Muslim Organizations in Canada: Gender Ideology and Women's Veiling

Abstract

This article examines the Muslim shaping of gender ideology around the veiling practices of immigrant Muslim women in Canada. Women's veiling is often attributed to the mobilization of traditional values against the universalizing influences of Western culture. This is also a common theme in mainstream sociological studies that conceptualize cultural politics as being split between the global and authentically local. However, the veiling practice can also be understood as part of the transnational dynamics of Muslim claims for cultural authenticity, rather than a locally rooted rejection of Western culture. Archival data and interviews are used to examine the interplay between the global configuring of gender ideology and the local cultural practices of Muslim immigrants. Analyzed in this way, veiling is seen as posing a paradigmatic challenge to the dichotomy of global versus local in sociological theory.