Muslim Women

This chapter builds on the final section of the last, continuing the focus on female workers. Bodies in space form the primary emphasis of the chapter. This involves an exploration of the relationship between bodies and work and also an examination of the ways in which female bodies move through and across spaces of home, gully, factory and city. Two trajectories of marginalisation – that constructed around Muslim minority status and that cemented within hegemonic gender norms (Ray & Qayum 2009) – intersect in the production and reproduction of feminised sectors of the labour force. Other factors were also significant, class in particular. Those labouring in situations like those of Noor and her family were universally at the bottom of both social and labour hierarchies. In a context that often situated women’s engagements with the labour market – particularly when they involved leaving the domestic space – as symbolising low socio-economic standing, it was the families with the smallest incomes that provided the labour for finishing work.

The poor and marginalized women in India have not just experienced the inequalities of class and gender but also of caste and religion. Since most of them are employed informally, they are further exposed to job-related insecurities. The article intends to identify these women at the bottom of the Indian society and to understand their historical and current challenges. In the first section, it explores some major intersections of inequalities and disadvantages that these women face, attempting to understand their differences and commonalities. It is found that these women predominantly belong to dalit, tribal or Muslim communities. These women face unique struggles, owing to their different community identities. These challenges and their historical background are explored in the second section of the article. In addition, they face certain common challenges owing to their gender and the informal nature of their occupation, which is addressed in the third section. The article discusses their common and unique concerns through an exploration of various theoretical frameworks and gives a comprehensive overview of the subject. It underscores that the informal employment in India cannot be addressed without fully grasping the intertwined issues of caste, religion, community or gender.

Young Muslim women are coming under an increasing influence of globalisation processes and follow global trends, which also includes fashion. This entails a certain balancing act between being modern and being religious. The author of the present paper attempts to address the question whether the hijab may be considered a Muslim answer to globalisation through its presence within the so-called “hijab fashion,” or that perhaps, to the contrary, it constitutes a symbol of a growing isolation and separation of Muslim minorities inhabiting the countries of western Europe.

With many women receiving tertiary education, more women have become significant income earners and have the opportunity to save. As a result, more women are expected to become eligible payers of zakat on wealth. This paper examined payment of an important zakat on wealth – zakat on banking deposits among Muslim women in Selangor and Federal Territories. Specifically, the paper examined the demographic profiles between those that paid zakat and those who chose not to pay. Characteristics such as age, education level, employment status, marital status, monthly income, zakat channels, and resident areas were examined to determine the main drivers behind their payment of zakat on banking deposits. Next, the paper explored the level of zakat literacy among the respondents. We assumed that zakat literacy plays important roles behind the payment of zakat on deposits given the advancement of the deposit products. In measuring this, we adapted measurement of financial literacy as introduced by OECD namely awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours.  In achieving these objectives, a survey among  Muslim women respondents was conducted in Klang Valley.  Findings indicated that age, education level, employment status, annual income per month, zakat channels, annual zakat payment and residential areas played important roles in influencing payment of zakat on banking deposits among the respondents. Meanwhile, among the dimensions of financial literacy investigated, only age and monthly income were found to have  positive correlations with zakat awareness and behaviour. Surprisingly, the correlations between age and zakat knowledge and skills were found to be significantly negative. It is expected that this study may help zakat institutions to understand their women zakat clients and guide them to develop appropriate program of zakat literacy suitable for women of various demographic profiles.

Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic immigrant Muslim
congregation in a Midwestern city in the United States, this article scrutinizes the
intricate process through which women use traditional gender roles and expectations
to legitimate and operationalize women’s leadership. This study found that de facto
congregationalism has made it possible for Muslim women to translate their ‘traditional’
responsibilities for food preparation and socializing children into greater visibility
and voice in both the mosque and broader society. This study provides an in-depth
examination of the nuanced processes of women’s empowerment in American Muslim
congregations.

Ce texte, basé sur un travail de terrain effectué pendant trois ans dans une ville du
Midwest aux États-Unis, analyse le processus à travers lequel les femmes musulmanes utilisent leurs rôles traditionnels afin de légitimer la place des dirigeants femmes au sein de la communauté musulmane. Cette étude montre que l’assemblée de facto congrégationalisme a permis aux femmes musulmanes de faire valoir leurs responsabilités traditionnelles dans la cuisine et avec les enfants dans la mosquée et au sein de la société musulmane. Cette étude fournit un examen détaillé des processus d’émancipation des femmes dans les assemblées musulmanes aux États-Unis.

