant in the commonwealth. A new generation of Muslim public figures is already negotiating this space—messily and imperfectly—through competence, reciprocity, accountability, and sincere engagement with public life, not merely in defence of parochial Muslim interests, but in service of society as a whole. This, by necessity, requires retiring the notion of themselves as a diaspora and becoming true citizens. Read more on Kasurian. Link below: