1. Introduction

Space is deeply political. Entering any space demands preconditions that determine who belongs and who is pushed to the margins. I met Dana in the Hague on a chilly January evening as we sat to talk about her experience navigating the university space as a Muslim. She recounted a story about discovering a torn Qurʼan in the meditation room at her university, and the university’s repeated failure to meaningfully respond:

“Every time we tell a student who is part of the University Council about investigating this, and every time we speak to other university agents, I tell them, “Do you understand that every time we come to you with this, you gaslight us? You act like this doesn’t exist. We have direct proof and evidence of what it feels like to be a student of colour at this university. You get surveilled, followed, and when you go to the prayer room, your holy book is ripped apart and thrown on the floor. In what world is this a university that advertises itself as a space for diverse students?”… I need you to start doing something. Because clearly, this university is not a safe space for all students.”

The tone throughout the interview with Dana and three other Muslim students present was one of exhaustion, of pain, of being unheard, unseen, and misunderstood. Yet what struck me most was not just their anger, but the deep care each and every student I interviewed still held for their respective institution. The evocative symbol of a ripped Qurʼan torn apart in a space dedicated to meditation represents a salient moment of violence and disruption — arguably the common thread that runs through this article, which attends to three interrelated forms of exclusion: spatial, embodied, and institutional.

Muslim students with hyphenated ethnicities, such as Dutch-Moroccan or Dutch-Turkish, form the core research population of this study. While my interlocutors hailed from different backgrounds, what most had in common was that they were often children and grandchildren of immigrants who arrived in the Netherlands as guest workers in the second half of the twentieth century (Bhabha, Giles, and Mahomed 2020, 40). The shadow of colonialism and labour migration histories is deeply imprinted on their present identities and contemporary struggles as Dutch Muslim students. While many of the families of immigrant background have long since laid down roots, their belonging to Dutch society remains contested.

The significance of the broader political climate in the Netherlands came to the fore as I undertook my fieldwork. The 2023 electoral victory of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), a far-right party long associated with anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, alarmed many across the political spectrum. Dutch Muslims, students included, had to confront a new reality — one that inculcated fear and anxiety across different Muslim communities. For them, the rise of the right was not a change of policy; it was an existential threat.

My research focused on the university as a site where Muslim students have to navigate the politics of space. Keval (2024, 25) argues that the university is not simply a site of knowledge production, but a “racial regime” historically grounded in whiteness and structured to preserve it. Similarly, Ahmed demonstrates how the institutional embrace of diversity often functions as a rebranding strategy, overlooking inequalities while fronting a happy, marketable image of inclusion, leaving structures of whiteness intact (Ahmed 2007, 606). This article builds on this body of research to investigate: How do Muslim students navigate the politics of space in Dutch universities?

2. Theoretical Framework

The modern university presents itself as an institution of neutrality and inclusivity. However, this has been widely contested in literature on race and academia. Race-making is a contextual process that also occurs within academic institutions, as spaces and practices influence how racial categories are produced, understood, and experienced in everyday interactions (Lewis 2003, 295–296). Wekker (2016, 50) contends that universities are not neutral but somewhat complicit in this process, as they actively construct, legitimise, and spread dominant discourses about race in the public sphere.

The university’s self-representation is also shaped by its secular framework. According to Asad (2003, 25–26), secularism does not have a neutral foundation that merely separates religion from the public sphere; it actively excludes public, shared, or political belief systems that do not fall into a privatised, individualised framework defined by Christian-European history. By examining the university through Asad’s conceptualisation of secularisation, we can understand how its secular orientation does not neutralise or guard against religious exclusion, but instead serves as a tool for marginalising practices and identities that do not correspond to Western, Christian ideals.

Puwar (2004, 8 & 33) investigates how racialised and gendered individuals are deemed bodies out of place inside white-dominated institutions, proposing the phrase space invaders to convey how racialised bodies are regarded as intruding into institutional spaces that have historically been designated for the so-called white male body. Expanding upon this, Vigh’s (2009, 419–420) work on social navigation provides a critical perspective that investigates how individuals both navigate and move through environments of social flux and transformation, emphasising the interplay of agency, social factors, and transformation. This article employs navigation as a continuous, strategic process through which racialised bodies move through and assert their presence in spaces that are not designed for them — marked by hyper-visibility, emotional labour, and ongoing self-regulation to negotiate belonging and legitimacy.