The documentary depicts the journey of a teenage girl and her mother who move to California in 2012 because of the Syrian civil war. Together they learn to live in a different culture and face challenges to their traditions - ­all while endeavoring to build a better future.

In political and popular media discourse "Muslim woman" has become the prime example of the oppression of women in the world. In a climate where Islam is constantly associated with extremism, violence and oppression of women, this article aims to give the students tools to critically engage with the category of "Muslim woman" and have a nuanced understanding of how we come to know Muslim women and the complexity of this category.

This article deals with the growing phenomenon of Islamic feminism and its multiple manifestations through many new media avenues in the Arab world today. It begins by defining the term 'Islamic feminism' and the many ambivalences and paradoxes surrounding it. The article then maps the transformative socio-political landscape in the Arab world, with a special focus on the rising tide of (re)Islamization and its complex causes and implications. It also maps the equally transformative media landscape in the Arab world, especially the impact of the proliferation of satellite television channels and Internet websites on the degree of freedom, plurality and diversity that is permitted and exhibited throughout the Arab region. The article provides specific examples of this New Wave of Islamic feminism as it manifests itself through various satellite channels and Internet websites exhibiting different forms of self-expression and multiple resistances.

There are many studies about whether Muslim women are oppressed or emancipated by Islamic traditions. Some claim that Islamic traditions, such as the headscarf, oppress women while others want to prove that these women have agency when they perform Islamic traditions. This project aims to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom that will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and spatial formations of Muslim women’s lives. In other words, I apply the relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations over Muslim women. Through this relational ontology, I problematize the depictions of Muslim women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative way and want to explore alternative patterns in Muslim women’s experiences and practices. Therefore, I use the Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom to demassify the depictions of Muslim women as submissive beings based on their religious engagements. I suggest scholarly projects that will be attentive to the situatedness of Muslim women.

Summary: Based on the clash of civilizations framework, some western institutions depict a monolithic community of Muslims and use this monolithic depiction to prove the need to fight against Islam and Muslims. Muslim women become a focal point within this narrative since they are portrayed as an oppressed group by the Islamic traditions and Muslim men. For example, the headscarf as the marker of Muslim women’s identities sparks discussions about whether it is oppressive or not. There are many studies on whether Muslim women are oppressed or emancipated. Some claim that Islamic traditions such as the headscarf oppresses women while others want to prove that these women perform their agency when they wear a headscarf. For instance, Saba Mahmood challenged this narrative by questioning the liberal conceptions of agency, freedom, desire, and resistance. Although these studies point out the necessity of historical and spatial analysis of Muslim women and their agencies, this issue requires further investigation and articulation.

In this project, I aim to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom that will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and spatial formations of Muslim women’s experiences, desires, and practices. In other words, I apply the relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations on Muslim women. According to this Deleuzian ontology, the world is constituted of bodies. Every entity, biological organism, social structure, and abstraction is a body. Each of these bodies, whether it is a human or non-human body, material or immaterial, social or psychological construction, is produced by confluences of relations. Every aspect of the human body including its biological, mental, social, and psychological components is also constituted through multiple relations. Therefore, when we talk about a human subject, we refer to the assemblages of complex and multiple relations. This conceptualization of the body brings a new conceptualization of agency as well. This Deleuzian understanding of agency focuses on relations that produce the body. Since bodies are generated through the flux of relations, their capacities to feel, to act, and to desire in certain ways will change according to the relations they have.

Through this relational ontology, I suggest seeing bodies of Muslim women as complex assemblages of multiple elements constituted through flows of relations. This conceptualization problematizes the portrayal of Muslim women’s embodiments exclusively based on a religious tradition. Experiences, practices, and desires of Muslim women, as well as their agencies, constraints, and capabilities, are produced through relational engagements with multiple elements such as socio-political discourses, familial relations, material availabilities, and economic conditions. In other words, their power to act is generated by relations with surrounding elements (bodies in Deleuzian ontology), whether these bodies are religious or secular, human or non-human, material or immaterial. Consequently, their bodies and forms of their agency are always remade through various elements which continuously connect and disconnect. 

