Image credit: Courtesy of Ayse Gur Geden

University campuses have formed an epicenter of Palestine solidarity resistance since the onset of Israel’s genocide. In equal measure they have become sites of institutional repression where waves of encampments and protest have led to punitive disciplinary measures, even inspiring university policy research as a guide on how to best manage them. Such highly public interventions, aired by student activists themselves, have however, been accompanied by what can be seen as softer modes of quelling solidarity resistance; ‘Muslim-Jewish’ platforms, ‘interfaith’ and tackling anti-Islamophobia/antisemitism in university settings.

In this vein, the interventions of the NUS (National Union of Students) – the British student union body claiming to represent near 7 million students across 400 university/college campuses in the United Kingdom, are illustrative. In the wake of the genocide, their public crisis statement and annual conference of 2024,reveal carefully curated interventions marked by a semblance of parity and equality in their approach towards Muslims and Jews, Islamophobia and antisemitism.

Of course there is nothing inherently problematic in establishing ‘Muslim-Jewish’ relations or in jointly tackling racism- but when these involve collectives who relentlessly lobby for and whose constitutional aims are to maintain their enduring affinity to Israel, and are supported by institutions that have euphemistically bypassed the genocide for over two years, it is clear that the purpose, limits and directives with which such conversations are being enabled, or rather disabled, are inherently bound to settler-colonial logics of erasure. Exceeding the spatiality of colonized territories, this logic of erasure functions insidiously in Western institutions to repress, contain or expunge those who unsettle Zionist normalcy.

What we see assembled in the midst of a genocide are thus not platforms of parity, democratic inclusivity or the fraternising of the faithful, albeit they may appear as such in the public eye, but an exercise in a phantom Muslim politics. As I propose elsewhere, a phantom Muslim politics refers to illusory performances/scripts that emplace Muslims as equal political subjects, providing the quintessential alibi for white colonial, in this case, Zionist preservation. A phantom Muslimness refers to the way ‘Muslims’ and the problem of ‘Islamophobia’ are invoked and opportunistically resurrected as a concern to merit the pretense of inclusion and parity in multicultural liberal spaces but where this semblance of ‘inclusion’ functions as a mode of racialised governmentality and Islamophobia;[i] that is, a form of managing, (self)regulating and authorising the parameters of Muslim activity/vocality.

Following Hesse’s original work on “white governmentality” and Hesse (2,29) and Hesse and Sayyid (21), “racialized governmentality” was a concept advanced in my doctoral research over a decade ago, with specific focus on Muslim students in white liberal universities, but its relevance today in the context of genocide appears ever more pressing.

On campuses and beyond, phantom Muslimness figures as an acutely ubiquitous politics, sharing much with both the racialized surveillance of Muslims underpinning Prevent and the “non-performativity” of antiracism that beset many ‘diverse’ university spaces. However, in student union spaces professing liberal diversity to include and bolster the settler colonial aspirations of Zionist Jews, it assumes a distinctly domestic strain that pivots around ‘race’ and (inter) -faith’ where Muslims/Muslimness occupies a special place in validating a pretense of parity between religious equals. In this regard, Muslims remain indispensable to a democratic facade of parity functioning as indemnity for white supremacist, in this case, Zionist legitimacy.

This feigned semblance of parity between religious collectivities (presently being revived across Diversity units) can be discerned globally as key to obfuscating Israels’ genocide and to vanquish Palestine from conversations altogether, detracting from and bypassing the spectacle of genocide. Against the backdrop of Israel’s genocidal fervour, this semblance of ‘Muslim-Jewish’ parity has been repeatedly invoked as a means of managing the groundswell of resistance against Israel’s grotesque violence.

This sits uncomfortably besides a commonplace framing that has centred Jewish safety on campuses, but with no equivalent discourse on ‘safeguarding Muslim students,’ despite record figures of Islamophobia and 1 in 3 students reporting Islamophobic abuse.

The NUS 2024 annual conference provides a perfect illustration of preemptive measures undertaken to manage Muslims in political spaces to avoid encroaching on Zionist sensibilities. What is perhaps less known and the sole focus of this contribution, is the way this semblance of parity under-girds NUS rationale for maintaining the widely contested IHRA definition of antisemitism.

As privately conveyed by management and through the independent antisemitism inquiry report it sponsored, the IHRA definition of antisemitism is maintained and relies upon, amongst other flawed arguments, this same but flawed premise of parity and equal ranking of Jewish and other student collectives.

