This paper reflects on the methodological and ethical paradoxes that inform the current, and highly securitzed, anthropological field of Islam in Europe, which largely revolve around a growing refusal to be subjected to the ethnographic gaze of researchers. This refusal expresses itself in many ways among the Muslim community workers in Belgium, where I live and conduct most of my research. Many scholars have explored the convergence between the nexus of knowledge and power in surveillance in ethnographic practices. In so doing, they have critically challenged the idea that representational practices, even by well-intentioned researchers, do not operate in a vacuum but are necessarily entangled with the very same mechanisms of surveillance they seek to undo. Such observations have confronted anthropologists with the question on how to proceed with research, and whether one should abide by these demands. Building on some recent scholarly work that consider refusal as generative (McGranahan 2016, Simpson 2007), I consider the various iterations of refusal as an entry point to study the effects of power and, just as importantly, consider the distinct methodological and ethical considerations that are at stake. Furthermore, refusal also goes along with its accompanying double: ethnographic acceptance, with both the researched and the researcher. Attending carefully to the various iterations of refusal/acceptance, to what I describe here as the “pragmatics” of ethnographic refusal and acceptance, can thus serve as an entry point to study the effects of power and, just as importantly, consider the distinct methodological and ethical considerations that are at stake. I use the term “pragmatics” to highlight the socially situated and deliberative aspects that are involved in accepting and/or refusing the ethnographic encounters. These can be discursive and non-discursive, conscious, and subconscious. In so doing, I am interested in examining and showing how refusal/acceptance works in “making sense in common” (Stengers 2020), which figures here as a condition for the ethnographic encounter.