I use this Deleuzian conceptualization of body and agency to problematize the depictions of Muslim women as a submissive group of women by their religious engagements. I aim to illuminate the multiplicities of constituent elements in their lives and suggest a fragmented and relational depiction of their agencies. Through the lenses of relationality, I explore what becomes invisible and left out in terms of depicting heterogeneous and dynamic experiences of Muslim women. For this purpose, I apply this Deleuzian perspective to an interview conducted in Capital City Women’s Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu) in 2018 for my Ph.D. project as well as some ethnographic observations in Turkey. Given the theoretical basis I propose, I aim an in-depth analysis of the data collected from this interview instead of a collection of a higher volume of data. In addition to the analysis of the interview, I use other resources such as ethnographic observations, material culture, and analyses of historical and political contexts.

By applying the Deleuzian ontology on Muslim women, I aim to pay attention to multiple and relational generative forces in Muslim women’s lives. Specifically, I problematize the depictions of Muslim women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative way and want to explore alternative patterns in Muslim women’s experiences and practices. To put it differently, I argue that Muslim women’s experiences are relational, multi-faced, fractured, and particular. We should explore this multiplicity and relationality instead of assuming an imaginary singular category. Therefore, I suggest grounded scholarly projects that will be attentive to the situatedness of Muslim women. In this type of analysis, the task of the scholar should be to explore the multi-faced and situated subjectivity and agency of Muslim women that enable us to understand intertwined forms of oppression and liberation. We should stress the constant co-construction and re-construction of experiences and actions over marginalizing and categorizing identities.

Many Jewish and Muslim women in New Jersey too often suffer grave consequences of litigating with husbands who want to punish them for seeking divorce or for demanding their financial marital rights. Such malevolent husbands often use their unilateral right to dissolve the marriage in a religious context as a tool to abuse their wives or extract a more favorable financial settlement from them. The resulting injustice must cease. Jewish and Muslim women must be given a remedy in our civil courts to dissolve the chains of religious matrimony and to permit them to move on and remarry without fear of forfeiting their financial rights. To that end, we strongly recommend that the New Jersey Legislature adopt a measure that would mandate the removal of barriers to remarriage upon the entry of a final judgment of civil divorce. We hold out as an example New York's model. In every action for divorce or annulment filed there, each party must file a sworn statement that he or she will remove all barriers to the other's remarriage. If either party fails to do so, the other spouse can petition the court to seek enforcement. The New York statute is gender-and religion-neutral and has withstood several constitutional attacks.

Volgens de beeldbank van het Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) is de Nederlandse moslima gesluierd, passief, werkt ze als kassière en vind je haar vooral op straat, op de markt of tijdens het winkelen. Dit is wat er voornamelijk te zien is op de foto’s die verschijnen onder de zoekterm ‘moslima’.
De foto’s zijn eenzijdig en de omschrijvingen en zoekwoorden bij de foto’s bevatten woorden en begrippen die vaak niet overeen komen met wat er feitelijk te zien is op de foto, maar die wel bijdragen aan stereotypering en stigmatisering van moslima’s. Fotografen gebruiken deze woorden uit commerciële overwegingen, om de vindbaarheid van hun foto te vergroten. Dit blijkt uit onderzoek dat ik heb gedaan met fotograaf Cigdem Yuksel.

Muslim Women and White Femininity: Reenactment and Resistance is a much-needed book in a time when Muslim women are speaking out but also embodying White femininity. This book focuses on how Whiteness travels through Muslim women’s bodies, who in turn reenact or resist White womanhood, by examining three relevant archetypes: the Oppressed, the Advocate, and the Humanitarian Leader. The author aims to demonstrate the necessity of archetypal criticism as a method that can teach the reader or student how to deconstruct dominant discourses in the media. This book aims to address intercultural, gender, intersectional and critical communication courses but is also suited for those in the general public who wish to understand the deceptive nature of the media. Thus, at a time where Muslim women are being used as media objects by Western media, this book is crucial in analyzing how readers can begin to uncover dominant ideologies that are carried through and by Muslim women.

Women's spiritual care networks are keeping the Islamic intellectual heritage fresh and intelligible for new generations of U.S.-based Muslims who are navigating faith, practices, and values as religious minorities. Here, I highlight leading voices and promising directions in the professionalization of Muslim women's spiritual caregiving. I detail how campus chaplaincy and seminary teaching positions have become vibrant settings for context-relevant guidance and spiritual mentorship among women.

