Islamising the Culture War: Race, Gender, and the Akhi-Right in the Muslim Manosphere

This interview examines the emergence of a Muslim manosphere within contemporary culture wars, situating it at the intersection of Islamophobia, racial politics, gender discourse, and state securitisation. Drawing on Black Muslim intellectual traditions and post-9/11 political realities, Shareef Muhammad (Frank Beane) critically interrogates Muslim alliances with right-wing manosphere figures and neoconservative gender politics. He argues that such alignments are shaped by political illiteracy, racial displacement, and what he terms “immigration compensation syndrome”, whereby non-Black Muslims seek proximity to whiteness through anti-Black narratives. The discussion foregrounds the dangers of cultural conservatism being misrecognised as Islamic conservatism, highlighting how Western conservatism has historically been tied to white nationalism, empire, and racial exclusion. The interview further critiques Muslim manosphere attacks on critical race theory, exposing them as borrowed talking points from evangelical and far-right actors that erase Black intellectual traditions and mischaracterise race analysis as secular or Marxist intrusion. Throughout, the conversation emphasises how Muslim manosphere discourse risks reinforcing state surveillance, legal vulnerability, and racialised violence against Muslims, particularly Black Muslims, by supplying rhetorical material for securitisation regimes. By linking gender politics, race, and imperial governance, the interview offers a cautionary intervention against naive culture-war alignments and calls for a historically grounded, politically literate Muslim public discourse attentive to power, race, and state violence.