Abstract

This study explored the experiences of self-identified visibly Muslim undergraduate students attending a mid-sized university in southern Ontario, Canada. Employing qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 10), this study aimed to: (i) explore what being visibly Muslim meant to participants; (ii) identify acts of racism, microaggression, and/or Islamophobia experienced by visibly Muslim students; and (iii) highlight participants’ recommendations for potential educational and awareness initiatives. Research findings yielded two main themes. First, identifiers of visibility go beyond religious attire. Names, particular actions, and modes of conduct have the potential to render someone visible as Muslim to other Muslims and non-Muslims. Second, experiences of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia varied based on gender, location and exposure of people in those spaces to Muslims and other people of colour. At the intersection of race and religion, participants’ recommendations included institutionalizing, and thus normalizing, the learning of base Islamic practices to increase exposure and acceptance of Muslim students.

Keywords: Student Experience, Higher Education, Islamophobia, Racial Bias, Sense of Belonging

Introduction

For many Muslim undergraduate students, the university campus is not experienced as a neutral or inclusive space. Everyday interactions, such as moving through hallways, participating in class discussions, or even engaging with peers and faculty members, are shaped by heightened visibility and the racialized and religious assumptions that accompany it. In an era marked by persistent Islamophobia, the ways in which Muslim students are seen, recognized, and interpreted within academic spaces have tangible consequences for their sense of belonging, well-being, and educational experience. These directly undermine student success and retention. Understanding how Muslim students navigate visibility in higher education is therefore not only an academic concern, but also a matter of institutional responsibility for faculty, university administrators, and policymakers committed to equity and inclusion.

Research consistently demonstrates that Muslim students experience disproportionate levels of discrimination, harassment, and exclusion in educational settings (McCollum, 2017). While research has focused on the K-12 contexts, these patterns extend into postsecondary institutions, where Muslim students report encountering Islamophobia through peer interactions, classroom dynamics, and institutional practices (Alizai, 2021; Driel, 2005). Such experiences are not merely episodic. They shape students’ emotional well-being, academic engagement, and relationships to the university. Experiences of discrimination have been linked to heightened stress, feelings of alienation, and a diminished sense of safety and belonging (Elkassem et al., 2018). A growing body of higher education research highlights how Islamophobia operates through processes of racialization and visibility. Alizai’s (2021) qualitative study of Muslim university students in Ontario, Canada, for example, illustrates how experiences of antiMuslim sentiment prompted many students to develop a stronger attachment to their religious identity. This suggests that visibility does not simply expose students to harm, but also becomes a site through which identity, resistance, and meaning are negotiated.

The concept of Muslim visibility is critical for understanding these dynamics. Muslims have long been marked as a visible Other in Western societies, even prior to the events of September 11, 2001 (Perry 2015; Tummala-Narra & Claudius 2013). As Brighenti (2007) argues, visibility is not a neutral condition. Shifts in what and who becomes visible alter social relations, power dynamics, and forms of inclusion and exclusion. When visibility is racialized and politicized, it can expose individuals to surveillance, suspicion, and hostility. Studies documenting discrimination against Muslim students—whether in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia—point to common mechanisms through which visibility operates, despite differing national contexts (Alizai, 2021; Allen, 2023; Possamai et al., 2016). These international studies are useful for situating Muslim students’ experiences within broader global patterns of Islamophobia, while allowing for attention to local specificity.

In Canada, institutional and legislative developments further underscore the salience of Muslim visibility. Policies such as Quebec’s secularism law (Bill 21), passed in 2019, bans certain public-sector workers from wearing religious symbols while at work. In October 2025, this provincial ban was extended to everyone who interacts with students in schools and prohibits students from wearing face coverings (Bill 94). Most recently, the Quebec government is seeking to extend these measures to post-secondary institutions, including a ban on prayer rooms as well as the offering of religious-based meals (Olson, 2025). Such measures contribute to a social climate in which Muslim visibility is framed as problematic or incompatible with public life, with implications that extend into educational institutions. Indeed, in July 2024, Statistics Canada noted that police-reported hate crimes against Muslims increased 94% from the previous year (Office of Canada’s Special Representative, 2025).

Despite this growing body of research and data that continues to point towards increasing anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada, there remains a need to prioritize the voices of visibly Muslim undergraduate students in Canadian post-secondary institutions, to examine how they themselves understand and experience visibility. This study contributes to research in this area by exploring the lived experiences of self-identified visibly Muslim undergraduate students (n=10) at a mid-sized university in southern Ontario, Canada. Using qualitative, semi-structured interviews, this research examines what it meant for participants to be visibly Muslim, the forms of racism, microaggressions, and Islamophobia these students encountered, and the ways these experiences shaped their daily lives on campus. By foregrounding students’ perspectives, this study contributes to ongoing conversations about equity in higher education and offers insight into how institutions might better support Muslim students through informed, inclusive, and responsive practices.

Literature Review

Islam has long been represented in Western public discourse through associations with violence, extremism, and cultural incompatibility (Bleich, 2011; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2010; Tiflati, 2017). These representations are rooted in processes of othering, through which Muslims are constructed as a homogenous and inferior group defined in opposition to Western norms and values (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2010; Said, 1978). Such framings are sustained by contemporary media narratives and political discourse that contribute to moral panic and the normalization of Islamophobia (Mogadime et al., 2011). While Islamophobia intensified in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2011, it is not confined to this historical moment. Rather, it persists and evolves in response to shifting geopolitical events, including post 9/11 security regimes, United States travel bans, and more recent conflicts in the Middle East that have renewed public scrutiny of Muslim and Muslim-appearing bodies.

Islamophobia operates both globally and locally, shaping everyday experiences of Muslims in Western societies, including Canada. Survey research conducted by the Environics Institute (2016) found that 35% of Muslims in Canada reported experiencing discrimination, most commonly because of perceived religion or ethnicity. Focused on Islamophobia in employment contexts, survey findings by Islamic Relief Canada (2023) found that among 691 respondents, 38% reported being excluded from hiring due to stereotypical and misrepresentative perceptions of Muslims, while an additional 38% identified visible religious or cultural markers (e.g., hijab, niqab, beard, etc.) as direct barriers to employment. These findings suggest that Islamophobia is not episodic or declining, but rather a persistent feature of social life that continues to shape how Muslims are perceived and treated.

