Muslim, Not Supermuslim: A Critique of Islamicate Transhumanism ^†

Abstract

Informed by ideas drawn from critical race theory and decolonial thought, in this paper, I mount a critique of Roy Jackson’s proposal for an Islamicate philosophical and theological contribution to the Transhumanist goal of forging a posthuman successor to humanity. My principal concern is to draw attention to the assimilatory nature and status of Islamicate Transhumanism within the broader context of Transhumanism, understood as a technological articulation and refinement of global white supremacy in a technoscientific register.

1. Introduction

For over a decade and a half, there has been a mounting body of literature exploring the relationship between various religious traditions and the contemporary phenomenon known as Transhumanism, although precedents go back somewhat further1. Most such explorations tend to assume the form of contributions to collections and include those edited by Tirosh-Samuelson and Mossman (2011), Sorgner and Jovanovic (2013), Mercer and Maher (2014), Mercer and Trothen (2015), and Trothen and Mercer (2017), among others. Importantly, with the exception of two essays appearing in these collections—those of Mahootian (2011) and Mavani (2014)—and a few more recent articles by Mobayed (2017), Hijazi (2019), Ferrero (2022), and Al-Kassimi (2023), all of which engage with Transhumanism from various Muslim, Islamic, and Islamicate2 perspectives, the bulk of such literature tends to focus on other traditions—specifically, Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist. It is for this reason that Roy Jackson’s Muslim and Supermuslim: The Quest for the Perfect Being and Beyond (2020), a book-length work that attempts to set out the case for an Islamicate philosophical and theological contribution to the Transhumanist goal of forging a posthuman successor to humanity—a project which he frames in terms of the progressive transformation of the Muslim into what he refers to as the ‘Supermuslim’—warrants attention and critical interrogation.

Building on earlier work interrogating Transhumanism through lenses of critical race and decolonial theory (Ali 2019a, 2021b), in what follows, I mount a critique of Jackson’s project with a view to drawing attention to the assimilatory nature of Islamicate Transhumanism within the broader context of Transhumanism, understood as a technological articulation of white supremacy3.

To motivate my critique, I need to begin by briefly explaining what is meant by ‘Transhumanism’ and describe who the Transhumanists are in terms of their demographic constitution and where they tend to be located within the modern/colonial world system.

2. Transhumanism

According to its proponents, Transhumanism is a scientific and philosophical movement informed by yet extending European Renaissance and 18th century Enlightenment commitments to rational humanism and scientific empiricism4 aimed at transforming—that is, progressively enhancing and transcending—human beings through the deployment of convergent developments within technoscience, specifically those associated with so-called GRIN/NBICS technologies5. Crucially, philosopher Nick Bostrom maintains that “[the] ‘transhuman’ refers to an intermediary form between the human and the posthuman [emphasis added]”, the latter designating “possible future beings whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards.” (Bostrom 2014, pp. 3–4). Statements such as these have led some commentators to suggest that Transhumanism’s concern is not with enhancing or perfecting man as he currently exists but rather with the pursuit of constructing “a new race” (Sombetzki 2016, p. 173), the emergence of the latter constituting what has been referred to as a technological ‘Singularity’ wherein mind is ‘virtualised’ (that is, rendered into information) and uploaded to a technological substrate, thereby attaining immortality.

3. Transhumanist Demographics

As to the demographic constitution of the Transhumanist movement in terms of its racial composition, a survey conducted by Pellissier and Dal Santo (2013) presented some interesting statistics regarding the ‘ethnic’ self-classification of Transhumanists, viz. 85.4% white, 3.3% Asian, 1.0% black and 10.0% multiple races. Further evidence of the whiteness of Transhumanism is readily provided by quantitative analysis of the demographics of leading Transhumanist organisations such as the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and Singularity University (SU)—in 2017, 82% of faculty speakers were identifiable as white6. In short, and notwithstanding the international nature of Transhumanism, it is empirically demonstrable on demographic grounds, both quantitative and qualitative, that Transhumanism is hegemonically white, male, and ‘Western’ (Euro-American), with non-white advocacy of Transhumanist ideas—for example, by postcolonial proponents located within India, a former periphery in the modern/colonial world system (Geraci 2018)—constituting the exception that proves the rule—and moreover exceptions that are perhaps better understood as regional dialects within a global language of white Transhumanism (Ali 2021a).

