Australian Muslim Women Research Articles

Where Intersectionality and Multiculturalism Meet: Australian Muslim Women's Experiences of Domestic and Family Violence.

Gendered violence in minority communities has long been a flashpoint for debates on multiculturalism. Whereas multiculturalism has been critiqued for not supporting gender equality, intersectionality has been heralded as a solution to ensuring women receive holistic responses. This article draws findings from a broader study on domestic and family violence (DFV) in Australian Muslim communities, highlighting how intersectionality, as applied in the Australian context, often fails to attend to the depth of Australian Muslim women's experiences. Participants' reflections showcase a number of limitations as well as how multicultural frameworks can provide the infrastructure to meaningfully engage with their particular cultural and religious needs. The insights contribute to scholarship that critiques tokenistic applications of intersectionality.

‘We’re Islam in Their Eyes’: Using an Interpellation Framework to Understand Why Being a Woman Matters When Countering Islamophobia

Australian Muslim women are far more likely to be the target of Islamophobic attacks than men, and common narratives often paint Muslim women merely as victims of Islamophobia. This article takes a new approach and considers how Muslim women may counter Islamophobia and the various audiences they must contend with in their work. Using de Koning’s interpellation framework, this research investigates why Australian Muslim women believe gender matters in public countering Islamophobia work and proposes new developments to the framework based on the way Australian Muslim women must mediate the ascriptions of both non-Muslims and Muslim men. This research draws on in-depth interviews with Sunni, Shi’i, and Ahmadiyya women from around Australia who are active in public countering Islamophobia education initiatives.

‘When Have Dolce and Gabbana Ever Cared about the Hijab?’ Social Media, Fashion and Australian Muslim Women’s Perceptions and Expression of Hijab

The scale of the representation of the Islamic head covering has increased exponentially over the last decade because of a range of factors, including growth in the modest fashion business sector and increased visibility of Muslim women in hijab in the public space. Social media has played a big role in changing perceptions of the Islamic head covering, via promotion and advertising. Meanwhile, the mainstream fashion industry has included options targeting the modest Muslim female market further, adding to changes in the representation and perception of the hijab. This research will examine the impact of social media and mainstream retail on Australian Muslim women’s perceptions and expressions of hijab. Using interviews and online surveys it explores the links between the fashion industry, social media, and changes in how Muslim women view the hijab. The majority of Australian Muslim women spoken to followed various hijabi bloggers or influencers although only a small proportion adopted recommendations from these hijabi bloggers or influencers (such as purchasing products, or incorporating suggestions on modest clothing or modest style trends). They believed migration, liberalism, social media marketing, and the inclusion of Muslim women in mainstream fashion has contributed to a form of commodification and commercialisation of the hijab. Furthermore, using hijab models as promotional tools to market the products, as well as the use of social media bloggers and influencers to represent them was perceived as tokenistic and disingenuous.

‘The Whole Concept of Social Cohesion, I Thought, “This Is So Qur’anic”’: Why Australian Muslim Women Work to Counter Islamophobia

Islamophobia is on the rise in many Western countries, and while previous research has considered the causes of Islamophobia and the impact it has on its victims, little research has investigated the attitudes and experiences of Muslims who are working to counter Islamophobia, and particularly those of Muslim women. This research investigates the motivations and intentions of Australian Muslim women who run public engagement events for non-Muslims to counter Islamophobia and build social cohesion. Data were obtained via in-depth interviews with 31 Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya Muslim women in four Australian capital cities. The three main themes that emerged were that the women wanted to connect with the non-Muslims who attended the events, create positive social change, and increase the knowledge that non-Muslims had about Islam and Muslims. Significantly, the women said that their most important motivator was their faith, and they rejected the idea that they were doing such work to appease non-Muslims. Instead, they saw work was an affirmation of their identity as Muslim women and their commitment to God.

Navigating the Disjuncture Between Domestic and Family Violence Systems: Australian Muslim Women’s Challenges when Disclosing Violence

ABSTRACT This study uses an intersectional lens to examine disclosure among Australian Muslim women experiencing domestic and family violence (DFV). Findings reveal a disjuncture between formal DFV systems and Australian Muslim women’s realities. The disjuncture is fuelled by three key factors: reluctance to disclose violence due to discrimination and marginalisation; a disconnect between the language the women use to describe violence and the language used by formal DFV systems; and disclosures and identification of violence occurring primarily outside of formal DFV systems. The factors that lead to the disjuncture described above are shaped by all three of Crenshaw’s forms of intersectionality, demonstrating that while intersectionality can improve responses to disclosures of violence by marginalised women, it can only do so with a holistic application of the concept. One of the key implications of this is that investment is needed to increase the capacity of informal networks and non-DFV specific formal systems to identify and respond to violence in order to better respond to Australian Muslim women’s intersectional experiences. Acknowledging the factors affecting Australian Muslim women’s experiences of disclosure also yields benefits for other marginalised women.