Beauty is a highly meaningful attribute of women with varying meanings of beauty across nations and culture. To some Moslem women, along with their obligations to cover certain parts of their body, aesthetical appearance remains a meaningful matter, while to others it is irrelevant or even harmful. There are groups of Moslem women wearing hijab as a means of avoiding aesthetic appearance.
Bandung, popularly believed as a city of fashion in Indonesia, consists of mostly Muslim citizens. In the last two decades, the growth of Muslim women fashion industries has been clearly visible and gradually brought about changes in Muslim women fashion and lifestyle. Aesthetical appearance, especially beauty, has become a central matter to those participating in the Muslim fashion design activities.
In the paper we present results of case study on a Muslim women fashion group called the Hijabers. By way of ethnographic interviews with Hijabers’ members, we explore how hijab is as given meanings, how beauty is defined in terms of Islamic teaching, how fashion designs and beauty related devices and products are developed. In the study we explore the impact the Hijabers exerts on their social environments as well.
Our results suggest that the practices of Hijabers have led to a specifically constructed religious fashion and beauty in such a way with a creation of a border between Hijabers’ members and others. Religious fashion and beauty introduced by Hijabers is built upon practices, devices, products inaccessible to low income Muslim women. Thus, under Hijabers’ version of religious beauty, Moslem women become divided based on their economic privilege. In the paper we suggest an innovative approach to developing more inclusive Islamic fashion and beauty practices.

Western feminist scholars have been prone to conceptualizing women as a single universal group that faces similar challenges, share the same interests, and require the same needs in their development processes. The last three decades have ushered an era of misconceptions and stereotypical presumptions of Muslim women’s status in Muslim societies around the world. Chandra Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses criticizes the “assumption [that] a singular patriarchal kinship system, common to all Arab and Muslim’s [is what] structures women as an oppressed group in these societies” (Mohanty, 1984). Mohanty provides an enriching argument criticizing the assumption of women as assumed to be part of a singular coherent group or category prior to their entry into the development process. The argument against the veil as a symbol of universal oppression through segregation she proves is “reductive and useless when it comes to political strategizing” (Mohanty, 1984). Quebec’s Bill 21 is a product of intersectional discrimination as Muslim women have been erased “within the political contestation between anti-racism and racial hierarchy and between feminism and patriarchy” (Crenshaw, 1991). Furthermore, reports will be introduced that indicate a spike in hate crimes particularly against Muslim women and how the law has framed Muslim women’s religious or cultural expression as separate and incoherent with Quebec values. This paper will focus on the debate over Quebec’s controversial Bill 21 which bans religious symbols including the hijab. In support with Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes, Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins, and Echol’s Daring to be Bad to determine that it largely targets Muslim women while continuing to export the notion that the mere practice of veiling indicates universal oppression of women.

This study examines the growth of a progressive religious Muslim activism among Palestinian women in Israel and the challenges it poses to the religious patriarchy and colonial power structures. Based on semistructured interviews with a religious feminist organization’s activists, the study revealed that feminist Islamic activism addresses an alliance between state officials and patriarchal–religious establishment gatekeepers that interlock to block Muslim feminist reform. Unlike other Muslim activists in former settler colonial states where state and religion are separate and unlike progressive Muslim women in Muslim states who struggle to escape the religious–patriarchal trap, in Israel, these activists face a religious–colonial–patriarchal trap.

The Journal of Islamic Faith and Practice is a new, online, double-blind, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal ‎published by Indiana University and sponsored by the Islamic Seminary Foundation (ISF). Produced annually, this ‎journal commits itself to promoting academic and professional research about recent developments in American Muslim ‎communities. In doing so, the Journal aims to provide a platform for scholars, students, and researchers to exchange ‎their latest findings from varied disciplines. Therefore, one of the key aims of the Journal is to foster dialogue between ‎academics, researchers, community leaders, chaplains and students regarding Islamic faith and how it is practiced in ‎America. The Journal will be in an open-access format with print on demand available at Amazon.com.‎

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Islamic-Faith-Practice-‎Issue/dp/1980526761?SubscriptionId=AKIAJ2F6RDUSIYCWQMFQ&tag=sa-b2c-new-‎‎20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1980526761‎