4. Transhumanism and the Modern/Colonial World System

While it might be argued that the whiteness and Western-ness (and maleness) of the Transhumanists is insufficient in terms of determining the body-political and geo-political orientation of its proponents, I want to suggest that thinking about Transhumanism and whiteness, as well as reframing Transhumanism as whiteness, in relation to historical processes of re-articulation7 of the latter (that is, whiteness), enables us to theoretically and better understand how Transhumanism can—and arguably does—function as a techno-scientific articulation of whiteness during a period of ‘White Crisis’ wherein white supremacy is subject to increasing contestation by its historically subordinated ‘others’. On my reading, it is precisely such a crisis that contributes to engendering what I have referred to elsewhere as the ‘algorithmic’ transformation of humanism into posthumanism via Transhumanism as iterative shifts within the historically sedimented onto-logic of Eurocentric racialization—shifts that are engineered to maintain structurally asymmetric power relations between the (formerly) human (as white, Western, male, etc.) and the subaltern, sub-human ‘other’. I suggest that the contemporary moment is marked by a relational shift from the distinction between sub-human (non-European, non-white) and human (European, white) to that between human (non-European, non-white) and Transhuman (European, white), such a shift being prompted, at least partly, by various non-European/non-white contestations of Eurocentric/West-centric/white-centric conceptions of the human (Ali 2019a, 2021b)8.

5. Critique

Informed by the above framing of Transhumanism as an articulation of political whiteness, in what follows I question—and more precisely, critically interrogate—Jackson’s Muslim and Supermuslim (Jackson 2020), along various lines, with a view to effecting a disavowal of his project, and emphatically asserting ‘Muslim, Not Supermuslim’. I suggest that from a perspective informed by critical race theory and decolonial thought (among other currents such as Sufism), a close reading of Jackson’s text readily evinces that it constitutes a project of assimilation into a hegemonically white Transhumanism, irrespective of whether this was intended or otherwise.

5.1. Assimilation

Regarding the specific issue of assimilation, it should be noted that, at the very outset, Jackson’s concern is to make the case for an Islamicate contribution to Transhumanist debate on the future of the human (p. 2)9, since in his view, “Islam, for its part, can and should be playing a key role in engaging and helping to determine [the Transhumanist] future.” (p. 175) In this connection, Jackson offers the following four “suggested Affirmations for a future Muslim Transhumanist Association: (1) We believe that the purpose of Islam involves the revival (ihya) and renewal (tajdid) of creation, including humanity, and that we should work towards the elimination of pain and suffering, poverty, injustice, and death; (2) We seek growth and progress along every dimension of our humanity, whether this is spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and at all levels; individual, communal, social, and global; (3) We understand that the Islamic tradition is compatible with and complementary to many cultures, religions, and philosophies that likewise seek transformation and renewal of creation; and (4) We believe that the intentional use of technology will empower us to transcend our current state and move towards perfectibility, guided by the example of the Prophet Muhammad as the Perfect Human (insān al-Kamil).” (pp. 175–76).

For Jackson, however, Muslims have thus far contributed ‘very little’ due to what he views as ‘the problem’ of engaging with Transhumanism via “the prescriptive paradigmatic religious sources of, primarily, the Qur’an, and its kin, the hadith and shari’a.” (p. 5).10 Setting aside the issue of normativity vis à vis prior Muslim engagements with Transhumanism that involve the mobilisation of religious texts11, not to mention Jackson’s failure to cite, let alone engage with, the work of scholars such as Mahootian (2011), who have advanced an extra-textual critique of Transhumanism from a Sufi (more specifically, Illuminationist/Ishrāqi12) perspective, there is a need to inquire as to what extent a focus on an Islamicate contribution to Transhumanism constitutes an attempt to domesticate and assimilate the Islamicate to a hegemonically Western if not white supremacist technocentric project13. In this connection, consider Jackson’s plea that “we want Islam to be taken seriously.” (pp. 25–26). Who is this ‘we’? And even if this ‘we’ refers to Muslims, who are these Muslims attempting to be taken seriously by if not Transhumanists?14

