Creating Muslim Futures: Katrina Thompson's Queer "Discursive Futurism" and the Ethical Labor of Middle-Class Muslim Women in India

This presentation examines Katrina Daly Thompson's "Muslims on the Margins" (2023) and its theoretical framework of "discursive futurism" as a generative lens for understanding ethical aspirations among middle-class Muslim women in North India. Thompson's ethnography of queer Muslim communities reveals how marginalized Muslims actively create futures through embodied practices rather than merely envisioning them. I place this framework in conversation with my research on the triadic ethical labor—mushaqqat (struggle), sabr (patience), and khidmat (care)—that Muslim women in India employ to navigate between divine determination and agentive possibilities. Both studies illuminate decolonial approaches to Islamic knowledge production that challenge dominant narratives of Muslim women's agency. By examining how differently marginalized Muslims across transnational contexts employ ethical practices to construct alternative futures, this comparative analysis contributes to debates about gendered authority and embodied feminism.