Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence
Date: February 24, 2026
Time: 2:30-4:30pm EST
Location: Tubman Resource Room (314 York Lanes) (Hybrid)
In-person Registration: https://research.apps01.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=290575
Zoom Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/CNTEpJ5OS9SftuOLJCijLQ
Description: This talk draws from Dr. Abu-maye’s recently published book, Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence (University of California Press, 2025). Centering Somali refugee narratives, the talk examines the links between U.S. military violence abroad and policing domestically, tracing experiences from civil war–era Somalia to refugee camps in Kenya and to Somali American communities in the United States. Through storytelling and critical refugee studies, Dr. Abu-maye shows how U.S. militarism continues to shape refugee life while disrupting humanitarian narratives that obscure state violence.
Maxamed Abu-maye, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He is the author of the book Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence (University of California Press, 2025). This multisited project, the first of its kind, exposes the links between US military violence abroad and police brutality at home through a profound exploration of Somali refugee lives. Black Muslim Refugee traces the globe-spanning journeys of these refugees, from civil war–era Somalia to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to their eventual arrival in San Diego, and Maxamed Abu-maye analyzes their experiences through the dual lenses of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia. He situates their displacement within the larger context of East Africa's colonial history, as well as the policy consequences of the American-backed war on terror and war on drugs. Throughout, Abu-maye's centering of Somali subjectivity underlines this community's critical and creative capacity to defy the mechanisms that seek to "manage" and ultimately control them.
Muna-Udbi A. Ali, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment and Urban Change (EUC), specializing in Black Studies in Geography and Environment, at York University in Toronto, Canada. Before joining the faculty of EUC, Ali worked as an Assistant Professor at California State University San Marcos, and as a Visiting Faculty member at Christopher Newport University. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, her primary research covers diverse theoretical foci including Black studies, critical refugee and migration studies, critical race studies, Black feminist studies, Black geographies, transnational feminism, environmental justice, popular education, critical Muslim studies, critical pedagogy, and public policy (specifically immigration, refugee, health, and welfare policies). Outside of academia, Ali is a community worker, curriculum and policy consultant, researcher, and anti-oppression educator. She has designed curricula and policies on gender-based violence, Afrocentric education, and anti-racist praxis. She has worked in education and curriculum development in Canada, United States, Kenya, and Somalia.