Islamophobia – Dustin J. Byrd, Ph.D.

On October 17th, I was fortunate to join colleagues, graduate students, and former and active professors from the Comparative Religion department at Western Michigan University to celebrate the retirement of the amazing scholar and master pedagogue, Dr. Brian C. Wilson. Dr. Wilson came to WMU in 1996 from UC-Santa Barbara, and quickly became an imminent scholar of local religious history. For thirty years he has educated WMU undergrads and graduate students in religion, religious history, religious theory, etc. I shared my work on the problem of “Geist” within the Willensgemeinschaft and Volksgemeinschaft states regarding Muslims, especially in post-secular Europe.

Dr. Brian Wilson has written some amazing books on American religious history, including Yankees in Michigan, John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living. These books are all well worth reading as they give incredible insights to the religious history of this area of southern Michigan.

It was great to see my dear friends and mentors, Dr. Nancy Falk, Dr. Stephen Covell, Dr. Kevin Wanner, Dr. Amy DeRogatis of MSU, and many others, including my dear friend and former office mate, Sarah Montgomery-Richards.

On August 21st, 2026, I gave a talk about my chapter in the book, Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia (University of Albert Press, 2025), edited by Dr. Sharmin Sadequee. My chapter is entitled “The Limits of the Translation Proviso: The Inherent Alien in the Willed-Society.” Entitled “Futures and Frontiers,” the conference was held at Dublin City University on the All Hallows campus – the site of a former monastery and Vincentian seminary. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religion (ISASR), the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR), the Center for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM), and Dublin City University, School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music (DCU).

The conference was excellent, with great speakers and presenters, including Marion Bowman and Olivet Scharbrodt. My panel included Sharmin Sadequee and Alain Gabon, who both gave tremendously interesting and informative presentations on Islamophobia. A big shout out to Brad Anderson who organized the conference; it was masterfully done! I would also like to thank The University of Olivet for graciously sponsoring my work in Dublin.

For more information on the conference, see the brochure:

Conference Booklet BASR ISASR 2026-2 Download