Muslim Student Experiences and the Higher Education Context

Although Islamophobia existed prior to 9/11 (Ahmad & Evergeti, 2010; Cole & Ahmadi, 2010), the heightened surveillance and suspicion directed towards Muslims in the post 9/11 era intensified the visibility of Muslim people, including students within educational institutions (Haddad, 2001; Cole & Ahmadi, 2010). Research focusing specifically on Muslim students in postsecondary campus settings remains limited, particularly in Canada, despite the growing religious and cultural diversity of university populations (Gilliat-Ray 2000). Existing studies suggest that Muslim identity plays a meaningful role in shaping students’ academic and social experiences. Cole and Ahmadi (2010) found that Muslim students were more likely than their non-Muslim peers to engage in diversity-related activities and religious practices. Research suggests that being able to connect religious identity and academic extra-curricular activities contributes to a sense of purpose, self-awareness, and well-being (Bryant, 2007; De Soto et al., 2018).

Research consistently documents the prevalence of anti-Muslim bias across educational contexts. Studies conducted in K-12 settings show that Muslim students are frequently exposed to Islamophobic curricula, stereotypes linking Islam with terrorism, and institutional failures to challenge such narratives (Amjad, 2009; 2018; Haque, 2022). Amjad (2018) found that Muslim elementary school students in Alberta, Canada, reported negative bias towards topics related to terrorism, where the school failed to clearly separate terrorist ideologies as a distinct political movement to the religion of Islam. There also exists research that suggests a lack of action and response from teachers when students experience Islamophobic and xenophobic actions from their peers (Amjad, 2009, 2012; Sleeter & Stillman, 2005). Similar dynamics have been observed in postsecondary contexts internationally. In Australia, Muslim university students report discrimination and exclusion within educational environments (Possamai et al., 2016). Research in the United States has found that Muslim and Muslim-appearing students experience distancing, surveillance, and social isolation (Anderson, 2020; Tummala-Narra & Claudius, 2013). Even students with concealable Muslim identities experienced feelings of anticipated stigma and internalized tensions surrounding whether to disclose their identities to peers (Edwards et al., 2025). While these studies are situated outside Canada, they are useful for illustrating how Muslim visibility operates transnationally across higher-education contexts shaped by comparable racialized and securitized logics.

Muslim Religious Visibility

Central to understanding these experiences is the concept of Muslim visibility. Visibility is often narrowly defined as the “likelihood that someone will be identified in public, through clothes or personal grooming, as a follower of a specific religion” (ColicPeisker et al., 2019, p. 2745). Clothing, such as women’s head, face, or body coverings, as well as men’s grooming and dress practices, can serve to symbolically demarcate difference as well as represent or signify, to some, the opposition to Western values and religious fanaticism (Haque, 2010; Hussein, 2015). This may serve to make visibly Muslim persons the target of “people’s hostile feelings and behaviours” (Colic- Peisker et al., 2019, p. 2746). Literature suggests that while Muslim racialized surveillance is gendered (Selod, 2019), it is visibly Muslim women, that most often bear the brunt of Islamophobia and Western re-articulations of Muslim “oppression” (Abu-Lughod, 2013; Easat-Daas, 2021; Ho, 2007; Rahmath et al., 2016). The confluence of Muslim symbolism and visibility has also had violent consequences where individuals have been harmed or even killed, including in cases of mistaken identity, whereby non-Muslim persons are wrongly profiled and targeted as being Muslim. Such was the case of the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi in Arizona, United States, on September 15, 2001. His beard and turban were misinterpreted as being symbols of Islam by his killer, and not as part of Singh Sodhi’s adherence to the Sikh faith (Sra, 2025). Such cases underscore that Islamophobia operates through perception rather than religious affiliation per se.

Research on religious visibility has found both positive and negative effects for Muslim communities (Perry, 2015). Some Muslim individuals report that increased visibility has fostered community cohesion, collective advocacy, and a strengthened sense of religious identity (Alizai, 2021; Aslam, 2011). These dynamics are particularly evident among youth and students, for whom visibility may simultaneously expose vulnerability and generate collective strength (Alizai, 2021). However, other research suggests that some Muslim persons continue to feel like “strangers” and that they do not belong in the community as a result of their religious identity (Hosseini, 2013; Richmond, 2017). Findings from Quebec, Canada, have found that Black and/or otherwise visibly Muslim individuals face discrimination in hiring practices (Helly, 2004; Tadlaoui, 2002). Muslims have also reported higher levels of psychological distress than non-Muslims, in part due to high rates of unemployment (Joly & Reitz, 2018).

While Muslim identity does not solely hinge on visibility, or visual symbolism such as clothing or grooming practices, such visibility can serve to create and propagate certain perceptions and messaging, as well as exacerbate antagonisms against certain groups of people (Perry, 2015). In addition to facing exclusion, discrimination, or acts of Islamophobia, Hussein (2015) highlights that visible modes of dress and/or grooming also serve to engender narratives of victimhood. At once, visibly Muslim women are not only suspect and outsider, but also victims of a supposed dysfunctional Muslim male misogyny, and responsibilized as transmitters of this Muslim identity and culture (Hoodfar, 2015).

Research has largely focused on Muslims as a collectively racialized and surveilled population (Possami et al., 2016, Waugh, 2015). There is limited exploration of how Muslim individuals interpret the features or attributes that render them visible as Muslims to themselves and to others (Ab Razak, 2019). Scholarship has begun to address this gap by examining how Muslim individuals negotiate identity, visibility, and belonging in everyday life (Chaplin, 2018; Fatima, 2011; Hussein, 2015; Salkinova & D’Arcus, 2019). Building on this work, the present study centers the perspectives of self-identified visibly Muslim undergraduate students to explore how visibility is understood, embodied, and experienced within the university context.

Muslim Identity and Visibility

This research is grounded in a theoretically integrated framework that conceptualizes Muslim identity as embodied, relational, and institutionally mediated, with particular attention to how visibility operates within educational contexts marked by racialization, securitization, and multicultural governance. This framework is guided by Fatima’s (2011) conceptualization of Muslim identity, which centers three interrelated dimensions: (a) belonging to a Muslim community, (b) occupying a Muslim body, and (c) engaging in or being habituated into Islamic practices. This framework is particularly useful for understanding visibility as it highlights how Muslim identity is lived both internally and externally—through embodied presence, social affiliation, and everyday practice. It moves beyond reductive understandings of Muslim identity as either purely belief-based or externally imposed, instead, it allows us to situate identity as a lived and negotiated social process.