NUS management and the KC authoring the report have suggested that the adoption of the IHRA definition is being treated as any other anti-racist or gender equality policy measure. Upon closer scrutiny, in the scheme of NUS politics and proclaimed parity – it is not. In actuality, the IHRA definition of antisemitism has been institutionally ringfenced as irrevocable, while the proclaimed adoption of the APPG definition of Islamophobia it is being coupled with in the name of parity, has paled into oblivion. Meriting reference where politically expedient, the APPG’s translation into effective NUS policy and practice appears as redundant as the government that disposed of it.

The IHRA

For those not familiar, the IHRA definition has been widely identified, by academics and activists alike, as a method of counter-insurgency that subsumes anti-Zionist critique within its oppressive fold. This is not because of the definition proper, albeit not without its own problems, but its exemplars, 7 of which pertain to Israel. These are being espoused by British Israel advocates as a fundamental part of the definition and uncritically quoted by liberal sector commentators as both legitimate and factually authentic; they are neither. As academic/policy research has highlighted not only does the genealogy of the definition trace the IHRA’s beginnings to a Mossad funded  project at Tel Aviv University (11), the exemplars were never part of the definition to begin with.

The IHRA was adopted by NUS in 2017 and since been maintained as policy- despite repeatedly being contested by external academic, race relations and Palestine supporting bodies who have argued that it is being leveraged to quash Israel-critical resistance. In 2022 for example, the oldest ‘race relations’ body in the U.K. the IRR wrote to NUS and warned that its adoption would prove a “ significant factor in the deterioration of relations between students from Black and Minority Ethnic students’ organisations and Jewish students’ organisations.”

The IHRA has been deemed so problematic that it has given rise to an archive of material by the Diaspora Alliance, a Jewish led collective legally challenging the Department for Education for its proposals on antisemitism education across sectors. The UN was urged to rescind its usage altogether.

Offering little in the way of an anti-racist toolkit, it is clear the IHRA is being operationalised to nurture a culture of incrimination that far exceeds the use of the definition itself. In this sense it functions, as Ayyash observes, to prescribe the contours of what is deemed permissible for those resisting- even if not overtly referenced. In the context of genocide, these boundaries on Israel-critical speech are being eroded to make way for bolder interventions.

Last academic term, the IHRA’s contested status re-emerged as part of a collective campaign (notmynus) to rescind the definition altogether. It was certainly not the first time, but NUSs egregious response in seeking to privately discipline signatories was illustrative of the very critiques being laid out against them – that charges of antisemitism were being weaponized against Israel’s critics. Students occupying Birmingham University’s Guild fought back on social media, dismantling the logic of maintaining a definition that remains inherently discriminatory.

How Muslims figure in NUS reasoning to maintain the IHRA is noteworthy. While this has certainly not featured highly in the public domain, the logic of procedural parity formed a key point in the antisemitism inquiry which unproblematically iterated NUS rationale for maintaining it, disregarding its deleterious impact on Palestine solidarity activists despite numerous submissions discouraging its usage.

The Muslim Alibi

During the inquiry into Shaima Dallali, when NUS’ anti-racist policies were queried in private correspondence, NUS manager, Kat Stark, explained that both the APPG definition of Islamophobia and IHRA definition had been mainstreamed into NUS infrastructure suggesting a consistency in approach between groups.

The notion of political parity to justify the IHRA’s renewal can also be traced in the Tuck report. Like Stark, the analogy between marginalised groups is presented in the inquiry report both by reference to the APPG definition (43) and “gender balanced delegations” (43/44) – being written across policies, as evidence of coherent rationale for its renewal. In Tuck’s view “It does not appear” that this interpretation is obviously wrong.”

However, it suggests that each policy/definition should be infinitely applied because the same has been done for other groups, irrespective of its discriminatory impact or legal implications that place it at odds with free speech or even potentially with the Islamophobic impact for Muslim students vocal on Palestine. Such shoddy rationale renders the IHRA non-negotiable, adopted not on merit or substantive periodic engagement, but in a presumed equivalence between policies/groups. This presents a flawed and a-priori, fixed rationale.

