Between Mosques and the State: Reflections on Scholarship, Fieldwork, and Positionality Among Mosque-Communities in Belgium and Switzerland

This paper examines the methodological and epistemological challenges that arise when researching the state regulation of Muslim institutions in Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Belgium and Switzerland, I explore how academic research and policymaking intersect in ways that shape both access to the field and the knowledge such research produces. I argue that this entanglement operates on two levels: structurally, through the growing involvement of scholars in advising or informing public policy pertaining to Muslim groups; and epistemically, through research practices that mirror the state’s own logics of classification and control. In tracing the effects of these entanglements, I show the ways in which they generate suspicion among participants and affect relationships between researcher and researched. I then turn to a discussion of positionality as both risk and remedy in this terrain. Depending on how it is navigated, a researcher's identity and self-presentation can either reinforce these dynamics by reproducing extractive relationships, or mitigate them by fostering more reciprocal forms of engagement. By situating these experiences within the broader politics of knowledge production, the paper contributes to debates on reflexivity, access, and representation in ethnographic research on Muslim minorities and state governance in Western Europe.