Combining Beekers and Kloos’s (2018) concept of fitting God in with Ahmed’s (2007) critiques, this article investigates the gap between rhetoric and reality at secular universities. While institutions claim to promote diversity, the central question remains: Do they genuinely offer the space and infrastructure required for Muslim students to practise their beliefs on campus? Or do they merely provide an appearance of inclusion without implementing the necessary adjustments for actual accommodation?

3. Methodology

I drew on qualitative methods, primarily participant observation and semi-structured interviews, to explore the lived experiences of Muslim students in Dutch universities. I conducted participant observations in academic and non-academic contexts from September 2024 to March 2025, participating in university events across four Dutch institutions, visiting quiet/meditation spaces, attending Friday mosque sermons, and conducting document analysis of university websites and social media.

In addition to participant observation, I carried out 22 semi-structured interviews with self-identifying Muslim students enrolled at various universities across the Netherlands, including Utrecht, Tilburg, Leiden, Groningen, Erasmus, Radboud, Delft, and Vrije University Amsterdam. Most of the interviews were conducted with female students, although I also interviewed a number of male students. While I recognise the internal diversity of my research population, this article does not take gender as its central analytic frame. This is not because gender is unimportant; rather, I intentionally decenter it to foreground how Muslimness itself, as a racialised identity in Europe, becomes the primary site of exclusion.

My positionality as a Muslim researcher is woven into the discourses and analyses that form the bedrock of this research. I entered a space that has long been observed, misunderstood, and instrumentalised. Building rapport had to be cultivated slowly and carefully. In informal settings, I was welcomed as a peer and insider; my positionality opened doors, sparked conversations, and eased social interactions. But trust is not guaranteed by similarity. The mood of conviviality sometimes shifted towards caution when I asked institutional questions or brought out my notebook. Their scepticism was not only understandable — it was necessary.

4. The Politics of Space: Navigating Infrastructural Constraints

Throughout my fieldwork, the devotional ritual of prayer came to the fore as a recurring theme that could not be ignored. For many of my Muslim interviewees, the prayer is far more significant than a daily mechanical repetition of bodily movements. It is a ritual that connotes their metaphysical connection to the realm of divinity and one that brings inner peace and spiritual tranquillity. With two to three of the five daily prayer timings taking place during university hours, most students complained about the restricted access to prayer spaces, the lack of time to complete the prayer in the short breaks between classes, and inadequate institutional support.

The salat as well as the hijab have become heavily politicised and controversial symbols of Muslimness in European public and political discourse (Henkel 2005, 487). Prayer is often conflated with religious extremism, which in modern European parlance is reduced to acts of irrationality and associations with violence. A popular viewpoint repeated in different quarters holds that Muslim religiosity is incompatible with the liberal ideals of modern Europe, leading some state apparatuses to justify acts of surveillance and social monitoring. In this context, the politics surrounding the ritual of prayer reveals subtle but persistent forms of exclusion that pervade academic life.

Across multiple institutions and conversations, Muslim students described how navigating the university in search of a place to pray is often fraught, inconvenient, and alienating. I identify three common infrastructural challenges that impact daily navigation of prayer in university spaces.

Firstly, many students expressed concern about the shortage of quiet spaces. Given the regularity of daily prayers in Islam and the number of students utilising these rooms, current facilities are insufficient. As Amin, a history student, explained:

“The University is making efforts to promote inclusivity, but there is still room for improvement, especially when supporting religious practices such as prayer … The university could pay more attention to the practical aspects of religious life on campus, such as the availability of quiet spaces for prayer and providing support.”

Secondly, students expressed that these spaces are often scattered across campus and difficult to reach. Layla, a medicine student, shared her complaints: “We have to go to another location to pray, which is a small distance sometimes to get there; you cannot go between the classes here and there … Sometimes, you risk being late to class.” Naima, a history student, elaborated further: “You try to plan your day around your prayers, but since you live in a country where this is not possible, you try to plan it in a way that if you have a five-minute break, then you run to a prayer area to conduct your prayer and go back.”

