Islam in English

June 10, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In a 2013 study, bilinguals took the same implicit association test twice — once in each language — and got markedly different scores each time. That finding, from Oludamini Ogunnaike's undergraduate thesis in cognitive neuroscience, launched him into a career spent thinking about how language shapes thought, and how religious worldviews reshape the languages they inhabit. In an interview on the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast, Ogunnaike, now Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia, explains what it means for Islam to speak English — and for English to speak Islam.

What "Islam in English" actually means

There is a difference, Ogunnaike insists, between Muslims speaking English and Islam being expressed in English. The first is simply a demographic fact: millions of Muslims in Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria use English daily. The second is a creative and intellectual project — the deliberate transformation of English into a vehicle for Islamic concepts, worldviews, and ways of imagining the world. This is not a matter of plugging in English equivalents for Arabic terms. "You can pick out an English word," Ogunnaike says, "and then through its usage, you can actually transform the meaning of that word in English." He points to words like ablution and circumambulation, which in his experience appear in

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction & Guest Background** - Host Tazin Abdullah introduces Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike and the episode's dual focus on an academic article and a poetry collection.
2 (05:13) **Defining "Islam in English" vs. "Muslims Speaking English"** - The core distinction of the article is introduced: the focus is not on how Muslims *speak* English, but on how Islamic worldviews are *expressed* in English.
3 (09:14) **The Problem with "Plug and Chug" Translation** - English carries historical and colonial baggage, making direct word-for-word translation of Islamic concepts deeply problematic.
4 (14:27) **Making English "Speak Islam"** - A key mechanism for Islam to "speak English" is through consistent usage that forces English words to take on the semantic range of their Arabic counterparts.
5 (20:10) **Case Study: "The Wine Odes"** - Host Tazin reads an excerpt from Dr. Ogunnaike's poem, "The Wine Odes," which seems to praise wine and drunkenness, and asks how this constitutes "Islam in English."
6 (26:39) **The Gift of Migrant English** - In the context of migration and AI, Dr. Ogunnaike argues that speakers from different traditions bring a tremendous gift that enriches and enlivens English.
7 (32:25) **Future Work: Layla Poetry** - Dr. Ogunnaike discusses his upcoming book on how a North African Sufi order uses poetry about Layla (of "Majnun Layla" fame) to write about the ineffable divine essence.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Oludamini Oguannaike, Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia.

Tazin and Oludamini talk about his work into how languages, such as English, express concepts that originate from onto-epistemic perspectives that are not historically associated with the English language. They discuss his 2019 article “Islam in English,” which he co-authored with Dr. Mohammed Rustom and how this research is expressed in the literary genre in his book of poetry called The Book of Clouds.

The conversation considers how the distinctive philosophical and metaphysical concepts associated with Islam collide with the use of English as a result of the global dominance of English. Tazin and Oludamini discuss how he has used his research and knowledge of historical religious thought to express these concepts using English in poetry.

References

Ogunnaike, O. (2024). The Book of Clouds. Fons Vitae of Kentucky.
Ogunnaike, O., & Rustom, M. (2019). Islam in English. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 36(2), 102-111.
For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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