Yet, Jackson’s stance regarding Muslim engagement with Transhumanism appears contradictory since, in addition to the assertion that they have contributed ‘very little’ in this regard, he maintains that “in many ways Islam has, through most of its history, been involved in one way or another in the transhumanist debate, whilst it may not specifically use the term ‘transhumanism’ or understand it in the stricter sense that secular transhumanists are seeking to define it.” (pp. 9–10). Might it not be argued that Jackson appears to be bending over backwards to forge a link between Islamicate tradition and Transhumanism here through anachronistic projection? To what extent is he so broadening the idea of Transhumanism beyond its technological rationalist and scientific empiricist underpinnings to effect the contributory assimilation of Islam to this project that he ends up doing violence to both Islam and Transhumanism, notwithstanding anti-essentialist conceptualisations of both phenomena?15 For example, Jackson understands Transhumanism in terms of “paradigm-shifting technology that gets to the very nature of what it means to be human” (p. 72), yet reference to GRIN/NBICS technologies are notable by their absence from his framing. Rather, Jackson conceives Transhumanism simply—and rather abstractly—in terms of two characteristics, viz. “firstly, the ‘endless capacity for self-transcendence’, with the emphasis, for me, on ‘endless’. Secondly, our ‘god-like’ character.” (p. 10). Why these should be characteristics of Transhumanism rather than some other phenomenon (such as Sufism) remains unclear.

5.2. Transcendence

Regarding transcendence, Jackson invites us to consider “the ‘trans’ element of transhumanism in terms of ‘surpassing’ or ‘going beyond’ human boundaries and, indeed, whether there are such boundaries.” (p. 6). In his view, it is open to question as to “how far human beings can go before they ‘transgress’ the borders and, for that matter, the extent to which such borders exist and can be disputed. The Latin adjective ‘trans’, in terms of ‘crossing’, ‘going beyond’, ‘surpassing’, and so on is key here if we are to determine what the boundaries are and, therefore, the extent to which humankind can and should ‘cross’ these boundaries.” (p. 63). In this connection, it is crucial to appreciate that for Jackson, such boundaries are to be understood primarily in theological terms, yet it is unclear whether his framing of transcendence engages the latter in terms of ascent within a metaphysical hierarchy16. Resolving this ambiguity is important insofar as shifting the analytical and interpretative frame (and lens) from theology to political theology17 invites a rethinking of transcendence in terms of its entanglement with the political. Given the entanglement of race and religion18, and what decolonial theorist Lewis Gordon (2013) refers to as the ‘theodicean grammar of race’—that is, a vertical hierarchy established between those in the zone of being (plenitude, whiteness, Europeanness, humanity) and those in the zone of non-being (lack, blackness, non-Europeanness, sub-humanity), shifting to a political theological reading of transcendence points to understanding Transhumanism in terms of the transformation of a hierarchy between those self-classifying as human and classifying others as sub-human into a hierarchy between the Transhuman and the human with a view to maintaining asymmetric power relations (Ali 2019a, 2021b).

5.3. ‘Man’, Coloniality, and the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

In attempting to make the case for transitioning from the Muslim to the Supermuslim, Jackson offers a brief commentary on a play by George Bernard Shaw exploring progressivist themes, viz. ‘Man and Superman’. According to Jackson, ‘Man’ is a gender-neutral term, and moreover one that he suggests “can readily be substituted for ‘Muslim’” since, in his view, “one is synonymous with the other.” (p. 2). But what of the figure of ‘Man’ interrogated by Foucault and other critical theorists along various lines (race, class, gender, etc.) and decolonially extended by Wynter (2003), viz. as the secular or ‘de-godded’ biopolitically conceived European human?19 Jackson appears oblivious to the racialised (classed, gendered) nature of the term ‘Man’, yet this is perhaps unsurprising given that apart from a single quote from philosopher Nick Bostrom referring to diversity in relation to ‘races’, there is a marked absence of engagement with race, racism and/or racialisation in Muslim and Supermuslim, Jackson’s lens being philosophy of religion, which, I suggest, is deeply problematic given the entanglement of race and religion referred to previously.

