The closet and the headscarf: Chronotopes of secular emancipation in White Germany

This article examines how secularism in Germany racializes both Muslim women and queer immigrants through representations that hinge on the objects of the headscarf and the closet. By analyzing sex education materials and queer refugee support initiatives, the author explores how Muslim women and queer refugees are portrayed as mutually antagonistic in the liberal imagination, yet both are depicted as objects of secular governance in need of tolerance and liberation. The headscarf and the closet materialize as chronotopes of secular emancipation, constructing Muslim women’s religious dress and queer refugees’ imagined concealment of their sexuality as markers of excess. These objects are viewed through a racialized secular lens that interprets the lives of Muslim women and queer Muslims as illegible, oppressed, and in need of intervention, contrasting them with the perceived transparency and full subjecthood of White liberal secular individuals. In this constellation, both religion and sexuality are governed through racialized understandings of visibility, oppression, and the body.