Fatima’s (2011) articulation of Muslim identity is particularly salient for studies on visibility because it foregrounds the body as a site of meaning-making, recognition, and regulation. Muslim identity is not simply expressed through symbolic markers, but is performed, interpreted, and disciplined through everyday interactions. Visibility emerges as a relational phenomenon that is produced at the intersection of self-identification and social ascription, instead of a static set of visual cues. This study builds on Fatima’s (2011) insights by exploring how Muslim students themselves understand which aspects of their bodies, names, practices, and attitudes render them ‘visible’ and how this visibility is differentially read within institutional spaces.

To understand how Muslim identity becomes legible within higher education, we draw upon scholarship that focuses on the racialization of religion, that is, the processes by which specific faiths become tied to racial stereotypes. Scholars have demonstrated that Islam, particularly in Western contexts, functions as a racialized category through which bodies are marked as suspect, foreign, threatening, or simply ‘other’, regardless of individual belief or practice (Garner & Selod, 2015; Haque, 2022; Mogadime et al., 2011; Sufi & Yasmin, 2022). This racialization operates through phenotype, naming practices, accents, dress, and comportment, producing what Selod (2019) calls “Muslim gaze”, whereby Muslim bodies are continuously interpreted through securitization and Orientalist logics. Such practices, however, are not neutral, as Muslim visibility is also coded through a gender lens, whereby visibility—in particular female visibility—is understood through Western logics of oppression and subjugation (Abu-Lughod, 2002, 2013; Cole & Ahmadi, 2003; Hoodfar, 2015). Within educational institutions, this process renders Muslim students simultaneously hypervisible as objects of scrutiny, and invisible as complex subjects.

In addition, we draw upon critical theories of Islamophobia which conceptualize anti- Muslim bias not merely as interpersonal prejudice, but as a structural and discursive phenomenon embedded within institutions, policies, and pedagogical practices (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2010; Perry, 2015). From this perspective, Islamophobia operates through both subtle and overt mechanisms that shape Muslim students’ experiences of belonging and exclusion. These can include misrepresentation of Islam in curriculum, surveillance of Muslim spaces, and normalization of microaggressions (Alizai, 2021). These mechanisms align with critiques of dominant educational epistemologies that marginalize subjugated knowledges and reproduce hierarchies under the guise of neutrality (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2010).

Relying upon these theoretical frameworks for analytic guidance, this research asked: What does being visibly Muslim mean? How do self-identified visibly Muslim undergraduate university students understand and experience their visibility? Is visibility experienced vicariously (e.g., a student is visibly Muslim insofar as that designation is bestowed on them by others), or is it more visceral, an internal feeling or attitude bestowed outwards, even in the absence of the acknowledgement of other Muslim or non-Muslim peers? In asking these questions, accounts of visibility that stemmed from outside of attire and grooming practices arose, as did microaggressions and other sorts of ‘invisible’ exclusions experienced by visibly Muslim undergraduate students, which promoted participants to provide recommendations to increase diversity education and awareness at the post-secondary level.

Methods

Understanding Muslim students’ campus experiences is particularly salient given Canada’s demographic context. Muslims constitute a relatively young population, with a median age of 30 compared to 41 for the general population (Oficce of Canada’s Special Representative, 2025). Ethnically, the Muslim population is primarily South Asian (37.6%) and Arab (32.2%) (Oficce of Canada’s Special Representative, 2025). The province of Ontario is home to the largest Muslim population in Canada (6.7%), concentrated predominately in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) of southern Ontario (Statistics Canada, 2024).

This study was conducted at a mid-sized comprehensive university located in the GTA. While the institution does not publish race or religion-based student demographics, it offers undergraduate and graduate programs across multiple faculties. It also supports a wide range of student organizations, clubs, and societies, that span from those related to sports, academic discipline, political affiliation, race and/or ethnicity, hobbies and extracurricular, as well as religion. This includes a large and active Muslim Student Association (MSA). The university is characterized by a highly ethnically and racially diverse student population, as well as its commuter population—with many students, faculty, and staff travelling to the city to learn and work, from surrounding municipalities.

The research was a student-led project conducted by a Muslim woman student under the supervision of a non-Muslim woman faculty member within the social sciences. The student researcher did not self-identify as visibly Muslim at the time this research was conducted but had family and friends who were visibly Muslim. Prior to this project, the student researcher had witnessed outright verbal and physical Islamophobic attacks against visibly Muslim female peers wearing the niqab or abaya. She also experienced vicarious acts of Islamophobic microaggressions, exclusion, and anti-Islamic sentiments in the classroom. This project emerged from these observations of differential treatment based on religious visibility and is grounded in solidarity-based inquiry.

This qualitative research sought to document and contextualize Muslim students’ lived experiences on campus. In particularly, the research aimed to: (1) identify what being ‘visibly’ Muslim meant to participants; (2) identify experiences, if any, of racism, microaggressions, or Islamophobia, whether intentional or unintentional; and (3) explore students’ suggestions and recommendations for educational practice and reform. This research was approved by the institutional Research Ethics Board (File #16125). Undergraduate students were recruited from across all of the programs offered at the university. Recruitment posters were posted in online social media spaces, such as a Facebook group created for and by students at the university. The recruitment poster was also virtually circulated by the university’s MSA. Recruitment criteria consisted of the following: (i) any student 18 years of age or older, (ii) current undergraduate student enrolled at the university in any program, and (iii) self-identify as ‘visibly’ Muslim. The term ‘visibly’ Muslim remained unidentified in the recruitment posters and communication, as a core research question sought to understand what ‘visibility’ meant to each participant. Student participants were not provided with any honorarium for their participation in this research. While there was initially much interest in the research, a total of ten (n = 10) students participated in this research. We attribute this to the reality that there was no honorarium offered as well as the timing of the interviews—conducted near the end of the semester, and thus when final assignments were due. However, it is important to note that qualitative research is not concerned with how many participants are involved in any given study, but rather with what their deep, rich narrative experiences reveal (Denny & Weckesser, 2022). In this research, rich data was collected by all research participants, that spanned experienced both on and off of the university campus.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually, via a secured audio/video conferencing platform associated with the university. Interview audio was recorded via the platform, which then saved to a secured virtual dropbox associated with the student researcher’s university email address. All participants signed a Letter of Informed Consent. Identifying markers were removed from transcripts to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. The supervising faculty member only had access to anonymized transcripts, in order to minimize any real or perceived influence or coercion inherent in professor/researcher and student/participant research (Ferguson et al., 2004). Interviews ranged from 40—75 minutes. Thematic analysis, a widely utilized qualitative data analysis method, was used to code, define, and analyze patterns and recurring themes in interview data (Naeem et al, 2023). In this paper, pseudonyms are used to remind us of the personhood behind the quotes, and in addition to including generalized language of the participant’s program of study, assists in individualizing each participant’s narrative. Care was taken to ensure that participants’ identity remained confidential.