Third, even if the quiet areas are available, these rooms are frequently too small to accommodate everyone who uses them. During peak times, such as dhuhr (midday) and asr (afternoon) prayers, students reported standing in line to wait for their turn. Hajar, a psychology student, was direct: “It is too small. You always have to wait.” She continued: “This university raises the flag of inclusion, so it should be bigger and better; they talk about inclusion.”

Spatial exclusion is predicated on a profound misunderstanding of the Muslim identity. Kamel, a student I met in the university cafeteria, was worried. He told me: “Religion is a way of life and I don’t think D&I [Diversity and Inclusion] take that seriously.” He elaborated that while the D&I Office may support students if faced with hostility due to their Muslim identity, their support does not extend to the practical issues a Muslim student faces at university: “I hesitate to seek assistance if I struggle to pray on time.”

Sarah, a pedagogy student, lamented that the silent prayer rooms she routinely utilises would soon be shut without plans to offer replacements. Feeling the university tolerates minimal forms of Islam and Muslimness, she said plainly: “It is okay to be Muslim, but just not too much.” This conditional tolerance was likewise expressed by Harun, a PhD student: “They do not get it, they are not acquainted with religion as a way of life, and we do not have the opportunity to explain our identity.”

Despite these constraints, Muslim students do not disappear. They engage in what can be called wild praying — a term coined by students themselves to describe spontaneous, informal acts of prayer across campus. These spatial negotiations are practical responses to exclusion and deeply political and creative forms of resistance. Through prayer and ritual, Muslim students reconfigure the secular architecture of the university, challenging the normative spatial ordering that excludes religious expression. As Harun recounted: “We prayed below an empty staircase … sometimes we would leave a prayer mat for others, but they were often removed.”

These acts of readjusting are not passive. They challenge the spatial design of the university by asserting alternative, sacred uses of space. In this context, collective space-making emerges as a form of resistance. Muslim students are not passive recipients of institutional neglect. They actively shape their environments, just as those environments shape them. This reciprocal process reveals how exclusion does not lead to disappearance but to creativity, negotiation, and the re-inscription of meaning onto marginal zones.

5. The Body as a Site of Racialisation and Exclusion

In a post-9/11 world, Muslim bodies have been politicised. Dutch Muslims saw themselves as targets of suspicion and on the receiving end of subtle accusations of being sympathetic to violent extremism. Hilal, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim student, complained of a recurring incident at a Dutch university campus which she took as an unwelcome reminder of her otherness. Every time she entered campus, she was asked to show her student ID. Months later, she entered the same gate with a white friend who was not asked:

“Curious, I ask her and several other white students, ‘Hey, do they ever ask you for your student ID?’ Everyone says no. Maybe the first few times, someone comments, but now they know me.”

When Hilal discovered she was marked differently from the rest of the student body, she responded by negotiating and navigating her presence in the university space. She spoke back to the one doing the surveillance by turning the gaze back: “You know, I see these security guards almost every day. At some point, I ask the guard … You still do not know me? His reply was straightforward: I am only doing my job.” This reveals how the process of racialisation translates to securitisation and suspicion, where certain bodies — namely Muslims — are marked as suspect. Her racialised phenotypical marker, which she refers to as her “brownness,” marks her as a body out of place.

The white gaze was coined by Morsi (2017, 9–10) to describe a nervous racialising gaze, intentional and imposing meaning onto racialised bodies. It is beyond just a gaze; it is about exercising power and control, as well as alienating and erasing. Within the walls of the academy, students find themselves engaged in navigating their paradoxical visibility: hypervisible in a way where they are the subject of the problem, while their presence is scrutinised, contested, and politicised — invisible in a way that they are rarely spoken to.

Naima, a Dutch-Moroccan history student, told me that her veil became a sign of contention:

“When I put on my hijab, it started already with the lecture halls filling up. When you walk in, you feel eyes staring at you, like, Oh, you do the same study as me? You also have the mental capacity to follow this? That is how they look at you. And if you say something in class, they look at you like, Wow, you also have thoughts? You feel like you are under a magnifying glass.”

Naima’s hypervisibility is paradoxically associated with invisibility regarding her academic potential and intellectual ability. As Puwar (2004, 60) points out, racialised bodies are frequently considered to have limited skills. Naima feels her intellectual acumen is overlooked, making her both hypervisible in drawing attention and invisible in terms of being perceived as capable.

