The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What is it Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers.
The following is an edited excerpt from the forthcoming interview with Saba Fatima which will be released in full next week.
How did you get into philosophy?
Ohio Wesleyan was life changing; in particular, my humanities classes and my off-campus interactions had a tremendous impact on me. I learned a lot. I’d like to think that I became a more informed person about issues of difference. Professor Shari Stone-Mediatore was instrumental in my time there because she was/is so authentic to her values. She lives what she preaches and is a genuinely nice person. Shari taught wonderful feminist theory classes and I feel forever indebted to her.
9/11…what was that day like for you? Where were you? What were you doing? In general, what effect did 9/11 have on your college experience?
When 9/11 happened, I was in a psychology class conducted in a computer lab (I was a psychology minor). Someone had pulled up the news on their computer. I thought it was either a movie or it had happened in a developing nation (like bad plane navigation systems or something, I am not sure what I thought). I certainly didn’t think it was in NYC.
Many white students felt uncomfortable living with international brown folks. I remember seeing images on TV of Palestinians celebrating 9/11 as evidence that Muslims are a heartless people. The images turned out to be fake (duh!) but the damage was done. I had a male feminist teacher, who I really respected. He called me in for a talk. I thought he was going to ask me about how I am doing in the aftermath. Instead, he wanted to know where I stood on terrorism! That was a real wake up call. My dad called me up soon after and told me not talk politics with anyone (reminds me of my paper on Muslim American scripts – either just keep repeating patriotic scripts or don’t speak at all).
Grad school?
How Binghamton (grad school) came to be is still a mystery. It wasn’t a clear or straight path at all. My first job as a programmer had a super racist boss (in the interview he asked me what I thought about how barbaric Palestinians were… what can I say, I was desperate for a job). It was while working there, I decided to get my applications ready for something more fulfilling – grad school. But then I was laid off because the visa process was too much for his small company (he laid off another international person at the same time). I was so beyond broke after that, had a soon-to-expire visa, restrictions on where I could work, and no clear direction. All of that threw my plans in a limbo because I just wanted to survive. Shari told me about SPEL program at Binghamton. My letter of acceptance with funding there gave me that sense of direction.
What did your parents make of your decision to pursue grad school?
My parents were supportive about my decision to go to grad school for philosophy. My mom was worried about my financial prospects after my PhD. She was more right about that than either of us knew. Overall, my mom simply wished me to have a better life than hers. My dad was happy as long as we knew what we were doing with our lives.
Yeah, it can be difficult to get a grip on what the life of a philosopher is like…
I had no clue how bad the job market would be. I think if someone had told me, I wouldn’t have picked philosophy. I had serious misconceptions about the job of philosophers. I thought you change the world through your thoughts and writings. Ha! (I know that’s true for the superstars). In actuality, I write something (which itself takes me a longtime with a 3/3 teaching load), it takes forever to get it published (some of it has to do with what I write on – I mean is it even philosophy?), and very few people ever read what I have written (the two reviewers and the journal editor, maybe?). I still write, because I enjoy thinking through things. I was right about one thing: teaching. I do feel like I am making some difference in few of my students’ lives. I do think that I am opening some minds, much like mine was opened in college. So I am hopeful.
When you ask whether what you do is philosophy, what do you have in mind?
I am not sure. It is just a feeling. When I begin a project, I seem to almost always begin from lived experiences. By the time I get to submitting it to conferences, the paper doesn’t talk like a philosophy paper, rather seems to draw on real-life issues marginalized folks face. Sometimes even after what feels like a million R&Rs, I still think that I have written something for an in-depth magazine and not for a philosophy journal – actually, that was a real comment I once received on my one of my now-published journal article and it has always stuck with me. I love Kristie Dotson’s How is this Paper Philosophy?.
How would you describe Binghamton, to a person who has never been?
Binghamton is super-duper cold, and there is not a whole lot to do there. Good school though.
Was grad school what you expected? Did you feel prepared?
I had no well-formulated expectations of graduate school. I was definitely not prepared, especially since I didn’t know anyone who had been to graduate school in the United States and I was only a philosophy minor in my undergraduate. In retrospect, I should have sat in multiple grad and undergrad philosophy classes just to absorb the basics. When I was on campus, the person in charge of grad students was very hands-off, so at the time, there were no workshops or guidance on publishing or teaching etc. I have heard things changed drastically once the charge transferred hands to other faculty.
Did your views on sex and gender change in grad school?