Participant Demographics

In total, 10 undergraduate students participated in this research. As this was not a comparative study, there were no minimum participants to be achieved in any demographic category (Denny & Weckesser, 2022). Of the 10 participants, four (n = 4) were men and six (n = 6) were women. The age ranged from 18—24 years old. With respect to citizenship, participants either indicated being born in Canada and living in Canada since birth (n = 5) or living in Canada for at least four years after migrating from another country (n = 5). These countries included Bangladesh (n = 2), India (n = 1), and Pakistan (n = 2). Other participants identified as second-generation Canadians whose parents immigrated to Canada from India and Kenya (n = 1), India and Pakistan (n = 1), India (n = 1), or Pakistan (n = 2). As such, most of the participants were South Asian, in line with general population demographics. None indicated that they were an international student. Participants represented a broad array of the programs offered at the university and ranged from 1st to 5th year in their undergraduate studies. Programs/faculties of study represented by student participants included engineering (n = 3), social sciences (n = 3), health sciences and nursing (n = 3), and business (n = 1).

Findings

Our analysis yielded three primary thematic categories of findings: (1) self-identification as a visibly Muslim individual; (2) lived experiences as a visibly Muslim individual; and (3) lived experiences as a self-identified visibly Muslim student.

Self-Identification as Visibly Muslim

Participants’ reflections on what made someone visibly Muslim were marked by careful introspection and a strong awareness of how visibility operates socially rather than simply individually. Responses coalesced around three interconnected dimensions: names, modes of dress, and actions or behaviours. Importantly, participants did not describe visibility as neutral recognition, but as a condition that often produced heightened scrutiny, anticipation of bias, and differential treatment—hallmarks of racialized and religious microaggressions.

Seven of the ten participants identified names as a primary marker of Muslim visibility. For these participants, names functioned as an immediate signal that could trigger suspicion or institutional surveillance. One participant with a common Muslim name described being routinely prepared for interrogation when crossing the Canada United Sates border, noting a pattern of profiling that had become normalized in his life.

Nadir (male, 20, engineering) noted:

When we’re taking a trip to the USA, sometimes road trips to the USA, at border patrol, as soon as they read my name, [it is] ‘let’s get aside, let’s do an interrogation’. That happens quite often.

This account illustrates how Muslim visibility operates through bureaucratic and securitized practices rather than overt hostility alone. As Haque (2022) has argued, Muslim bodies, and in this case, Muslim names specifically, are frequently positioned as sites of risk within national security regions, producing routine yet unequal forms of scrutiny. The participant’s anticipation of interrogation reflects an internationalization of this surveillance, where bias becomes expected rather than exceptional. Names were also described as a mechanism through which both Muslims and non- Muslims identify one another. One participant explained:

The first thing that, like, when I meet… when I meet someone is by their name like that’s how I would be like so ‘this person is Muslim” (Ayesha, female, 22, business).

Here, visibility is not only imposed externally but also circulates within Muslim communities themselves, demonstrating how racialized and religious cues become normalized ways of reading identity. At the same time, participants were keenly aware of the imprecision and harm of such assumptions. As Nazia (female, 22, social science) stated:

A lot of the times they have a Muslim [sounding] name, but they’re not Muslims.

This tensions underscores Abu-Lughod’s (2002) critique of cultural reductionism, wherein complex identities are flattened into singular markers. The targeting of Muslim-sounding names has been so pervasive that institutional responses have emerged, such as increased name-change requests among Muslims in Quebec following 9/11 (Helly 2004). These patterns reflect individual bias as well as structural pressures to manage or conceal visibility to mitigate discrimination.

In addition to names, clothing and attire were widely cited as markers of Muslim visibility, which is consistent with existing literature. Seven participants referenced items such as the hijab, niqab, abaya, beard, topi, or thobe. However, participants also emphasized that visibility was not reducible to religious dress alone. Nazia (female, 22, social science) articulated this intersectional understanding clearly:

Being visibly Muslim to them could mean brown skin, beard, maybe wearing a Topi, any Muslim garb like… thobe and what not. And I guess for girls, it depends too, um obviously the most obvious thing that Muslim women wear is hijab, but I still think you can be visibly Muslim without wearing it. Like even just someone’s name can be part of them being visibly Muslim, um, and yeah, just like their general appearance as well.

This account reflects what Hoodfar (2015) describes as the “politicization of Muslim veiling” (p. 31) where race, gender, and religious symbolism intersect to shape how individuals (particularly women) are read and governed. The emphasis on ‘brown skin’ alongside dress also highlights that visibility is deeply racialized, reinforcing the idea that Muslimness is often perceived through (perceived) calendare as much as faith. Beyond names and attire, actions and behaviours emerged as significant mechanisms through which participants became visible as Muslim. Five participants described everyday practices, such as requesting prayer space, asking for halal food, or seeing time off for Eid, as moments that marked them as different. As Talal explained:

Something as simple as asking for Halal options. Something as simple as asking for a 15-minute break for your prayer time. Simple as that is to me, is asserting your Muslim identity or showing… that you are visibly a Muslim (male, 22, social science).

These moments exemplify subtle institutional microaggressions, where accommodation requests implicitly position Muslim students as deviations from a presumed norm.

Notably, inaction—rather than overt behaviour—also served to render Muslim identity visible. Participants described how not participating in dominant cultural or religious practices, such as celebrating Christmas or consuming alcohol (of which much post-secondary social life revolves), made them stand out. As Fatima noted:

I guess you really stick out when…like…you don’t celebrate the holidays around this [Christmas] time (female, 22, engineering).