Bu makale feminist literatüre katkı yaptığı düşünülen İslamcı kadın yazarların çalışmalarını incelemektedir. Makale bu çalışmaları İslamcı kadın yazını olarak tanımlamakta ve feminist söylemin bu çalışmalar üzerindeki etkilerini analiz etmektedir. Bunun için öncelikle feminist söylemin Müslüman kadın dünyasını etkileme süreci ve bu süreçte Müslüman kadın düşünürlerin kendilerini nasıl konumlandırdıkları ele alınmıştır. Daha sonra etkilenme olgusunun daha iyi anlaşılabilmesi için İslamcı kadın yazınındaki temel yaklaşımlar ataerkillik, toplumsal cinsiyet ve cinsiyetçilik gibi feminist eleştiride ön plana çıkmış kavramlar bağlamında incelenmiştir. İslamcı kadın yazarlar Müslüman seküler feministlerden farklı olarak kadın-karşıtı söylemlerde geleneğin etkisine vurgu yapmaktadırlar. Çalışmalarında geleneğin eleştirisi ve dini kaynakların kadın-duyarlı bir bakış açısı ile yeniden okunması konuları ön plana çıkmaktadır. Makale son olarak bu kadın yazının feminist bir teoloji olma imkânına dikkat çekmekte ve batılı feminist söylemin İslamcı kadın yazınına etkisindeki sınırlılıklara işaret etmektedir.

This article focuses on the works of Islamic women writers who contribute to feminist literature. The article identifies these works as Islamic women literature, and analyzes the effects of feminist discourse on this literature. Firstly, the article discusses the influence process of feminist discourse on Muslim women world and how Muslim women intellectuals position themselves in this process. Later, the main approaches of Islamic women literature are discussed in terms of key concepts in feminist criticism such as patriarchy, gender and sexism. Different from Muslim secular feminists, Islamic women writers emphasize the influence of tradition on the discourses against women, and they argue the necessity of re-reading sacred texts from a women-friendly perspective. The article finally argues the possibility of this literature to be a feminist theology, and refers to the limited effects of western feminist discourse on Islamic women literature.

When it comes to portraying Muslims in popular culture, the overwhelming trend is to depict Muslim women as oppressed. However, American superhero comics have recently begun to portray Muslim women in a more sensitive manner with strong Muslim female superheroes. The current rebooted Ms.Marvel which stars a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager Kamala Khan, is the comic industry’s best example of a Muslim superheroine that straddles a life of seamless moderation between her Muslim and American identities. A crime-fighting, patriotic Muslimah superhero like Kamala Khan has been warmly received by critics who welcomed a change from oppressed to visibly empowered. But how is this construction played out in popular culture and what does it mean? This paper explores the construction of the Muslimah superhero by providing an analysis of Kamala Khan, using Gayatri Spivak’s concept of “worlding”. It illustrates how the reconfigured third world women that was used as a marker for modernity in nationalist movements in early post-colonial eras, can be applied to a reconfigured Muslim woman in popular culture.

The Shah Bano case of the 1980s was a landmark in the discourse on ‘Muslim women’s rights’ in India. At this time, however, few Muslim women actually participated in the debates, which were dominated by male religious leaders and politicians or by ‘secular’ women’s groups, which had scant Muslim representation. Since the 1980s several Muslim-women led organisations have emerged in urban areas across the country, some of which have formed networks to advocate for Muslim women’s rights. This article looks at the emergence of two networks in particular, the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), both of which were established during the last ten years. These networks have different but overlapping ideological bases, priorities and strategies. They both aim to challenge the authority of the Muslim religious leadership, represented by institutions such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. They also offer a critique of the mainstream wo...

This paper seeks to explore the complex representation of Muslim women characters in two texts by two Muslim writers who live or have lived in Britain namely Monica Ali and Leila Aboulela. Since the two writers come of Asian and African/ Arab backgrounds, their delineation of their “Muslim” female characters allow for a more comprehensive view of the daunting experiences of migrant ‘ordinary’ women who find themselves triply displaced as women/ Oriental / Muslim. Both novels reflect the empowerment of the female characters Nazneen and Najwa who grapple with their migrant experience. This paper seeks to read the two novels as offering alternative forms of knowledge of Muslim women ‘displaced’ experiences. It acknowledges that the two novels trace the processes of transformation of the female protagonists in a metropolitan context, but focuses on how this process entails several reflections on their experience as triply displaced. The paper relies on Spivak’s concept of displacement and uses its insights to reflect the case of Muslim women’s displacement. The paper refers to Talal Asad’s discussion of the idea of Islamic tradition to highlight its argument that Islam is part of the tradition that influences Muslims’ subjectivities whether they embrace the religion or not. Hence, to work out their displacements, both protagonists undergo a process of empowerment and agency during their journey of finding a place in the world. 
                                                                                                      Keywords: Spivak’s displacement, Muslim women, Leila Aboulela, Monica Ali, contemporary British fiction.                                                               

