Islamophobia in the Secular University: Understanding and Addressing the Muslim Student Awarding Gap

This chapter is about the significant awarding gap affecting students from Muslim backgrounds in Higher Education. According to data from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), Muslims are by some margin the lowest attaining—or lowest awarded—students in UK universities, and there is evidence that the same may be true in other countries across the global north. The HESA data are disaggregated by religion, not just race/ethnicity, and I argue that the question of religion warrants special analytical attention. That is, Muslim students’ educational disadvantage has unique facets linked to the vilification of their religious beliefs and practices. Therefore, it cannot be addressed by falling back on familiar top-down strategies. Nor can it be reduced to a generalised understanding of racism. It requires careful analysis of the historical and current dynamics of Islamophobia, which in turn points towards a critical account of the role that secularism and de-theologised Christian culture continue to play in Western politics and education. The chapter will demonstrate that in the post-9/11 era, secularism functions almost counter-intuitively by ‘religifying’ people of Muslim backgrounds on one hand and de-privatising their putative religiosity on the other. The chapter proposes two ways forward. Firstly, I champion the importance of studying the unique dynamics of Islamophobia to better understand how racialisation and religification function in education within the broader context of secularism. Secondly, I argue that practical and political efforts to address the awarding gap are best mobilised under the umbrella of the student-led decolonisation movement on campuses.