It’s a kind of hard to assess my previous self. I think when I was 18, I probably thought gender was binary. So that’s definitely changed! I also know that I have gained a lot of nuance over the years about how patriarchy, misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. work in tandem. So while I may not remember what my exact views were, I have been called in/out about things over the years or learned from excellent writing on the subject, and I am actively learning how to listen in these moments, and to sit uncomfortably with the shame of messing up – and then hopefully doing better.
Did you get a chance to teach?
I did teach throughout grad school, until I got pregnant and moved in with my in-laws.
How many kids do you have? I just learned I’m about to have a kid!
Congratulations! It’s a transformative experience. I have two kids. Both were born during grad school. They both attended my graduation ceremony, which was awesome!
Explain why you aren’t free to practice your faith in Saudi Arabia, for those who don’t know.
This is very tricky to answer. I hope to reenter the country in the future as many times as possible. It is home to the Kaaba and to the mosque of Prophet Mohammad, and as a practicing Muslim, I feel a lot of peace in both spots. But here is what I think I can say:
Al-Rasheed writes that the royal family has a symbiotic relationship with Wahhabi clerics. According to her, the monarchy maintains the appearance of religious legitimacy via Wahhabi clerics stamp of approval. In turn, the state employs particular school of thought clerics and allows them to use of power of the state to enforce their interpretation of Islam. This has institutionalized Wahhabi thought as the only legitimate form of Islam, and everything else is labeled as heretic/innovative. The state is suppressive to anyone that follows manifestations of Islam too far from the Wahhabi form, and is especially suppressive of Shias.
Also, some have documented that the government has been on a mission to destroy religious sites – supposedly in the name of progress and development. However, it is to be noted that destruction of Islamic sites makes it easier to erase history since it does not comport well with Wahhabi ideology and Wahhabi’s interpretation of history.
Are your personal views and religious views perfectly in sync?
As far as religious views: religion is not something we come up with in isolation. Theological rulings become accepted as rulings within an environment of consensus. I can come up with something that seems right to me according to the basic precepts of my faith, but unless many other Muslims (especially Muslim scholars) agree to it, it would not become a norm within the faith. Given this, few of my personal views conflict with mainstream interpretations of my faith, but I personally may not view them as conflicts with the faith and there are other Muslim scholars who espouse views similar to mine on those issues. I fully understand that my ‘interpretation’ has a significantly higher chance of being flawed than the consensus of scholars who have devoted their entire adult life to an Islamic seminary, but the heart cannot accept what the intellect violently rejects. And faith is as much about the heart. As they say amongst Muslims, Allah knows best.
What’s your most controversial view?
In my own head, none of my views are controversial at all… they all have epistemic home in some community… but in all seriousness, I can’t think of any.
Of what you’ve written so for, what stuff would you say is the most important?
That is like asking me to pick a baby. Everything I write means something important to me.
Earlier you mentioned you are working on the epistemic harm of microaggression. Any other projects in the works?
#MeToo within a Muslim American context, American ignorance, and a book on Shia Islam!
Cool! Would you mind describing a bit?
So the #MeToo project is a two part project: The first paper is on the problem of Muslim American women navigating the discussion on sexual assault and harassment within an Islamophobic environment, and the second part is about issues that Muslim women face within their own communities in regards to #MeToo.
In the American ignorance paper, I argue that similar to how racialized ignorance functions on Mills’ view to maintain and legitimate racial hierarchy, nationalistic ignorance serves in the short-run to maintain a certain kind of flawed patriotism.
And Lastly, I have been working on a trade book on Shia Islam for quite some time. It’s a pure passion project that covers fundamental beliefs about Islamic theology, religious rulings on major issues, and basic information on key historical figures, all from the standpoint of Shia Muslims.
How do you see the future of philosophy? Exciting/disconcerting trends?
I don’t worry about the future of philosophy as much – I do find the push toward exploitative labor practices in academia worrisome. I also think that the current structures in academia make very accomplished folks constantly feel like failures. We never seem to produce enough, be impactful enough. It keeps us constantly working, away from the simple pleasures of life, like family, nature, and knowledge.
In exciting trends, more and more conferences seem to be set up for inclusive discussions, where people are keen on learning from one another. I could totally be mistaken… it’s always good to listen and learn from grad students who are minorities on how to do better!
[interviewer: Cliff Sosis]
This interview has been edited for length. The full interview will be available at What Is It Like to Be A Philosopher?
You can get early access to the interview and help support the project here.