This study investigates the experiences and the related social change attitudes of pious Muslim women in Turkey. Twenty self-identified pious women living in Istanbul were interviewed about their experiences of disadvantage based on gender and religious identity , the position of women in religious teachings and practices, and attitudes towards the women's movement. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants expressed facing distinct forms of marginalization in secular and religious settings, leading to a state of ''in-betweenness'' characterized by a psychological distance from both communities. Participants' attitudes regarding social change, and how they voiced their critiques about women's issues, were also informed by the tensions between the two contexts. Findings suggest that this state of ''in-betweenness'' may decrease pious women's intentions to act and limit their potential for activism.

This paper focuses on the portrayal of the East, and especially of Muslim women, in two texts from the Romantic period that travel across various countries in their narratives: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Percy Shelley’s “Alastor: Or, the Spirit of Solitude” (1816). It compares the victim/seductress binary as it relates to the Muslim women in these texts. Cognizant of an Orientalist pre-history, this paper argues that the representations of Muslim women in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Percy Shelley’s “Alastor" reflect what it terms the “victim/seductress binary” whereby Muslim women are ascribed to either the victim or seductress role.

My sincerest gratitude to Dr. Rachel Eisendrath for all her support with an earlier senior thesis version of this article.

There has been a developing concern with respect to the situation of women in Muslim society, a worry that has probably been to a great extent activated by the present flood of Islamic revivalism. In Muslim societies, women are viewed as someone that belong to the weaker sex as they are fiendish, unreasonable, hesitant, reckless and irrational and hence they need man's steady supervision, insurance and mastery. This paper will discuss the position of women is Muslim societies by critically examining Quran’s 4:34, a verse from the Holy Quran that is believed, to not only elevate men to such a degree which gives them the power of supervision and authority over women, but it is also believed that the verse proposes wife-beating as one of the panaceas for marital disharmony. Furthermore, this paper will be an attempt to examine two persistent strands of interpretation, one reformist and one traditionalist. By comparing the methodologies and translations of the verse adopted to produce it’s exegesis, by looking into the presence of scanty number of female exegetes throughout the history of Islam and by exploring the effect of translation from Arabic, which is a highly gendered language, to a different language on the exegesis, the paper will try to identify and analyze the divergences in the two strands of the interpretation.

Muslim societies, and especially Muslim women, have often received fetishized attention in (neo-)Orientalist literature. However, opening up spaces for the voices of Muslim women especially those wearing the hijab is long overdue. Therefore,
the representation of diasporic Muslim women and their multiple identities in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret and Shelina Janmohamed’s Love in a Headscarf is of paramount importance. These two texts show how, face to face with possibilities and pitfalls of diaspora, Muslim women negotiate and prioritize Islamic identity in the metropolis. While immigrant Muslim men are racked with somewhat unacknowledged exilic anxieties, the challenge and possibility of Muslim women largely concern gender and religion. For a group of Muslim women, the West facilitates a critical interrogation of their feeling of identity vacillation and creates a useful framework for thinking about their religious observances, which eventually helps them conceptualize and articulate their sense of belonging. For many others, it provides
a third space in which they can confidently engage in a reinterpretation of the Islamic texts and thus reclaim an identity which liberates them from culturally enacted practices of their countries of origin.

This is the largest  study of its kind in the world to be conducted on Muslim women's experiences of work and career development. The report was launched in UK Parliament on 26 February 2020 chaired by Shadow Foreign Minister Afzal Khan MP, and a keynote speech from Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.

To cite this report or any of its content pleas use the following format:
Bi, S. 2020. Empowered Employment: Unlocking the Workplace for British Muslim Women. Muslim Women Connect.

This work give three examples from the history of women in Islam and draw good example modern Muslim women should follow. By looking at the life of Hazrat Khadija (RA) Muslim women with wealth can take inspiration, by looking at the life of Hazrat Aisha (RA) Muslim women can get inspiration to live life in an Islamic way and develop interest in knowing Quran and hadith, by looking at Hazrat Fatima (RA) Muslim women with modest means can take inspiration. Their legacy is that of courage, integrity, and deep devotion to the message that the Blessed Prophet (PBUH) brought to mankind.

