Control over Muslim Women's Bodies: A Critical Review

Abstract

Struggling between the contradictory demands of colonial and neocolonial forces, Muslim women have been constantly at the center of ideological, political, and religious discourses and subjected to surveillance at multiple levels. More specifically, Muslim women's bodily practices, particularly the veil, as an embodied marker of difference that challenges the Western ideals of femininity and signals the “Otherness” of Muslim women, have been at the center of debates on Muslim women's bodies and embodiment. This thematic review of feminist scholarship on regulating and controlling Muslim women's bodies suggests that postcolonial and postsecular feminists have tried to alter narratives portraying veiled Muslim women as “victims” of patriarchal oppression and have disputed representations of Muslim women as “Others.” However, important nuances of Iranian Muslim women's multidimensional and complex decisions, informed by multiple matrixes of power, whether in the form of self‐regulation or through the constant control of the surveilling gaze of dominant “Others,” remain to be explored.