Regarding his indebtedness to Bostrom, it should be noted that Jackson draws upon arguments advanced by the latter with a view to asserting that the ‘derivative value’ of “religious belief [within Transhumanism] is not precluded and a recognition of diversity, including religious, is stated.” (p. 12). Granted, yet to the extent that religious belief is considered derivative rather than foundational suggests a certain secular domestication and subordinate status of the religious20. Furthermore, the ‘core value’ of Transhumanism is stated to be as follows: “Having the opportunity to explore the transhuman and posthuman realms”, its basic conditions being ‘global security’ and ‘wide access’ to ‘technological progress’. But what is ‘global security’ if not the maintenance of the modern/colonial regime of power relationships? In addition, ‘wide access’ neither entails equitable access nor does it engage with the question as to whether such access is desirable in and of itself. Relatedly, to what extent does the invocation of ‘diversity’ by both Bostrom and Jackson amount to little more than a liberal conceit masking the reality of asymmetric—that is, differential—power in the modern/colonial world system? Put simply, diversity neither entails nor is equivalent to decolonisation21.

Crucially, Jackson’s advocacy of ‘wide access’ and ‘global security’ is framed in terms of the notorious ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis originally articulated by Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis and expanded upon by political theorist Samuel Huntington. According to Jackson, “we must steer away from the presumed ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis” (p. 6), which he reframes in terms of “Islam rejecting entirely transhumanism, and transhumanism rejecting Islam.” (p. 14). But are Islam and Transhumanism civilisations, and why is the clash of civilizations a ‘danger’ rather than, as I have suggested elsewhere, an unfortunate existential reality given the ostensible backdrop of ‘White Crisis’ against which the Transhumanist project continues to unfold (Ali 2019a, 2021b)?

5.4. Textuality and Liberalism

Returning to the ‘problem’ of Muslim engagement with Transhumanism, viz. that it prioritises the prescriptive nature of paradigmatic religious sources (specifically, texts such as The Qur’an, hadith, etc.), Jackson attempts to make the case for an Islamicate Transhumanism by asserting the priority of the extra-textual over the textual. In this connection, he appeals to the late Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Ahmed 2016)—specifically, what he sees as Ahmed’s “creative and explorative explication of Islamic sources which are all too often ignored (by Muslims and non-Muslims alike), yet … provide so much guidance in terms of meaning and value.” (p. 5)22. Crucially, for Jackson, such sources include “the discursive tradition of theology, philosophy, poetry, and so on” (p. 28), a fortiori, certain strains of Muslim mysticism and rationalist Islamic philosophy, which, following Ahmed, he insists occupy a superordinate position in relation to the prescriptive and subordinate text of revelation23. It is important to note the assertion of a binary opposition between the creative and the prescriptive at work here, one that turns about a rather reductive elision of polysemic hermeneutic approaches to the text of revelation, including those predicated on a commitment to literal fidelity and legality24. On this basis, I suggest the need to consider what political and ethical work is performed by Ahmed’s (and Jackson’s) ‘bracketing’ of prescriptive/normative Islam as set out in the opening lines of What is Islam? and his (their) valorisation of a purely historical, ‘lived’ approach to the Islamic. Put simply, what political motivations underpin Ahmed’s (and Jackson’s) project? For example, to what extent might the latter turn about a tacit commitment to liberalism, and what might be entailed by embracing such an orientation given what Charles W. Mills (2008) has referred to as the illiberalism of racialised liberalism under global white supremacy? For this reason, and once again, contra Jackson, I suggest the desirability, if not necessity, of engaging with political theology, rather than with theology per se.

5.5. Transhumanism, Islamicate Modernism, and Iqbal

Consistent with this ostensible commitment to liberalism, Jackson suggests that Islam became reified under the impact of 19th century responses to colonial rule articulated by those he describes as modernists25, such as Jamaluddin al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (p. 69), a project that reached its culmination in the “all-encompassing ideology” (p. 75) espoused by Abul-A’la Mawududi26. The poet philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, in contrast, is viewed in a much more positive light for his “trust in the individual’s ability to assert his or her own creative power or ‘will-to-power’”, and “confidence that Muslims are able to take on individual responsibility … Iqbal’s concept of the khudi [being] one that seemingly emerges in an evolutionary manner, rather like Nietzsche’s Übermensch [emphases added].” (p. 77)27. In this connection, Jackson asserts that “Iqbal’s self, or ego (sticking, as Iqbal does, to the strict Persian term of khudi), is not annihilation, but greater individuation. This has interesting parallels with the distinctions … between transhumanism and posthumanism: the former in which the self remains but is ‘enhanced’ so as to be God-like, whilst in the latter, human identity is effectively ‘annihilated’ like fana.” (p. 162)28.

