Grounded

This week, I'm answering listener questions straight from you! Are you Muslim, and why do people ask this question? What’s your recent hot take… and why should we stop telling people that their beliefs+ideas aren't “real Islam”? What would I be doing if I weren't a professor? And how do you begin researching the spiritual dimensions of subjects that don't explicitly name spirituality?Chapters00:00 | Teaser: Are You Really Muslim?01:01 | Finding Grounding: Curiosity and Becoming a Professor04:29 | Are You Muslim? Is the Sky Blue?15:24 | My Progressive Muslim Hot Take: Stop Saying “That's Not Real Islam”26:20 | What Would I Be Doing If I Weren't a Professor?29:19 | Finding Scholarship at the Intersection of Spirituality and Research37:19 | Closing ReflectionsReferencesAli, Kecia. The Woman Question in Islamic Studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024.Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq. Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2010.Harris, Melanie L. Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017.Wheeler, Kayla Renée. “Conclusion: All Americanists Are Christian, All Muslims Are Brown, but Some of Us Are Brave.” American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020): 36–40.Wheeler, Kayla Renée. “Kayla Renée Wheeler.” The Black American Muslim. https://www.theblackamericanmuslim.com/kayla-rene-wheeler.Erotics of Liberation (@eroticsofliberation)Grounded, Ep. 16: What Males Something Islamic?Want me to answer your questions? Send me a DM on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube at @imanabdk, or email [email protected].

<< Rewind <<<This week, we're answering the question: How do you strengthen your intuition? On the pod so far, we've explored intuition through philosophy, Black thought, and management studies. This week, I wanted to do something different and answer that question through my own life. I share the three practices that have most transformed my relationship to intuition over the past five years: developing a relationship with myself via journaling, learning to distinguish what I want from what other people want for me, and embracing the conflict (internal and relational)that comes from actually acting on what my intuition tells me.

Is Black beauty culture just about what we buy? Or is there something much deeper happening when Black women get dressed, do their makeup, lay their edges, and show up in the world? Inspired (more triggered because it PMO) by a viral conversation between Nara Smith and Emma Grede about why they wouldn't spend their money on a Birkin bag, I'm asking what we miss when we reduce Black women's relationships to beauty and fashion to consumption, wealth, and materialism. From Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's work on respectability politics in the Black Baptist Church to Kayla Renée Wheeler's scholarship on the Nation of Islam's beauty politics, we're exploring how Black women have historically used beauty and fashion to negotiate political power, challenge white beauty standards, and articulate their own visions of Black womanhood. Then, we're bringing the conversation into the present with two thinkers I LOVE: Dr. Kiy and the Zorine Truly (aka the Hoochie Historian). Through Black feminine cultural mysticism and hoochie history, they help us think about Black beauty culture as a kind of secret language between Black women and femmes. If you know, you know! Chapters 00:00 Teaser 00:36 Welcome & Where I'm Finding Grounding 3:37 Is Beauty Culture More Than What We Buy? 12:16 Not Buying a Birkin is Not Relatable... 19:18 Respectability Politics & Political Access in the Church 23:05 The Nation of Islam & "Black Is Beautiful"29:20 The Secret Language Between Black Femmes: Black Feminine Cultural Mysticism and Hoochie History REFERENCES Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Wheeler, Kayla Renée. “Becoming the ‘Mothers of Civilization’: Constructing Black Beauty and Sartorial Modesty in the Nation of Islam.” Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty 16, no. 1 (2025): 59–76. Griffin, Farah Jasmine. “Ironies of a Saint.”Dr. Kiy (@pinkiysensei) — Black feminine cultural mysticism (thefemininecitation.com) and the intellectual significance of Black women's beauty and aesthetic practices. Zorine Truly (@thee_hoochie_historian) — The Hoochie Historian; Black feminine aesthetics, hoochie culture, and Black women's cultural expression.

What happens when you recognize spiritual lessons in Black feminist theory?* And pardon my voice, I am losing it this week*This week on Grounded, we're back to a 1:1 conversation, and I'm thinking about what Black feminist theorists have taught me about spirituality, how we see the world, and what it means to be human.But before we get there, I'm also thinking through something a little more personal: why, as someone who studies religion and spirituality, I sometimes hesitate to speak about my own spiritual life without grounding myself in scholarship. What does it mean to move between being a scholar of spirituality and someone who is actively trying to live a spiritual life? And why am I so worried about sounding like a guru? 😭Inspired by Jenn M. Jackson's Black Women Taught Us, I'm sharing two lessons from Black feminist thinkers whose work has fundamentally changed how I understand and inhabit a spiritual life. We get into Christina Sharpe's In the Wake and what it means to see the unseen, not just in a metaphysical sense, but in the histories, structures, and forces that shape our everyday lives. Then we turn to Sylvia Wynter, whose work challenges us to rethink what it means to be human and imagine ways of living beyond the values that have historically dehumanized Black people.This is the first of what I'm hoping will be more conversations about what Black women have taught me about living a spiritual life.Chapters00:00 — Teaser: Is Black Feminist Theory Spiritual?00:49 — Welcome to Grounded + Finding Grounding in Burnout07:01 — Why I Worry About Sounding Like a Guru17:11 — Lesson 1: Seeing the Unseen | Christina Sharpe26:13 — Lesson 2: Imagining New Ways of Being Human | Sylvia WynterReferences mentionedCarter, J. Kameron. The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.Jackson, Jenn M. Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism. New York: Random House, 2024.Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. New York: Penguin Press, 2026.Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337.

What if some of the practices we associate with modern spirituality have much longer histories in the Muslim world?This week, I'm joined by content creator, educator, and one of my favorite people to learn from on the internet, Shaif (@hotboyshaif), to ask: What do Islam + modern spirituality have in common?We get into the histories of astrology, crystals, spirit possession, Sufism, and other practices that complicate the distinctions we often make between Islam and modern spirituality. But we also spend a lot of time thinking about a question at the heart of Religious Studies: What makes something a religion in the first place?Shaif shares why he prefers to think about Islam as a living tradition and a way of life rather than simply a religion. We talk about the colonial histories of the category of religion, why I think we need better language than “cult,” and how colonialism, reform movements, and globalization have shaped what many of us now understand as Islam.And, of course, we get into Muslimness. Who gets to decide what makes someone a “real Muslim”? What happens when the Islam you inherited doesn't look like the Islam someone else insists is authentic? And how might studying the history of your own tradition actually deepen your relationship to it?One of my favorite parts of our conversation is thinking about how much of what gets dismissed as “cultural Islam” is part of a much longer history of Muslim spiritual and intellectual life. And what possibilities open up when we understand traditions as living, changing, and continuously being made.Chapters00:36 — Where Are You Finding Grounding?5:14 — Islam & Modern Spirituality13:48 — On the Word 'Cult'22:08 — Black Muslims Labeled a 'Cult'24:26 — Response to the Videos36:47 — Hadith & Debate in Islam44:29 — 'You're Not a Real Muslim'59:19 — Where to Find ShaifReferencesAnidjar, Gil. “Secularism.” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 1 (Autumn 2006): 52–77.Asad, Talal. “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam.” Qui Parle 17, no. 2 (2009): 1–30.Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq. Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2010.McCloud, Sean. Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955–1993. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.Find + Support ShaifShaif (@hotboyshaif) is a New York based content creator, educator, and 12th-grade history teacher with a background in Religious Studies. His public-facing educational content explores Islamic history, spirituality, cultural commentary, and popular culture.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotboyshaif/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hotboyshaif