Muslim Futurism as a Creative Movement: Fashion, Faith, and Photos

 Muslim Futurism has emerged as a creative movement through which artists reimagine Muslim identities beyond dominant narratives shaped by Islamophobia, surveillance, and cultural stereotyping. This paper examines how contemporary Muslim artists utilize fashion and photography as visual and material practices to imagine alternative futures. Through stylized clothing, and staged imagery, artists create speculative representations that foreground dignity, creativity, and agency in Muslim life. Rather than positioning Muslims within static representations of tradition, these works engage aesthetic experimentation to articulate forward-looking visions of identity and belonging. This paper argues that fashion and photography function not only as artistic mediums but also as tools for speculative world-building within Muslim visual culture. Building on my doctoral research, which examines how Muslim Futurism operates as a form of everyday activism, the paper situates these artistic practices within broader sociological discussions of lived religion, visual culture, and everyday resistance (Scott 1985; Johansson and Vinthagen 2016).