A Muslim feminist ethic of care - with Sarah Munawar

Careful Thinking

In what ways do medical racism and ableism shape Muslim families' experiences of healthcare services? How can Islamic spirituality and Qur'anic stories provide resources to support caregivers and receivers of care? Does care ethics need to be decolonised? And what are the implications of a Muslim feminist ethic of care for thinking about illness, disability and reproductive care?

These are some of the questions we explore in this episode, with Sarah Munawar. Sarah is a political science instructor at Columbia College in Vancouver, Canada, and she was recently a visiting professor at the Elizabeth Rockwell Center on Ethics and Leadership at the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. Sarah earned her PhD in political science at the University of British Columbia in 2019 with a thesis entitled, ‘In Hajar’s footsteps: a de-colonial and Islamic theory of care’, which will also form the basis of a forthcoming book.

Sarah describes herself as a neurodiverse Muslim, mother, and political theorist, her research articulating a vision of health equity, disability justice and care ethics that is intersectional, Islamic and de-colonial, while also centring the epistemic authority of disabled Muslims as knowers of Islam, Muslim practices of care, and care-based modes of knowing Islam.

Sarah’s publications include the book chapter ‘In the Belly of the Whale: Theorizing Disability through a De-Colonial and Islamic Ethic of Care’, which was published in 2022, in the collection Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions; the journal article ‘The Breathwork of Ar-Rahman: An Islamic Ethic of Reproductive Care’, also from 2022; and the book chapter ‘”Be and it is!”: Muslim Cosmologies of Care, Desire, and the Reproduction of Life’, which will appear later this year.

We explore the following topics in this episode:

Sarah's family's experience of caring and advocating for her father during his illness (02:50)

Experiencing medical ableism and racism (08:37)

Critiquing some religious responses to illness and disability (13:58)

Qur'anic stories providing a moral vocabulary for care (19:04)

Muslim and critical disability approaches to assisted dying (23:45)

Ableist and racist constructions of caregivers (26:52)

The influence of Eva Kittay on Sarah's thinking and the need to decolonise care ethics (30:22)

The concept of relational selfhood in Muslim, feminist and indigenous thinking (33:40)

'The breathwork of Ar-Rahman' as a source of mercy and care (37:39)

Sarah's development of an Islamic, intersectional ethic of reproductive care, and its roots in her experience of giving birth during the Covid-19 pandemic (39:35)

The stories of Hajar and Maryam as resources for understanding Muslim mothers' experiences (44:44)

Towards a political and ecological Islamic ethic of care and the importance of place in thinking about care (46:55)

Future directions for Sarah's research and writing (51:30)

Some of the writers and thinkers mentioned in the episode

Georg Hegel

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hannah Arendt

John Rawls

Eva Kittay

Joan Tronto

For a transcript of the episode, follow this link to the Careful Thinking Substack.