5.6. Transhuman—Islamicate Parallels

In addition to Iqbal, Jackson attempts to draw parallels between Transhumanist ideas and ideas “in the works of important Muslim thinkers such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd … and Rumi”, although for him, “Iqbal presents a paradigm that resonates with the vision of transhumanism” (p. 7); furthermore, he invites us to “see what Islam can contribute to the transhumanist table in its explorative sense. We may have a copy of the Qur’an on the table, but also Rumi’s Masnavi, Muhammad Iqbal’s poetry and philosophy, Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical fiction, Maimonides’ Guide for The Perplexed, Ibn Rushd’s commentary on Aristotle/Aristu, the writing of Muslim scientists such as Mehdi Golshani, Mohammed Basil Altaie, Bruno Guiderdoni, Nidhal Guessoum, and so on. Here we will see that Islam does not prescribe, it does not say what is forbidden and what is allowed, but it reveals, through its generations of creativity, what it means to be human and, as a consequence, what it means to be transhuman.” (p. 35). Notwithstanding concerns about ‘textual fundamentalism’, I suggest there is a not-so-veiled attempt to decentre The Qur’an and marginalise normativity in favour of a valorised liberal commitment to creativity at work here, one that is human-all-too-human with a view to becoming Transhuman-all-too-Transhuman. Regarding the matter of parallels between Transhumanist ideas and those articulated by Muslim thinkers, it is important to consider to what extent the construction of such ‘parallels’ erases difference through anachronistic erasure of embedding context and worldview, effected from a West-centric perspective with a view to domesticating the ‘Other’-ed. Appeal to—and perhaps from a critical race theoretical and/or decolonial perspective this might be better understood as an instance of appropriation—non-European cultural and discursive precedents is common in Transhumanist writings; consider, for example, Hughes’ (2012) assertion that “Transhumanism is a modern expression of ancient and transcultural aspirations to radically transform human existence, socially and bodily”, notwithstanding his insistence that “the transhumanist movement [is] a modern form of Enlightenment techno-utopianism [emphasis added]” (p. 757).

5.7. Transhumanism, Iqbal, and Nietzsche

Returning to Iqbal, various problems surface in Jackson’s attempt to extrapolate from the thinking of the former to liberal individualism vis à vis an embrace of Transhumanism via the assimilation of Iqbal to Nietzsche: first, Nietzsche’s relationship to Transhumanism is highly contested, with various commentators questioning the assimilation of the figure of the Overman/Übermensch to the Transhuman29; second, to assimilate Iqbal to Nietzsche selectively and reductively obscures the former’s engagement with other Western philosophical figures including Bergson and Whitehead (Ruzgar 2008)30; third, and relatedly, Iqbal’s reconstructionist position vis à vis Islamic(ate) thought has recourse to both these philosophical currents, Western and Islamicate; finally, there is Nietzsche’s problematic endorsement of race hierarchy (Conway 2002), which I suggest would be emphatically rejected by Iqbal, an endorsement of which Jackson remains notably silent. This is significant in relation to the argument developed in earlier works (Ali 2019a, 2021b) and reiterated herein, viz. that Transhumanism (and technological posthumanism) should be interpreted as racialised colonial shifts about the line of the human.

Yet even if one accepts Jackson’s reductive pairing of Iqbal and Nietzsche in asserting that “Iqbal’s Perfect Human or insān al-Kamil and Nietzsche’s Übermensch are paradigms of human transformation towards a ‘better human’” (p. 166)31, does this justify his holding that “Iqbal presents a paradigm that resonates with the vision of transhumanism [insofar as] Iqbal’s Perfect Human, Nietzsche’s Übermensch or ‘Overhuman’, and the Transhuman meet” (p. 163)?32 Ironically, Jackson himself appears to cast doubts on the validity of such a resonance, evidenced by his asking “am I pushing the analogies with Nietzsche, Iqbal, and Rumi too far in relation to the transhumanist debate?” (p. 167). For my part, the answer to that question is in the affirmative, yet the more important question is ‘Why is Jackson doing this’? According to Jackson, pushing such analogies appears to be necessary because, on his reading, the advent of the cyborg is inevitable33 for various reasons, including the need to adapt to a radically changed environmental landscape following the onset of the Anthropocene (or rather, Eurocene34). To what extent does this line of argument turn on a tacit embrace of a variant of technological determinism, entangled with a ‘tech solutionist’ orientation to an ‘existential threat’—specifically, climate change—that might be deflecting focus away from other entangled developments including the re-emergence of the phenomenon of ‘White Crisis’—that is, perceived threat to white supremacy under mounting contestation from the non-white ‘other’?

