My mail and email are filled daily with hundreds of studies, academic journals and new books and articles from numerous publications focusing on Muslims. Everything about the subject of Muslims is studied and parsed in minute detail with volumes upon volumes of subsequent publications citing and re-examining what everyone had said on every topic. The volume of studies produced about Muslims is mindboggling and the list expands beyond anyone's own ability to keep up with it. Yet the volumes of studies available at our fingertips have not made it possible to know Muslims any better, as they rather add to the structural and compounded ignorance of the subject. It seems that when more studies on Muslims are undertaken, the less knowledge we have on Muslims. Why do studies on Muslims lead to less knowledge and awareness of Muslims?Knowledge production is reflective of the social, political, racial, economic and religious forces in the U.S. that dominate and exercise hegemonic control over institutions assigned and funded to produce the problematized Muslim subject in writing. The "think tank industrial complex" has managed to produce massive studies, but manages to keep Muslims unknown. Some solid scholarship is produced by careful scholars, but on the whole they tend to be the exception, having limited circulation and rarely promoted by the corporate media and political elite.More importantly, knowledge production about Muslims is not value neutral, and for the most part is undertaken to solve empirical problems resulting from prolonged hegemonic discourses that are connected to resources. How does it feel to be studied but not known and being structurally silenced? The bulk of the studies are undertaken on Muslims being a problem that needs to be solved, and how to stop them from being violent. The questions and problem-solving endeavors introduce myriad issues but not Muslims themselves, into the discussion, as their place is defined as a mere subject in an experimental lab who are not allowed independent agency.Everything about Muslims is examined in the same way a lab specimen is researched through constant observation, being recorded and handled by the technicians. Current "lab scholarship" on Muslims produces detailed work that lacks depth and reality since the focus is on providing an answer to an empirical problem rather than on the subject itself.The questions are so predictable. They include violence, women's rights, despotic rule, supposed irrationality, minority rights, corruption and last but not least, why they hate us. All these questions are legitimate in normal circumstances and should be welcomed if the focus is on Muslims arriving at self-discovery and criticism. However, these questions, and many like them, are intended to document and study Muslims without Muslims themselves being party to it. On the contrary, the intention of these studies is to produce the opposite of the knowledge that should provide a deeper understanding and awareness of the diverse needs of the some 1.4 billion people inhabiting the earth with the rest of humanity.The funding provided for studying Muslims has spun a cottage industry with an interconnected web of foundations, research centers, think tanks, data collection nodes, translations services and a set of open and invite-only conferences. Every data point on Muslims is examined and analyzed, then added to the mountains of studies to strengthen the hegemonic abilities of narrative to control and dominate through knowledge production. Here, researching Muslims is not equal to knowing the person or people considered in the research. When more research of this type is undertaken, the less knowledge we have on Muslims since the intent is to solve the empirical problem and not appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of the people supposedly being studied.The problem is not new as Edward Said's "Orientalism" tackled it in reference to Napoleon's Egypt campaign, which included a French scientific expedition to document the country so as to facilitate the colonial project. Studying Muslims without their knowledge, not having the best interest of the group or community in mind and without the consent to be transformed into one-dimensional, academic content on a page is an ethical crisis. What type of Muslim are you looking for and examining for your grant, book deal, tenure promotion, media appearance, counter violent extremism training, securitization project, language training, data mining, Halal market expansion, elections strategies or weapons sales?Whatever type of Muslim you are seeking, a researcher and a study is available to shed some light on it. However, do not waste too much time reading the material or deciphering the footnotes since, for the most part, these are copied and replicated from earlier empirical studies and often reproduced word for word. A Quran expert is ready to give you everything you need to know about the text and the people who read it, but do not waste your time asking this expert to read one line of the Quranic text in Arabic or even possess a high level of proficiency in the English language to fully grasp the translation used.Knowledge on Muslims is produced within the war on terrorism and Islamophobia imaginary in which the conclusion of every study is predetermined. Muslims are studied to fit into the mega narrative that is constructed about the subject before it is even approached for study and the assumptions underlying the methodology already determined the outcome. Muslims outside of the existing and problematic terrorism and Islamophobic hypothesis do not exist, or if they do, then they are shadowed by the heavily embedded empirical knowledge producers. Muslims are studied but not known since the purpose of these studies from their inception is an empirical one that does not arrive at deeper awareness and appreciation of the subject itself.