Ayesha elaborated:

So when someone says “Merry Christmas” like, it’s kind of like a little bit awkward. So if I don’t pay it back, just say “Happy Holidays”… or when [someone asks]“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I’m just spending it, you know, I’m just not doing anything. Other things like, you know, um, parties. New Year’s Eve parties are not a thing for us to do. Or, like, um… I guess, you know, just going to like the grocery store and you see all like these Easter decorations and, you know, it’s just like the only time you get these Easter candies or Easter chocolate (female, 22, business).

These moments reveal how Christian norms are embedded as default cultural practices within broader society, rendering Muslim students visible through absence rather than presence. Although unintended, such interactions function as microaggressions by continually positioning Muslim students as outsiders to the social rhythm of campus and community life. On the other hand, presence through the observance of Muslim holidays further amplified visibility. Ayesha (female, 22, business) described how fasting during Ramadan compelled her to disclose her religious identity in a workplace setting:

During the summer I was fasting, and then there was a breakfast party, and then he [manager] invited me to come. And then I’m like “oh no, I can’t. I can’t eat.” So I had to explain to him [manager].

This example illustrates how visibility is often involuntary, emerging through situations that required explanation to avoid misinterpretation. As Abu-Lughod (2013) has argued, such moments can reinforce expectations that Muslim individuals must account for their difference in ways that others are not required to do.

While no single marker (name, dress, or behaviour) was sufficient on its own, participants emphasized that the accumulation of these cues made them feel conspicuously visible and subject to interpretation. This visibility frequently required them to justify participation or non-participation in everyday activities, reinforcing a sense of conditional belonging. At the same time, participants articulated deeply personal and affirmative understandings of their Muslim identity. Many described their purpose in life through Islam and emphasized values such as kindness, patience, and fairness. Hasan (male 21, social science) reflected:

Being visibly Muslim, to me, would be I, as I interact with people, walk on the street, I show my teachings of faith. Um, show the kindness and all the teachings, the values of my faith and I express them in every action and every interaction I have with other people. To treat them with kindness and one of the most important teachings [of Islam] is patience.

This articulation complicates dominant narratives that frame Muslim visibility solely as a site of risk or conflict. Instead, it highlights how participants actively reclaim visibility as an ethical and relational practice, even as they navigate environments shaped by bias and microaggression.

Lived Experiences as a Visibly Muslim Individual

Eight participants described experiencing direct and indirect forms of Islamophobia, discrimination, and anti-Muslim microaggressions that they understood as being precipitated by their perceived visibility. These accounts illustrate how visibility functions not merely as recognition, but as a mechanism through which Muslim bodies become read as suspect, threatening, or inferior within public space. Racialized and religious identities are not neutrally perceived. Rather, they are interpreted through dominant ideological frameworks that naturalize surveillance, exclusion, and discipline of marginalized groups (Easat-Daas, 2021; Haque, 2022).

One hijabi participant recounted an early experience of overt verbal harassment while using public transit:

A few years ago, there is actually a video of this incident on [social media platform], um, so yeah. I was on the GO Train and I was essentially moving from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor of the train, and while turning around, I heard a group of kids say “Oh look, ISIS is leaving”. Um, yeah, that was my first experience with Islamophobia (Nazia, female, 22, social science).

This incident exemplifies how visibly Muslim women are frequently collapsed into global discourses of terrorism and political violence. Muslim women’s bodies are often mobilized symbolically within Western imaginaries as sites onto which fears of Islam are projected (Abu-Luhgod 2002; Cole & Ahmadi, 2003). The invocation of ‘ISIS’ reflects a form of discursive violence in which an individual’s presence is transformed into a geopolitical threat, illustrating how microaggressions are embedded in broader narratives of national security and moral panic.

A participant who wears a niqab similarly described being subjected to sustained verbal harassment while travelling through a major Canadian airport:

The…experience is a specific one I had while on a flight. Um… this woman, she was sitting a row in front of me and she kept turning back and seemed to be speaking very disrespectfully towards our Prophet [important religious figure] while looking me in the eye. I tried avoiding it, but once my mother noticed that, she asked me to call the flight attendant, and I did. That is when that woman in front of me stopped doing this and I told the flight attendant what happened, and she helped me switch seats. She later informed me that the woman lied to her saying that we were talking with each other and somehow apparently, I started a conflict (Saba, female, 18, nursing).

This account highlights how visibly Muslim women are not only targeted, but also frequently either disbelieved or reframed as instigators when they seek institutional intervention. In conceptualizing the politics of Muslim veiling, Hoodfar (2015) argues that Muslim women’s agency is routinely erased within Western contexts, particularly when their religious attire marks them as deviant from dominant gender norms. Veiling is a historically contingent and context-specific practice through which Muslim women negotiate identity, morality, and power, but dominant Western framings flatten its meaning while reinscribing Islamophobic and patriarchal logics of female oppression and collusion (Hoodfar, 2015). Simultaneously, the aggressor’s false counter-narrative, and the need for institutional mediation, reflect how power operates unevenly in such encounters, often leaving visibly Muslim women vulnerable to both interpersonal harassment and procedural injustice. Saba (female, 18, nursing) continued to describe a separate incident of public harassment involving a middle-aged woman spitting in her direction:

One time, my mother and I were walking from home to the grocery store… she spat at the ground but towards us.

Participants also recounted gendered and racialized slurs in digital environments. For instance, Ayesha (female, 22, business) spoke about the shock, discomfort, and shame she felt in her early teenage years to learn what “sand n-word” meant, after this slur was used against her online. Online spaces, often perceived as detached from ‘real-world’ harm, function as sites where Islamophobic discourse circulates freely. Continually being exposed to such negative, dehumanizing, and racist discourse contributes to internalized stigma, and cumulative effects on mental health, and self-perception (Haque 2022). Such embodied acts of exclusion resonate with Haque’s (2022) argument that Islamophobia operates through both symbolic and material violence, rendering Muslim bodies as abject and undeserving of dignity in public space. That these incidents were perpetrated by strangers underscores how visibility alone, particularly though (women’s) attire, was sufficient to trigger hostility and unchecked bias (Crossouard et al. 2020; Rahmath et al. 2017).

While Muslim women’s visibility is often foregrounded in discussions of Islamophobia, male participants also reported experiences of racialized and religious violence. Talal (male, 24, social science) described how his family’s owned store was vandalized is Islamophobic graffiti, with bricks being thrown at the shop, and being told to “go back to Pakistan” and referred to as “Paki” or “dirty curry” by customers. Slurs are not isolated insults but instead are mechanisms of social regulation that reaffirm whiteness and belonging as normative. Vandalism of a business reflects how Islamophobia extends beyond bodies to collective economic and communal spaces.