Some students negotiate their hypervisibility by active engagement, although in doing so, they are frequently pushed to justify their Muslimness. Hayat, a religious studies student, found herself singled out whenever Islam-related subjects were discussed: “In a class on Islam in Europe, my opinion is always asked. I do not want to be zoomed in on … There was too much attention on me.” She continued: “I hear many assumptions. People ask me, you study religion, why don’t you wear a headscarf? … Protestant classmates are never asked such questions. I get very personal, intimate questions in class.” This singling out is more than mere curiosity. It is an essentialisation of Muslim students, reducing them to objects of study rather than active participants in intellectual endeavours.

To be a “good” Muslim was a concept repeatedly raised in conversation with Muslim students. Layla, with a furrowed expression, told me: “I am the only person with a hijab. I feel pressure to behave as “good” as possible so that people do not get confirmation for their stereotypes.” The notion has its foundation in colonial paradigms that historically separated the obedient “good native” and the threatening “bad native” (Said 1978). For some Muslim students, the concept of being a good Muslim serves as both an internal moral guide and an effective way of moving in academic spaces dominated by the white gaze. Hajar reflected on this:

“We need to represent ourselves well … I do not want to call it pressure, but this responsibility to be a good example in society for other Muslims is from a place of love … Yes, resisting bad perception. I will not resist by being hostile in return, but I will resist in my own way.”

Hajar rejects the imposed binary of Muslim identity only to define it on her own terms — one founded not on the white gaze, but on Islamic ethics. Harun, a PhD student in technology, expressed a subtler but significant disciplining of self: “I am afraid that if I say something in a bad manner, they will think all Muslims are like that … I try to manage my shortcomings.” His words reflect a complex internal conflict in which the weight of the perception of other Muslims rests firmly on the individual’s actions.

6. Institutional Mirrors: “The Outside World is Coming in”

Students exist in relation to the university. The modern university is of many pasts and legacies. Colonialism, institutional racism, and contemporary politics are part and parcel of the setup of Dutch educational outfits (Wekker 2016, 50). The data gathered shows that for many of my interlocutors, the pasts of colonialism, migration histories, and the politics of hate and division in the Netherlands all play a prominent role in how students navigate their presence in the university space.

Dana, a master’s student in political science, captured the structural nature of her experience starkly: “You want to tell me you care about me so much. When the issue is structural and in relation to other hegemonic structures of oppression and inequality we live in, why would it be different than because it is the university?” For students like Dana, real inclusion must begin with acknowledging their intersectional identities, particularly in the context of an environment increasingly dominated by far-right politics.

The leading Dutch universities of today are adamant to highlight their commitment to Diversity and Inclusion. Leiden University states it is “committed to becoming an inclusive community which enables all students and staff to feel valued and respected.” The University of Amsterdam declares it wants to be “a university where everyone feels at home and feels respected.” Yet students recognise the holes in these official narratives. Yara, a marketing student, explained: “We act like the university is separate from the current far-right government. The institution is an extension of exactly that.”

Evidence on the ground lends credibility to these claims. A number of prominent academics at Leiden University have palpable links to the far-right. Thierry Baudet, who founded the far-right Forum for Democracy, received his doctorate in law from Leiden under the supervision of Paul Cliteur, renowned for his anti-Islam views — described as one of the founding fathers of the Forum for Democracy. The Times Newspaper ran an article on 28 March 2019 describing Leiden Law Faculty as “the cradle of anti-immigration, anti-EU, and anti-Islam views in the Netherlands” (Morgan 2019). This perspective resonates with the words of Rabin Baldewsingh, the Dutch National Coordinator against Discrimination and Racism, who warned that “the outside world is coming in” during a panel at Leiden University on the topic of racism in education.

Soraya, a political science student, told me: “Universities are so institutionalised. Politics plays out there. Knowledge is created within those walls … Everything that happens in society occurs at the university.” For Soraya, the university is a microcosm of modern society — not sealed off from everyday racism and exclusion, but a space in which societal tensions find their way into academic settings.