This book delves into the physical public spaces of communication, majālis in East Arabia and their equivalents, digitally mediated cyber spaces. All are transformative spaces wherein Arabian social groups (Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula) regularly interact, listen to one another, discuss diverse topics, communicate traditional and modern knowledge, and question or circulate ideas. These social groups communicate multi-layered information and codes of meaning that inhabit every aspect of Arabian daily life. Those who dominate these two participative spaces of interaction have the ability to communicate particular knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, heritage, ideologies, norms, and values. Islamic religious ways of thinking abound in these public spaces and some can find preference to deconstruct or reconnect segmented communities. The book attempts to apprehend some of the cultural, social, and political changes rapidly shaping two predominant, religious clusters of contemporary Sunnī Islam in Eastern Arabia: the ‘Sufis’ (traditional Sunnī Muslims), and the ‘Salafis’ (Wahhabi Sunnī Muslims). Furthermore, by focusing on the micro cultural foundation that regulates the unification or fragmentation dynamics between a Sufi master or a Salafi shaykh and his respective disciples, this book reveals new information on how in-group micro-life is co-created before it manifests at the macro social level. The book captures cognitive identity as part of the public religious discourse in terms of fiqh (religious reasoning) or madhhab (school of religious reasoning), each distinctively tenting Sufi or Salafi clusters with different identity markers. Due to the discursive nature of fiqh, exposure to group discourses and counter-discourses is essential in order to gain insight into the process of constructing cognitive religious identity. In portraying public cognitive religious reasoning as a main identity marker, the book reveals how cognitive identity re-manifests itself in the realms of attires, melodies, and digitally-mediated-Islam. By using an interdisciplinary framework, employing different disciplines and approaches, the book will be of specific interest to students and scholars of Islam, Communication, New Media, Ethnology, Anthropology, Religion, Heritage, Identity, as well as Middle East Studies.

Abstract:
The hijab controversy is really about the ‘choice’ of wearing the hijab for a Muslim woman and perhaps why she cannot be trusted to make this decision herself.  One has to understand the religious significance of the practice including what is written in the Quran and then how it is widely interpreted including Sharia Law and second, depending on one’s own particular stance on the world, one then has to weigh in with cultural, political and personal viewpoints that can influence the debate.
If feminism is about empowering women to make their own choices, when then have some ‘progressive’ cultures taken her right to decide away?  One can only speculate that these North American and European cultures must not actually believe their women are capable of deciding for themselves. Meanwhile, researches indicated that the media bombards the public by constantly emphasizing the difference between Western and Islamic cultures, using the headscarf (hijab) as a main symbol of the culture clash. Because this particular practice in Islam appears to centre on women, it is easy to focus on the status of women in Islam as the main issue, especially because it varies so widely across the world. 

Key words:  (headscarf), Islam, Sociology of religion, Muslim women, Islamic culture, feminism

Abstract
'The plight of Muslim women' periodically surfaces in the Indian media as well as in academic forums. These discussions often focus on the tropes of parda, polygamy and personal laws with 'Muslim women' often placed in the position of symbolic bearers of the identity of 'the Muslim community'. This article explores the construction of 'Muslim women in India' outside of media and academic discourses, looking at the ways that women, who are identified as Muslim, themselves construct this category in their personal narratives. The analysis is based on discussions with women living in a majority-Muslim area of Delhi, Zakir Nagar. These discussions reveal competing constructions of 'Muslim women' in relation to parda and personal laws as well as in comparison with various groups including 'Hindu women', 'the poor', and 'the uneducated'. 'Muslim women' is thus revealed as a category that has limited and differing resonance in the ways that women themselves represent their identities. The article calls for an exploration of women's identities outside of the over-determined category 'Muslim women', taking into account multiple and contingent identifications including religion but also including class, regional affiliation, age, migration history, status, etc.
Keywords: Muslim women; India; Islam; religious identity; parda; personal laws

Colonial Muslim South Asia had two leading cultural centres: Bengal and North India. As part of the far-reaching reformist movement during the colonial period and beyond, intellectual work from these two places included a powerful segment of feminist writing which has remained the harbinger of the women’s rights movement among Muslims of this region. It is important to give research attention to South Asian Muslim writers, many of whom have been marginalised mainly because of the dominance of, and sometimes overriding and disproportionate focus on, their Hindu counterparts. Against this background, this article discusses the life, incredible commitment, sacrifice and feminist accomplishments of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). It will also contextualise her ideas in the broader South Asian Muslim feminist tradition.