Australian Young Muslim Women’s Construction of Pious and Liberal Subjectivities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on the narratives of Australian young Muslim women, this paper examines the way the subjectivities of religious feminine piety and secular and democratic liberalism are embodied and, therefore, continually produced through the practice of religion. It aims to understand women’s piety in relation to questions of self and agency. Liberal self-governance presents as a possible precursor to pious self-construction of religious subjectivities and agency in contrast to piety held as the other of liberal politics. Additionally, the paper unpacks the ethics of veiling and unveiling, suggesting that both bodily practices can be perceived as techniques of the self. Particularly, it challenges the understanding of unveiling as a sign of assimilation or an act of rejection to a practice largely perceived in the West as oppressive. Rather, it is a bodily act that can be interpreted as a self-technique to articulate a distinct subjectivity structured along ethical liberal lines. This subjectivity involves interrogating the mandatory nature of veiling within Orthodox Islam by practising Ijtihad.