The fixity of this approach flounders for a number of other reasons. The very protocol designed to uphold or rescind NUS policy by democratic vote has disappeared entirely . It is no longer open for debate as demonstrated at the last conference where despite delegate pressure, it was not tabled for discussion. The insistence on its usage thus not only highlights its over-reach in regulating racialized others, it spotlights the fallacy of democratic process itself.

This non-negotiable stance also came to light in response to the recent not my nus campaign where the IHRA has been maintained as irrevocable.

Perhaps most critically, the idea of equivalence and consistency between different groups remains erroneous given NUS have ignored FOSIS’s (Federation of Student Islamic Societies) longstanding and misguided formal rejection of the APPG Islamophobia definition and adopted it anyway. Given self-definition is a cornerstone of NUS ‘liberation’ politics, bypassing the self-determination of their Muslim membership does not suggest parity or progressivism but rather, utter disdain. While FOSIS continues to deliberate on definitions, the NUS has executed decisions for them- at least on paper- but thus far demonstrating zero favorable outcomes or protections for Muslim students.

But even if we took NUS’s adoption of the APPG seriously, the claim of mainstreaming the APPG definition across policy appears another illusory claim- it is untraceable across online information on liberation politics, gatekept for union officers and staff only to be found in an obscure link to the MCB, included under the genocide euphemism ‘middle east crisis.’

Perhaps the most trenchant of reasons to question this claim of parity however, is the element of the definition that renders Muslims presumptively antisemitic, an element NUS spent well over a million in demonstrating in their notorious case against Shaima Dallali, NUS president-elect ousted in 2022.

Although pivoting on a widely-cited tweet deemed antisemitic and posted 10 years prior, it was Dallali’s refusal to endorse the definition that dominated the political basis surrounding her dismissal. There was no evidence to suggest the APPG definition was upheld or guided the apparently confidential investigation.

On the contrary, points of questioning that transpired revealed the way Dallali’s Muslimness guaranteed a number of essentialist racialised presuppositions about her propensity towards extremism and antisemitism. Indeed, that Dallali was targeted for her outspoken political resistance on Palestine ought to have been a red flag for FOSIS and Islamic Society student leaders to recognise multivalent sources of Islamophobia, far exceeding any straightforward example of religious beliefs and practices. Indeed, in addition to and intersecting with, being targeted for being a “woman of color” as the inquiry report partly concedes, (109), Dallali’s case represented the targeting of the ummatic agency of Muslims vis Palestine where the Zionism-Islamophobia nexus looms large.

The Bold and Beautiful

Invoking Muslims and the APPG definition of Islamophobia is hardly a tale of parity or anti-racist liberation but simply a woeful attempt to justify the IHRA’s adoption, an outcome of establishment pressure and influence of their Israel-friendly associates who have recently been awarded a 1 million pound government tender to roll out more ‘antisemitism training.’

It becomes exceedingly egregious however, when the claim to parity with peers, Muslims or otherwise, has been made for a definition that is being wielded behind closed doors and in official disciplinaries to suppress vocality on Palestine. As such the outcome is not mere disparity, but a further entrenched racialised divergence.

The quest for ‘parity and inclusion’ has been a mainstay for Zionist advocates since the seventies when Zionism was declared as racism by the UN (Resolution 3379). But like then, there is no one to seek parity with given the consensus on colonial ethno-supremacism. Today, students involved in the NUS may also find this a peculiar aspiration since the UJS are presently well-embedded in the infrastructure of the NUS- they are NUSs only associative members.

If Zionist-led collectives were truly seeking parity with their Muslim peers, they would have to forgo their vertical state alliances, and recourse to university governing bodies; their anti-racism definitions would be ignored and reduced to an obscure paper trail that at best indemnified universities against criticism; they would be subject to a surveillance regime that would render their settler colonial sponsorship unconscionable; it would also mean they would disproportionately face a string of investigations and along the way their members would most likely be subject to disenfranchisement if they acted on the crimes of their times. There would certainly be no list of inquiries to ponder on and document their grievances.

It seems then it is not parity Zionist contingents seek but a degree of exceptionalism.

It is precisely this exceptionalism the notmynus campaign sought to level in their requests for due diligence and disclosure on “student groups with financial, institutional or strategic ties to settler colonial regimes.” This is why when bold Muslim students and their allies stand against an institution that actively preserves the scope for Zionist advocacy while indulging in illusory measures of ‘Muslim engagement,’ the way forward is to amplify those voices. They are after all the future in our decolonial horizon.