ABSTRACT
Within orientalist conceptions of citizenship, the development and presence of citizenship in the Occident is juxtaposed with its absence in the Orient. The emphasis of much of the literature that critically engages with discourses of political orientalism has been on revealing and critically interrogating the depiction of subjects and practices associated with Islam or Islamic societies as non-political, and their presence in the political realm as a threat to the political. These studies demonstrate the manner in which practices and subjects associated with Islam are not recognized as properly political within dominant discourses of citizenship. Instead, they are viewed as either ‘merely’ religious or are disqualified from the political because of their dangerous failure to differentiate between the political and the religious. Whether deemed merely or dangerously religious, subjects and practices associated with Islam appear as the non-political other of occidental citizenship.
