Empowering Muslim Women: Independent Religious Fellowships in the Kyrgyz Republic

Abstract

In this article, Noor O'Neill Borbieva presents research on the work of Muslim female activists in the Kyrgyz Republic and on the religious fellowships they organize, revealing these groups as important but neglected civil society actors. These religious fellowships are “hybrid,” neither complicit with coercive interests nor fully independent of diem. Borbieva explores how the religious sensibilities of her informants inspired unique responses to the institutions and discourses that otherwise shape their lives as Muslim women and Kyrgyz citizens. These women are engaged in more than a struggle for female empowerment; they are crafting a response to national and international power structures, a response informed equally by their gendered identities and their spiritual sensibilities.