Wittgenstein’s family resemblance justifies Muslims as a real, non-essential group.

Evidence

I think groups are necessary both to social science and to anti-racism or egalitarian politics, and so I work with an alternative interpretation of anti-essentialism derived from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968). His concept of family resemblance offers a way of recognizing that just as it does not make sense to say that games or languages do not exist because they do not share a common, definitional essence, so the lack of group essences and discrete, bounded populations with unchanging characteristics is not a good reason to assert in an a priori way that groups do not exist. … Another way of putting it is that just as the complete self-made individual of some liberal theories does not exist, it does not follow that individuals do not exist, that we have to give up ‘individual’ from social science vocabularies; so, similarly, with groups. — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 588

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the Wittgensteinian family-resemblance interpretation of anti-essentialism as the author’s working framework for Muslim group identity.
• SEED: Could become an essay on how the anti-essentialism debate in critical race theory maps onto the ‘group vs. no-group’ question in Islamophobia scholarship.
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that abandoning impossible definitional standards spares us from concluding groups are ontologically deficient is genuinely subtle and reusable beyond this field.
• XREF: connects to: Muslim group identity is socially constructed, not defined by any shared essence. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 591; Religion is an evolving family-resemblance package, not a natural kind — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 635

Related

• Groups are real for social science and anti-racist politics despite lacking shared essences. (similarity 0.90)
• Muslim group identity is socially constructed, not defined by any shared essence. (similarity 0.85)
• Muslim identity is real but never the sole or primary form of social self-understanding. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Religion is an evolving family-resemblance package, not a natural kind #expands (0.90) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 635
• Muslim group identity is socially constructed, not defined by any shared essence. #expands (0.85) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 591