“You Are My Garment”: Muslim Women, Religious Education and Self-Transformation in Contemporary Singapore

Abstract

Since 2007, Singaporean graduates of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University have offered a new type of religious class that incorporates self-help rhetoric with the Quran and Hadith (prophetic traditions). Like their counterparts in Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen and Egypt, the returnees market their costly lessons as opportunities for young ethnic and religious minority Muslim graduates of Singapore’s secular universities to apply new understandings of their faith to everyday spheres. These new preachers utilise social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to proselytise and market their lessons. Although their seminars attract male participants, the vast majority of students are professional women seeking to fashion ideal Muslim selves while pursuing their careers. In this paper, I interrogate the following questions: How do women preachers and students perform their authority in interpreting Islam? How do male preachers, in turn, conceptualise and negotiate women’s religious authority? Although professedly apolitical, how does the women’s embrace of globally commodified Islam, social media and eclectic pedagogical incentives reframe conventional notions of Islamic “piety” and “education” and affect dominant male religious authority and interpretation?