Critical Terrorism Studies has witnessed a growing engagement with decolonial and postcolonial perspectives over the past years that have challenged the continued, even if inadvertent, Eurocentrism of the discipline and its dominant approaches. Despite these advances, the field continues to grapple with enduring forms of Eurocentrism in its conceptual frameworks, research agendas, and scholarly conversations. It is therefore time for CTS to consider a more radical re-orientation of the direction it has been taking since its foundation.
In light of this, we are calling for an initiative that bridges the fields of CTS and Critical Muslims Studies (CMS). CMS has developed a rich body of scholarship that interrogates the racialisation of Muslim identities, the colonial and imperial structures shaping contemporary governance, and the epistemic conditions through which “Muslimness” is produced as a problem within global politics. Orientalist narratives of the Global War on Terror produce the ‘terrorist’ as an ahistorical and violent stranger-figure bound to an ethnically and religiously homogenous community without political will or desire while justifying death and destruction in Muslim majority countries. Muslim and Arab futurism however, in acts of refusal, speculation and reimagination seek to open spaces for world-making of more just and desecuritised futures for communities that continue to live through catastrophe and crisis. In so doing, these approaches re-examine what it means to be a political subject for those subject to ongoing exclusion, dehumanisation and delegitimisation.
Tuesday September 2026
9am - 9.15am: Welcome, tea and coffee
9.15am - 10.15am
Roundtable: Teaching ‘terrorism’ critically
Chair: Amna Kaleem; Discussants: Alice Finden, Durham University, Marine Guéguin, Leeds Beckett University, Rabea Khan, Liverpool John Moores University, Richard McNeil-Willson, University of Edinburgh
10.15am - 10.30am: Tea break
10.30am - 12pm
Panel 1: Exclusion and belonging in the nation
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Paper 1: Tracing the Colonial Continuities of the 'Muslim Threat'". Sara Gad
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Paper 2: From laïcité to multiculturalism: Muslim women reimagining belonging between France and the UK, Sarah Nehla Touabti
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Paper 3: Affect, Colonial Temporalities, and Counterterrorism in Post-Brexit Britain Sahra Isikdemir Degirmencioglu
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Paper 4: Terrorism and Islamophobia: A Bibliometric Mapping of an Evolving Research Field, Qasim Khan
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Paper 5: Fear as a Tool: Orientalism and the Securitisation of Terrorism in French Political Discourse after the 2015 Paris Attacks, Laura Ribeiro
12pm - 12.45pm : Lunch break
12.45pm - 2.15pm
Panel 2: Counterterrorism and the securitisation of education
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Paper 1: On the Frontlines: Contesting the Securitization and Surveillance of Muslim Students with Refugee Backgrounds in Canadian Schools, Zuhra Abawi-Hussain
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Paper 2: Faith on the Margins: Muslim Students Navigating the Politics of Space in Dutch Universities, Asma Mataich
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Paper 3: Modern Islamic Education in the Context of Branches of Islam in Al-Azhar and the Islamic University of Madinah: A Comparative Study., Mariia Sartison
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Paper 4: Microphysics of Prejudice: Intersectional Securitisation of Afghan Students in Delhi, Akanksha Dochania
2.15pm - 2.30pm: Tea break
2.30pm - 3.45pm
Panel 3: Muslim futurism and new directions for CTS
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Paper 1: Beyond the North–South Divide: Terroristisation, De-securitised Criminalisation and the Future of Critical Terrorism Studies, Matthew Obonyilo
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Paper 2: Re-Orienting Critical Terrorism Studies: Arabfuturism as a Decolonial Refusal in Africa? Can Arabfuturism offer a transformative lens for re-orienting Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) by engaging with Critical Muslim Studies (CMS)? Shahstry Njeru
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Paper 3: Beyond Eurocentric Freedom: The Political Subject of Resistance and the Ontological Primacy of Dignity (Kiramah), Elham Rabiee
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Paper 4: Beyond the Terrorist Trope: Boko Haram, Insurgent Governance, and the Limits of Doctrinal Explanation, Rasheed Uthman
3.45pm - 4pm: Tea break
4pm - 6pm: Keynote address: Rizwaan Sabir
Wednesday 9 September
9:00-10:30
Panel 4: Counterterrorism in the Arab world
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Paper 1: Security Without Speech: Algorithmic Securitisation, Orientalist Training Data, and the Re-Orientation of Critical Terrorism Studies, Milind Lonara
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Paper 2: This research examines how at moments of formal international censure, Israeli Prime Ministerial discourse draws on Orientalist civilisational hierarchy as a resource for legitimation and denial, Maryam Dharas
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Paper 3: From Securitisation to Genocidal Warfare: Gaza as Method in a Decolonial Critique of Israel's Counterterrorism Response Post-October 7, Arshad Arshad
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Paper 4: State Securitization as a Producer of Terrorism: A Case Study of Egypt Post-2013. This paper critically analyses the role of the state as an actor in co-producing terrorism after the violence of 2013, Shereen Eltaieb
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Paper 5: Reading the Muslim Brotherhood's Gender Script through Postcolonial Nation-Building and Securitisation, Sena El Banna
10.30am - 10.45am: Tea break
10.45am - 12.15pm
Panel 5: Assemblages of the ‘terrorist’
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Paper 1: Contemporary antisemitism on extreme right websites: Critical race theory, Muslim grooming gangs, and trans rights, Ninian Frenguelli
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Paper 2: From terrorist assemblages to antisemite assemblages: Germany’s war on antisemitism and the figure of the Muslim, Anat Kraslavsky
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Paper 3: Well, if we are extreme-right, then the green-left is extremely wrong": Epistemologies of ignorance and the discursive management of far-right coalition contradiction in Finnish parliamentary debate, Rohan Kit Bains Stevenson
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Paper 4: ‘Terrorism’ in South America's Tri-Border Area, Alejandro Rascovan
12.15pm - 1pm: Lunch
1pm - 2.30pm
Panel 6: Imperial and postcolonial security narratives
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Paper 1: Securitizing dissent: the Cyber Security ordinance and the imperial legacy of counter-terrorism in Bangladesh, Omme Habiba
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Paper 2: From Jeremy Benthams panopticon to Michel Foucault Panopticon 2.0: How Surveillance Systems in China evolved into state engineered terror, Rana Danish Nisar
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Paper 3: The military intervention prosecuted by the Global Coalition against Daesh is conventionally understood as one of the better examples of its kind within the War on Terror, especially as compared to its predecessors in Afghanistan and Iraq, Cian Bear
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Paper 4: Terrorism and Geopolitics Narratives of the April War and the New Scramble for the Sudanese Red Sea Coast. Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a fierce war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Abdaljbar A. M. M. EJAMI
2.30pm - 2.45pm: Tea break
2.45pm - 4.15pm
Panel 7: Muslim states and constructions of terrorism
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Paper 1: Re-thinking Terrorism from a Non-Western Perspective: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Conception of Terrorism, Fatemeh Delavari Parizi
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Paper 2: Beyond Ideology? Re-reading Iranian Strategic Culture through Critical Muslim Studies, Sadra Raykan
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Paper 3: Good Muslim States, Bad Muslim States: Nation Branding and Conditional Humanity in Global Politics, Thembelihle Mafanga
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Paper 4: Drone Warfare and the Racialised Body: Pakistan’s Tribal Belt as a Site of Necropolitics, Mohsin Fareed Shah
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Paper 5: Beyond Shared Faith: Host-Community Securitisation of Syrian Refugees in Türkiye, Cenker Korhan Demir
4.30pm: Closing address