For several participants, discrimination manifested in more subtle and difficult-to-name ways. Fatima (female, 22, engineering) articulated the ambiguity of everyday microaggressions:

It’s definitely harder to call somebody out on being racist when you don’t have a concrete [example]… It’s more the things that they say to you or the ways that they treat you.

This uncertainty reflects what Spaducci et al. (2024) describes as the “insidious nature of microaggressions,” as forms of bias that are normalized, deniable, and emotionally taxing precisely because they resist clear articulation. But it is this lack of clarity that enables systems of inequality to reproduce themselves through everyday interactions. Mohammed (male, 22, nursing) described being asked to shave his beard for a co-op placement. After he refused due to religious adherence, he was later told that his school schedule did not work with the organization, and he was no longer given work hours. Although a causal link was never formally acknowledged, Mohammad perceived this as a consequence of asserting his religious identity. This example illustrates how ostensibly neutral workplace expectations can operate as mechanisms of exclusion when they fail to accommodate religious difference.

Beyond personal experiences, all participants recounted violence and harassment directed at friends and family members, reinforcing a collective sense of vulnerability. These included attempts to forcibly remove a hijab, racial slurs in school settings, deliberate contamination of halal food, and verbal assaults during travel. Saba (female, 18, nursing) recounted:

I had a friend—she mentioned that like she had people who attacked her with racial slurs and tried to pull her hijab off.

Nadir (male, 20, engineering) spoke about his cousins being harassed at school:

Where they go to school, they’re the only Muslims in the whole school so you know like, these kids always make racist jokes, and scream randomly like ‘Allahu Akbar’.

Talal (male, 24, social science) spoke about the time when a friend’s pizza was intentionally topped with bacon, a food item not permitted for consumption in Islam. And Nadir (male, 20, engineering) detailed how his mother was verbally assault as a result of her wearing a hijab during a family trip to Quebec.

As a result of these pervasive experiences, many participants described modifying or concealing visible markers of Muslim identity due to fear. Two male participants spoke about how their parents urged them to re-consider their appearance. Hasan (male, 21, social science) stated:

They [parents] would always tell me to shave my beard off …that is a result of the Islamophobic atmosphere.

Similarly, Talal (male, 24, social science) explained:

They [parents] would prefer that I not be [visibly Muslim] in front of non-Muslim friends or non-Muslim colleagues because they’re afraid of um, either backlash, or Islamophobia, or racism. Without our own communities they know I can be comfortable asserting my Muslim identity. They’re just afraid that I, in non-Muslim communities, I’ll be ostracized or I’ll face discrimination.

In addition, two of the five female participants indicated that they or friends were discouraged by family members from wearing a hijab for fear of their safety. These accounts echo arguments that visibility becomes a site of negotiation and constraint, where expressions of faith are carefully managed in response to anticipated hostility (Ho, 2017; Selod, 2019). Such experiences further demonstrate how Islamophobia functions relationally, shaping not only individual experiences, but broader community perceptions of safety and belonging. Visibility is not a neutral condition, but a socially mediated process through which power, bias, and surveillance are enacted.

While this section focused on experiences occurring beyond the boundaries of the university, the following section turns to how these dynamics manifest within the postsecondary campus space.

Lived Experiences as a Self-Identified Visibly Muslim Student

Although post-secondary institutions are often discursively positioned as inclusive and progressive spaces, participants’ accounts suggest that university campuses may frequently reproduce the same racialized hierarchies, forms of surveillance, and exclusions present in broader society (Spaducci et al., 2024). For these visibly Muslim students, the campus functioned as a microcosm in which dominant assumptions about Islam, security, and belonging were reinscribed through everyday interactions with faculty, staff, and peers.

All participants described having reflected extensively on their experiences of campus life, both inside and outside of the classroom, as visibly Muslim students. Some participants described encounters with peers that reflected entrenched Islamophobic stereotypes. For instance, Hasan (male, 21, social science) recalled being asked by a non-Muslim peer:

Oh, you’re Muslim, don’t you guys like blowing each other up?

Such remarks exemplify microaggressions that rely on the conflation of Islam with terrorism, reducing Muslim identity to a singular narrative of violence. While framed casually, these interactions contribute to what Sue et al. (2007) identify as cumulative psychological harm, as visibly Muslim students are repeatedly compelled to navigate stigma, disbelief, or shock in response to their very presence. In addition, several participants recounted moments in which it was the course professors who explicitly singled them out during lectures, positioning their bodies, names, or presumed identities as ideological tools. In one instance, Mohammed (male, 22, nursing) described how an instructor incorrectly identified him as Arab during a lecture and used this misidentification to offer unsolicited advice about how to manage discrimination in his future profession. The instructor stated to the class:

Because you’re an Arab Muslim man, you’re gonna have some patients say that to you because you’re gonna do something to them. There’s gonna be instances where patients don’t like you, and guess what? You move on with it.

This interaction reflects the normalization of Muslim suspicion, where stereotype, prejudice, and Islamophobia is framed as an inevitable social reality that racialized individuals are expected to endure rather than contest (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2010). Rather than challenging discriminatory assumptions, the instructor implicitly legitimized them, shifting the burden of accommodation onto the visibly Muslim student. Such moments also resonate with Abu-Lughod’s (2013) critique of liberal colonial feminist discourses that frame Muslim (women’s) suffering as unavoidable while absolving institutions of responsibility for structural change.

Similarly, Nazia (female, 22, social science) recounted a classroom experience in which an instructor offered an inaccurate and reductive explanation of Islam as part of course content. She explained:

Basically, he [instructor] was explaining the religion [Islam], and like the way he described it was kind of like bizarre to me. He’s like ‘Islam says that people are poor because that’s like god’s way of like testing them’. Um, I don’t know, he said something like that.

Nazia’s response underscores how much misrepresentations are not merely factual errors but acts of epistemic violence that position Islam as morally regressive and intellectually simplistic. Such experiences are not isolated, as literature continues to suggest that current teaching practices and lessons are not diversity-informed, nor are they attentive to multicultural issues, cultural relevance, and/or racialized injustice (Amjad 2009, 2012; Sleeter & Stillman 2005). These examples also highlight the tension between Muslim students’ lived knowledge and the authority afforded to instructors as producers of legitimate knowledge.

