This is us: Islamic feminist school leadership

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this empirical study, we describe how Muslim female school leaders prioritise equity, community, and resistance when leading American Islamic schools. Similar to prior critical feminist studies, this research centres female leaders’ agency as an emancipatory praxis of resistance to injustice and oppression, aligned with our core assumptions of Islamic feminism. Through our analysis of thirteen interviews and our own collaborative autoethnography, as a methodological bricolage, we found the intersections of religious and gendered identities informed female Muslim school leaders’ efforts to advance their school communities. The following data-driven themes ground our theoretical iteration of an asset-driven leadership framework we are naming, Islamic Feminist School Leadership: (a) leading by modelling an equitable, and just ethic; (b) leading by nurturing a communal culture and, (c) leading for transformational resistance. Our study adds the voices of Muslim women school leaders to a broader discourse of anti-imperialist, anti-racist school leadership practices.