In this article I consider religion in international political scholarship and suggest a study of its epistemological politics and conceptual history. I argue that scholarship which strives to ‘engage’ or ‘recognize’ religion in global politics remain ignorant of the costs involved. Building on this argument, I ask if the troubles with recognizing religion reflect more basic qualities of recognition scholarship. Following the work by Jacques Rancière, Patchen Markell, Elizabeth Povinelli, and Jens Bartelson I argue that recognition has two faces and that along with its frequently acknowledged empowering aspect, it also comes with costs. In order to assess the costs of recognition I propose a study of its conditions of possibility, that is, a study of the ways in which the subjects of recognition become recognizable as such. In the final section of the paper, I apply this to the example of religion in global politics and the formation of the Muslim subject in the lead-up to the partition of British India and the founding of Pakistan.

Global international relations (IR) generates space for theoretical expressions drawn from outside the experiences of the modern West. Alongside these demands for theoretical pluralism can be found a concern for widening IR's historical frames of reference. Yet, to date, the relationship between global IR and history is the least developed part of the project's agenda. This article suggests two ways in which this relationship can be strengthened. One draws from global history, shows how transboundary connections and relational dynamics forge the units used by advocates of global IR in their analysis: West and non-West, core and periphery, metropole and colony. The other draws from global historical sociology as it advances the role of power asymmetries for understanding the patterns and entanglements in transboundary connections. Connecting global IR to global history and global historical sociology can help produce a fuller understanding of the interactive connections and asymmetrical entanglements between peoples, places, ideas, and institutions that drive historical development. We illustrate this potential through a brief analysis of the rise of the West. This, in turn, demonstrates the ways in which three visions of the global – global IR, global history, and global historical sociology – can be mutually beneficial.

In his response, Manjeet S. Pardesi argues that global international relations and relational scholarship rooted in global history can learn much from each other and must work together to overcome Eurocentrism while avoiding other forms of ‘centrisms’. The second contribution by Zeynep Gülşah Çapan aims to underline three interrelated dynamics: space (global), time (history), and knowledge. In the third and final response, Musab Younis draws on Edward Said's critique of ‘counter-conversion’ to suggest how anticolonial and postcolonial thinkers sought to create oppositional forms of knowledge while remaining alert, in ways not always replicated in recent writing, to the dangers of nativism.