Ahmed (2007, 604–605) argues that the attractiveness of diversity is frequently found in its emotional and artistic components — what she refers to as the emotive promise of happy diversity. Diversity is portrayed as an asset that makes institutions look and feel good, while masking the existence of structural inequalities, acting as a glossy surface concealing a deeper, “defiled core.” Hilal put it pointedly: “A lot of people at the university know that there are Muslims, but they never actually interact with them.” Soraya added that when speaking to deans, it becomes clear that diversity, for the institution, often ends at the visual. As she and Hilal agreed: the conversation stops there. And when it comes to providing a safe space, as Soraya lamented, “it all becomes too much.” Hilal was blunter still: “You can only exist as an image.”

These narratives frequently place the burden on the marginalised, pushing them to chase inclusion rather than asking why institutions themselves are not more proactive. Mehmet, an engineering student and former board member of a Muslim student association, had advocated for a prayer room in liaison with the D&I Office since the start of the academic year. Despite seemingly positive responses, months passed with no meaningful results. A breakthrough came nearly one year later — not through the D&I Office or official channels, but through the personal initiative of the university library manager. “Alhamdulillah,” Mehmet remarked, “because of her, we now have a quiet room in the university library where people can pray. It wasn’t the D&I office; it was her own decision.” The practical supply of inclusive places relies on goodwill rather than institutional policy.

For many Dutch-Muslim students, the material covered in class — particularly sensitive topics such as colonialism, the current socio-political climate in the Netherlands, and the genocide in Palestine — is taken as an opportunity for critical engagement. Many of these students come from immigrant backgrounds whose families lived under colonial rule. The classroom becomes a formal pathway for students to bring about the change they desire, such as challenging the Eurocentric curriculum. Soraya vividly recalled being assigned Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations in her first year without a critical framing: “I can’t believe we were assigned his work without even doing a critical reading of it.” She had raised this concern directly with her professor.

A second pathway taken by Muslim students is to seek alternative, informal spaces within the university, such as student associations. When the university stops short, students turn to other means. Kenza, a former Public Administration student, reflected on the asymmetry of access to knowledge: “Who are we? I get a lot of power from my history. There are a lot of forgotten stories … Our history is destroyed. We just have oral history.” These student associations provide informal pathways to knowledge and community, organising social and educational events. The events I attended were almost always packed despite their late evening schedule — an indication of the dedication of these students and the importance they assign to the issue of representation.

7. Conclusion

This article has explored the ways in which Muslim students navigate the politics of space in Dutch universities, emphasising their experiences of three interrelated forms of exclusion: spatial, embodied, and institutional. Building upon the premise that space is political and influenced by the legacies of colonialism, the structures of racialisation, and current sociopolitical contexts, the research has examined how Muslim students navigate space in institutions that uphold structures of whiteness. Entering such spaces frequently involves unspoken conditions that define who is afforded inclusion and who is relegated to the margins.

Muslim students in secular Dutch universities are positioned as space invaders — racialised bodies that disturb the unspoken norms of institutional space, frequently defined by secular and Eurocentric ideas. The lack of accessible and suitable prayer facilities is more than just a practical mistake; it reflects deeper institutional logics that do not identify or accommodate religious needs. Muslim students must negotiate infrastructures that were not designed with them in mind, often adapting, resisting, or reconfiguring space to meet their religious needs. Their bodies are sites where racialisation, religious scrutiny, and spatial exclusion intersect, rendering them hyper-visible and invisible in ways that subject them to suspicion, surveillance, and regulation.

The colonial legacy embedded in the architecture, curriculum, and institutional culture of Dutch universities continues to shape how Muslim students experience and navigate university life. While inclusion initiatives may be in place, they often fail to meaningfully engage with the racialised and religious identities of Muslim students. Yet these students are not passive recipients of exclusion. They actively challenge dominant narratives — by critically engaging with course material, questioning Eurocentric assumptions, and creating space for alternative histories and voices.

What is most striking is that, even in the face of discrimination and silence from institutions, these students still show deep care for their universities. They are not asking for special treatment. They are asking to be seen, heard, and supported. To build on this work, future research would do well to focus on reconciling the relationship between diversity, inclusiveness, and the university’s responsibility in promoting these principles — through direct interaction with diversity and inclusion agents alongside racialised students, to identify practical strategies for making universities more responsive and proactive in their efforts to create a true space of belonging for all.

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