5.8. Transhumanism and Divinization

Finally, I want to turn to Jackson’s engagement with Iqbal in relation to the former’s assertion that “Iqbal’s concept of the self is a form of self-divination … there is no hesitancy in striving to be God-like, and this is the ultimate concept of the self as insān al-Kamil, the Perfect Human.” (p. 163)35. While Jackson is correct to point to Iqbal’s invocation (and possible reformulation) of the insān al-Kamil, I want to question Jackson’s suggestion that the Islamicate Perfect Human be understood as the technological Transhuman. Consistent with Mahootian (2011), yet arguing from alternative Sufi perspectives, various Muslim commentators point to the inward (bātin) as the site of human transformation, notwithstanding the connection between such transformation and outward (dhāhir) action, and irrespective of whether the locus seeking perfection is identified as consciousness or the heart (qalb)36. As Ferrero states, “in Islam, spiritual realization entails overcoming the individual’s consciousness and the progressive purification of the individual with respect to the only reality of God … [By contrast,] what is now called transhumanism is moved by another spirit.” (p. 216).

Regarding this ‘other spirit’, it is crucial to appreciate that, for Jackson, “the Cartesian [that is, dualist] notion of the human … is closer to the transhumanist view: the human is not to be ‘reduced’ to the mechanical, but to be ‘expanded’ to the God-like, to acquire God’s point of view, or ‘theomimesis’ as [Steve] Fuller calls it”. In his view, “Descartes’ cogito ergo sum … can be regarded as ‘the first modern secularization of the theomimetic moment’” and Jackson insists that “such a notion of theomimesis, although under different names, is evident in Islam too.” (p. 121). To what extent is Jackson here conflating Islamicate philosophical and theological notions of ‘theosis’ (ta-alluh)—or becoming ‘God-like’—articulated by figures such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and a fortiori by Muhiyuddin ibn ‘Arabi with Cartesian theomimesis? In this connection, Ogunnaike (2016) points out that the Cartesian cogito must be understood in terms of rationality, whereas theosis in the pre-Cartesian Islamicate tradition is associated with the intellect—and these are not identical37. Going further, to what extent is Jackson attempting to assimilate Islamicate approaches to theosis38 to the Transhumanist project by conflating the former with technophilic conceptions of Divinization arguably traceable to transformations in the relationship to technology within Western Christianity from the 12th century CE onwards? Regarding the latter, Noble (1997) argues that the embrace of technology, persisting and intensifying through the colonial era and European Enlightenment into technocentric modernity, was theo-politically driven by two concerns: first, to recover an alleged ‘prelapsarian’ Adamic state of perfection following ‘The Fall’, and second, to facilitate the war against the Antichrist, which was often, though not exclusively, identified as either the Prophet Muhammad himself or Muslims more generally39. Once again, given such theo-political entanglements, there is a need to interrogate whether framing the issue of possible Islamicate contribution to Transhumanism in philosophical and theological terms occludes other entanglements and framings—specifically, those that are political theological in nature and thoroughly racialized.

6. Conclusions

In conclusion, and consolidating the above lines of argument, I want like to re-iterate my disavowal of a proposed shift from the Muslim to the Supermuslim. Insofar as Transhumanism can—and, I suggest, should—be understood as a technologically driven religio-racial project aimed at maintaining, expanding, and refining Western, white supremacist hegemony under non-Western contestation, and what appears to be an attempt on Jackson’s part to domesticate and assimilate Islam to the unfinished project of modernity, which, following the argument of decolonial scholars, must also be understood as the ongoing project of coloniality40, its encroachment must be resisted on decolonial and critical race theoretical grounds consistent with aspirations toward Islamicate futures, technological and otherwise.