Religification, racialization and romantic partners

Blog post by Tahseen Shams, University of Pennsylvania, USA

​In my research, I ask how do Black and White Canadians perceive South Asian Muslims – the largest Muslim ethnic group in Canada – as romantic partners? Based on interviews of 46 Black and White Canadians from diverse socioeconomic background in Toronto, my Identities article, ‘Religification of brownness and racialization of Muslimness: how do Black and White Canadians perceive South Asian Muslims as romantic partners?’, shows that Islamophobic tropes as civilizationally backward, patriarchal and intolerant of religious freedom and sexual minorities deter many Black and White Canadians who are not Muslim to even consider dating someone from an Islamic background.
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These Islamophobic stereotypes are so widespread in Canadian society that even the participants who are generally open to being in interracial unions with South Asians do not want to be in relationships with Muslim South Asians. Even when their experiences with Muslim partners were positive, they did not want to risk entering another relationship with a Muslim. They feared that their Muslim partners and their families would force them to convert to Islam. Both Black and White women worried that they will be forced to wear a hijab, give up their careers and be subservient to their husbands. 

Moreover, participants’ fears about Islam overshadowed even the values that they saw in a positive light in South Asian culture, such as strong family ties. For instance, those who identified as Queer believed that even if a relationship with a Muslim person was possible, the families of the partner would force them to break up because of homophobia. In these essentializing speculations, participants consistently imagined Muslim partners as conforming to familial expectations of breaking up and forced conversions. These imaginations of how a mixed union with a Muslim partner would end up reflected broader Western narratives about Muslim cultures lacking individualism and having something akin to a herd mentality.
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Sometimes, participants blurred distinctions between race and religion, referring to both Muslims and South Asians as ‘brown’. Consequently, a negative experience with a South Asian, regardless of religion or ethnicity, had the potential to overshadow any positive experience with Muslims. For instance, one White woman, Claudia, had dated both Muslim Arab and South Asian non-Muslim men. While she had very positive experiences dating two Muslim men – who, much to her surprise, never imposed their religion on her – her experience with an Indian Hindu man was very negative. Since that relationship with the Hindu man ended, Claudia decided not to date ‘brown men’ – Muslim or Hindu, South Asian or Arab – because she believed they were all ‘going to be abusive’.

However, there was a key difference in how Black and White Canadians viewed Muslimness. While White participants viewed Muslims in Canada in relation to Muslim-related turmoil abroad, such in Afghanistan, Syria and Palestine, for Black participants, their outlook emphasized anti-Blackness among South Asian and Muslim communities within Canada. Most Black Canadians emphasized their race over their religious identity – i.e., how their partner and their families would accept the participant being Black – when it came to considering a mixed relationship with a South Asian Muslim. These romantic experiences, perceptions and imaginations reveal how open Canada, a country that prides itself on its multiculturalism and immigrant integration, really is as a society on the ground.

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Image credit: Courtesy of Razeeb Chowdhury Photography.

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Read the Identities article:
Shams, T. (2026). Religification of brownness and racialization of Muslimness: how do Black and White Canadians perceive South Asian Muslims as romantic partners? Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2026.2679373

Read further in Identities:

Islamophobia, racial discrimination law, and the question of self-identification   OPEN ACCESS

What’s love got to do with it? Marriage and the security state   OPEN ACCESS

Racialized identities in a postcolonial context: exploring religious identification processes among daughters of Maghrebi-Spanish couples in Spain