Outside of the classroom, participants described how institutional practices on campus reinforced feelings of surveillance and suspicion. Nazia (female, 22, social science) recounted opposition to install cameras in the student prayer space, explaining:

We recently had to bargain with our department because they were going to install a camera in the prayer space. They [administration] don’t see this as problematic, but for Muslims who grow up with, you know, the fear of CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and whatnot, for us it’s like problematic, right. That our private space would be monitored in a way.

This account illustrates how ostensibly neutral security measures can be experienced as deeply threatening by racialized and religious minorities, particularly within a broader context of state surveillance targeting Muslim communities (Haque 2010; Perry 2015). Muslim bodies and spaces are frequently politicized in Western contexts, rendering even sites of worship subject to regulation and suspicion (Hoodfar 2003). The proposed surveillance of a prayer space thus extends beyond safety concerns, reinforcing Muslim students’ sense of conditional belonging on campus.

Despite these experiences, participants also acknowledged positive aspects of campus life that contrasted with their encounters in broader society. Several noted institutional efforts to accommodate Muslim students, including:

Halal food options available at campus events, availability of prayer space on campus (Talal, male, 24, social science).

The presence of a Muslim Student Association (MSA) was cited by four participants as a critical source of support, community, and affirmation. Three participants expressed appreciation for individual instructors who accommodated religious observances without bureaucratic resistance. For instance, Nazia (female, 22, social science) stated:

I have appreciation for instructors who accommodate prayer times and deadline extensions on the basis of religious circumstances without making students go through complicated bureaucratic processes.

However, participants were clear that such accommodations were discretionary rather than institutionalized. While it was acknowledged that some professions individually would grant such allowances, there are no official accommodations for Muslim students. Nazia (female, 22, social science) understood this as being related to the length of time of some religious observances:

Being granted one whole month of deferrals for final exams is very unlikely for students who fast and observe the month of Ramadan.

This observation points to the structural privileging of Christian and secularized Christian calendars within higher education, a pattern that scholars have noted continues to marginalize religious minorities even within ostensibly secular institutions (Gilliat-Ray 2000; Peek 2003; Spaducci et al., 2024). While holidays such as Christmas and Easter are often framed as cultural rather than religious, their institutional centrality means that Muslim students routinely navigate academic demands while fasting, praying, and observing religious obligations.

Taken together, these findings illustrate that being a visibly Muslim university student involves navigating a complex terrain of conditional inclusion. While certain institutional practices signal recognition and accommodation, everyday interactions within classrooms and campus spaces often reproduce Islamophobic assumptions, surveillance logics, and epistemic marginalization. Visibility, in this context, is not merely about being seen, but about being read through dominant narratives that shape whose presence is normalized and whose must continually be explained, justified, or managed.

Student Recommendations for Post-Secondary Institutions

Based on their experiences as visibly Muslim students, both on- and off-campus, study participants offered both practical as well as more generally encompassing recommendations that they would like to see acknowledged and even implemented by the university administration, staff, and faculty. Rather than having a multifaith prayer space, some participants indicated that Muslim students need a separate and permanent space for prayer on campus or prayer breaks if it coincides with regularly scheduled classes. Other participants identified the need for program/discipline specific alternative options to be made available to visibly Muslim students. This is particularly relevant for programs that have a work-integrated or internship component. Mohammed (male, 22, nursing) explained that:

You have to go and get tested and they fit you for it (N95 mask), so in order to get fitted, they have to be, there has to be a seal around your face like this [gestures to show] and that’s just a requirement generally for the nursing program before COVID and what not. And with that, when it happened, I told them like ‘okay, I can get this done’ but the thing is I’m not gonna shave my beard for it because I keep my beard for religious reasons. They were like ‘no worries, we’ll get you to sign the exemption sheet waiver and what not and you’re good’. Yeah, but I was disappointed that there wasn’t an alternative. Because there are actual alternatives out there for that reason.

It was suggested by this participant that the university could invest in a Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) as an alternative. A similar sentiment was echoed by Saba (female, 18, nursing) who recommended:

[the university] should have more options for modest attire than the existing nursing scrubs.

Six participants expressed that the university should have a robust protocol for acknowledging accommodation requests/suggestions made by Muslim students and not treat these as threatening to university procedure. Talal (male, 24, social science) noted:

They just have to know that people who are Muslim, that they’re not threats.

Reaching out to students who bring forth concerns of anti-Muslim microaggressions and/or Islamophobia and offering them meaningful and culturally relevant resources was also cited by several participants to create an atmosphere of support.

The validation of different Muslim students’ experiences plays an important role in advancing Muslim student voices. Amplifying the voices and needs of Muslim students include supporting the university’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) and their activities as noted by two participants. Additionally, three participants recommended institutionalizing getting involved and getting more exposure to other Muslim students, such as through the MSA’s events. Some participants believed that exposure to more Muslim individuals and their practices might have a domino effect where more students learn how to accept students of Islamic faith. Two participants suggested that this could be achieved through adding knowledge about different Islamic practices in the curriculum for every program. This is consistent with that from Edwards et al. (2025), who found that the undergraduate student participants in their study wished that there existed more education about Islam. This would also include educating university administration, staff, and faculty about the different needs of Muslim students, cultural and religious sensitivity, and specialized training on addressing students who have been subjected to issues on campus. A program/training akin to the sexual violence bystander intervention program was also suggested. Adila (female, 22, health science) suggested that this could be carried out by training peers to:

Walk to the victim and standing by them physically, try to intervene safely, calling for help, smiling in their direction, or making eye contact to make them feel that they are not alone or in the wrong.

There was consensus among participants that advocating for more inclusive as well as culturally competent university policies and practices would do much for normalizing Islam to the broader campus community.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study set out to find the ways in which Muslim undergraduate students at a mid-sized ‘commuter’ university in southern Ontario, Canada described what being ‘visibly’ Muslim meant to them. We sought to understand the ways in which their self-identified and perceived visibility shaped their lived experiences, as well as interactions with others, as students and as individuals, both on- and off-campus. Specifically, this research asked: What does it mean to be visibly Muslim? How do undergraduate students understand and experience their visibility on campus? Is visibility imposed externally through perception and categorization, or experienced internally as an embodied and affective dimension of identity? By addressing these questions, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Muslim visibility in higher education and offers insight into both the overt and sometimes subtle ways that exclusion, microaggressions, and belonging are negotiated in university spaces.

Throughout their interviews, participants expressed many ways in which they perceived their Muslim identity as visible to others. This study echoes existing literature (Cole et al., 2020), that for the student participants, visibility extended beyond attire or grooming habits. Rather, it emerges at the intersection of race, skin colour, facial features, accents, comportment, and religious practices. Muslim-sounding names, certain actions such as not participating in work events involving food, as well as expressing particular sentiments and accommodation requests, also marked one’s visibility as Muslim student. As noted by the participants, there are consequences of being visibly Muslim, as many narrated experiences of exclusion, discrimination, microaggressions, and violent acts. These findings reinforce scholarship demonstrating that Islamophobia operates through racialization, whereby Muslimness is read through embodied and ethnicized cues (whether real or perceived), rather than belief alone.

Participants emphasized that the consequences of being visibly Muslim were not evenly distributed. This was clearly seen through the narratives provided by women students, who detailed accounts of hostility, aggression, and suspicion as a result of the hypervisibility of the veil. It is also important to note that the students who participated in this research were mostly South Asian Muslims. This is analytically significant for understanding how Muslim visibility was experienced and interpreted.

As Garner & Selod (2015) explain, Muslimness is not racialized uniformly, but is mediated through pre-existing hierarchies, colonial histories, and phenotypical assumptions that are attached to particular ethnic groups. Islamophobia thus operates less as religious intolerance than as a racial project that collapses diverse Muslim populations into a singular, suspect category, while simultaneously stratifying Muslims along ethnic and racial lines (Rana, 2011). South Asian Muslims, in particular, are racialized through a nexus of colonial Orientalism, post 9/11 securitization, and labour-based racial hierarchies (Rana 2011). Drawing on long-standing imperial constructions, South Asian Muslim bodies, particularly those perceived as Pakistani, Indian, or Bangladeshi, are often racialized as terrorist, foreign, and ‘Other’ (Rana, 2011). As seen through our findings, this racialization is mediated not only through visual attire, but through ethnicized markers such as accents, names, everyday practices, and what Patel (2017) describes as “brown bodies”. Importantly, South Asian Muslims are often conflated with Sikh or Hindu identities, revealing that Islamophobia operates as much through religious specificity as it does through racial misrecognition or perception (Cainkar, 2005; Patel, 2017). This distinction is analytically important because it demonstrates that Islamophobia is not monolithic. Rather, it is stratified along ethnic and racial lines that shape who is targeted, how they are targeted, and with what consequences. For the participants in this study, these dynamics helps explain patterned differences across interview accounts. Our findings do not simply show that visibly Muslim students experience Islamophobia, but that how Islamophobia is lived, anticipated, and navigated varies according to ethnicized and gendered readings of Muslimness. Visibility, then, is not solely self-defined or internally experienced; it is imposed through external racial logics that carries real material consequences for students’ sense of belonging, safety, and participation on campus.

The university campus is a microcosm of these broader social dynamics. While this study focused on a single institution, participants’ narratives demonstrate that visibly Muslim students must navigate not only their identities as students, but also their positioning as racialized and religious subjects within institutional norms that privilege secular, Christian-centric, and culturally dominant practices.

Implications for Practice

Participants’ investment in improving the campus climate was evident in their willingness to offer concrete suggestions and recommendations to the university, as discussed earlier. Beyond these participant-specific proposals, the findings of this study point to several broader implications for post-secondary institutions.

First, faculty and staff training must move beyond generic commitments to diversity and engage directly with the lived realities of Muslim students. Such training should explicitly address Muslim racialization, including the ways that Islamophobia is experienced differently depending on religious visibility and ethnicized perception. Casebased training modules grounded in classroom and campus scenarios would enable educators to better recognize how routine pedagogical and institutional practices may inadvertently reproduce exclusion. Such scenarios can include responses to accommodation requests, participation in social or group events involving good, and shifts in engagement following the disclosure of religious identity.

Second, religious accommodation should be institutionalized as a structural, rather than an individual, practice. As Ipgrave (2020) notes, structural barriers to belonging may contribute to broader educational and economic disadvantage among Muslim populations. Consistent with this, our findings indicate that repeatedly requesting accommodations intensified students’ visibility and vulnerability. Post-secondary institutions should therefore move away from reactive, case-by-case accommodation models toward structural approaches that minimize the need for self-disclosure. Practical measures including publishing clear accommodation policies for religious observance, embedding flexibility for prayer times and fasting within assessment scheduling, and ensuring that food-inclusive events routinely offer halal, vegetarian, or fasting-sensitive options without requiring special requests. Such institutionalization directly addresses participants’ experiences of being ‘outed’ through accommodation requests and aligns with equity-oriented frameworks that treat religious diversity as an ordinary and anticipated dimension of campus life, rather than an exception.

Third, post-secondary institutions should continue to strengthen and resource Muslim student organizations and spaces. Participants’ narratives underscored the importance of MSA’s and prayer spaces as sites of safety, solidarity, and identity affirmation (Possamai et al., 2016). Beyond material support, however, universities should also consider positioning MSA’s as active partners in institutional decision-making. For instance, MSA’s could be meaningfully involved in the review of equity policies, the development of campus safety initiatives, and the co-creation of training materials on religious and racial inclusion. Such engagement would recognize Muslim students as knowledge producers with expertise grounded in lived experience, rather than as passive recipients of institutional support.

Directions for Future Research

While this study yielded rich qualitative narratives, it has several limitations. The research was conducted at a single mid-sized commuter university in the GTA. This limits the transferability of the findings to other institutional contexts, particularly smaller, rural, or less diverse campuses. Additionally, the relatively small number of participants constrains the breadth of perspectives captured, particularly across different ethnic, gender, and sectarian identities within Muslim student populations. While the qualitative design allowed for in-depth exploration of lived experience, these limitations should be considered when interpreting findings.

Future research would benefit from multi-site studies that examine Muslim student experiences across different types of post-secondary institutions (e.g., colleges and universities) and geographic regions. Comparative research exploring how ethnicity, gender, and degrees of religiosity as well as religious visibility shape experiences of inclusion and exclusion would further illuminate the complexity of Muslim student life. Longitudinal research could also examine how sustained exposure to Islamophobia affects academic trajectories, mental health, and institutional trust over time. Such work is essential for informing structural interventions aimed at fostering more equitable and genuinely inclusive campus environments.

References