Muslim Women’s Religious Leadership: The Case of Australian Mosques

In the history of all religions, there has been a male monopoly over religious leadership. In most Muslim societies in particular, men have enjoyed indisputable authority over religious leadership roles in the spaces of worship and communal gatherings. However, in recent decades, some Muslim women have contested this ownership and have taken up space in mosques and other religious spaces to teach and lead prayer for other women or for both genders. Yet, women’s religious leadership roles in contemporary mosques in both Muslim and Western countries are contested. Research on this topic in the Australian context is limited to very few studies. In this article, I will review the historic debate around female religious authority—particularly women’s leadership roles in the mosque. The relationship between Islam, gender and religious authority, as well as the initiation of female Imams, will also be explored. Online written interviews were conducted with twenty Muslim women drawn from three Australian Muslim online Facebook groups to determine how these women perceive female religious authority and, in particular, how they view female Imams leading prayer in the mosque. Building on the participants’ narratives, the paper investigates the didactic potential and challenges that Australian Muslim women may have with regard to greater inclusion in religious authority and decision-making positions.

PERANAN AMWCHR DALAM UPAYA PENURUNAN ANGKA PERNIKAHAN ANAK DAN PAKSA DALAM KOMUNITAS MUSLIM DI AUSTRALIA

Abstract: The whole world has recognized that child marriage and forced marriage (CFM) are acts that are contrary to human rights and are considered to be gender-based violence. The Australian Government since 2013 through its constitution has criminalized acts of child and forced marriage so that the perpetrators can be subject to criminal penalties. However, this policy did not effectively reduce the effect on CFM cases in Australia. It is proven that from 2017 to 2019 there was an increase in the number of victims of forced marriage and children who were categorized as victims of human trafficking in Australia. The criminal law in the CFM case is considered ineffective because the protective impact is not sustainable. The high rate of forced marriage among Muslim women in Australia is driven by high gender inequality, migration and harmful traditional cultural practices. The Australian Muslim Women's Center for Human Rights (AMWCHR) is a Muslim women's organization that seeks to advance the rights and status of Muslim women in Australia. AMWCHR has multicultural and hybridity characteristics that are not tied to any Islamic sect. This article aims to analyze the role of the AMWCHR in efforts to reduce the rate of child, early and forced marriage for Muslim women, especially in the Australian region with sustainable protection and prevention programs, based on gender equality and the principle of multi-culturalism. Keywords: Australian Government, AMWCHR, Child Early and Forced Marriage, Australian Muslim.

Guilty When Innocent. Australian Government’s Resistance to Bringing Home Wives and Children of Islamic State Fighters

Currently there are 20 Australian women and 47 children being held in the Al-Roj camp in Northern Syria, who are the family members of Islamic State fighters. The Australian government argues that it is both unsafe for government officials to rescue those held in the camp and unsafe for Australia to repatriate these women and children. This security rhetoric is commonly understood as Australia’s abandonment of its citizens and their entitlements to protection and repatriation. This paper argues that the Australian government is condemning its citizens to a condition of statelessness and displacement, simulating the following conditions under which refugees and asylum seekers are forced to live: murder, violence, deprivation of adequate food and shelter, disease, and the potential hazards of the COVID-19 infection. Rendering its citizens to a condition of statelessness and displacement constitutes both punishment meted out on those deemed guilty by their presence in Syria, and provides the Australian government the opportunity to revoke the citizenship of women and children. Three Australian women who travelled to Syria have already been stripped of their Australian citizenship. This paper explores the conditions and methods by which the Australian government has erased the entitlements, protections and certainty of citizenship for Australian Muslim women and children.

Dismantling the Deadlock: Australian Muslim Women’s Fightback against the Rise of Right-Wing Media

In Australia, as in other multicultural countries, the global Islamophobic discourse linking Muslims to terrorists to refugees results in the belief of an “enemy within”, which fractures the public sphere. Muslim minorities learn to distrust mainstream media as the global discourse manifests in localised right-wing discussion. This fracturing was further compounded in 2020 with increased media concentration and polarisation. In response, 12 young Australian Muslim women opened themselves up to four journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). They engaged in critical journalism research called Frame Reflection Interviews (FRIs). The process gave journalists important knowledge around the power dynamics of Islamophobia and empowered participants to help shape new media discourses tackling Islamophobia. This paper proposes that the FRIs are one method to rebuild trust in journalism while redistributing risk towards the journalists. These steps are necessary to build a normatively cosmopolitan global public sphere capable of breaking the discursive link between refugees and terrorism and fighting back against the rise of the far right.

Negotiating Gendered Religious Space: Australian Muslim Women and the Mosque

Women’s presence and role in contemporary mosques in Western countries is contested within and outside Muslim communities, but research on this topic is limited and only a few studies consider women’s roles inside mosques in Australia. There is a complex intersection of gender and religion in public sacred spaces in all religious communities, including Muslim communities. Women’s role in these spaces has often been restricted. They are largely invisible in both public sacred spaces and in public rituals such as congregational prayers. Applying a feminist lens to religion and gender, this article explores how a mosque as a socially constructed space can both enable and restrict Australian Muslim women’s religious identity, participation, belonging and activism. Based on written online qualitative interviews with twenty Muslim women members of three Australian Muslim online Facebook groups, this article analyses the women’s experiences with their local mosques as well as their views on gender segregation.

Experiences of Abused Muslim Women With the Australian Criminal Justice System.

The confidence of intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors/victims in the criminal justice system (CJS) is important to consider when exploring intervention and prevention strategies toward deterring IPV. Information on the experiences of IPV survivors/victims with the justice system is greatly lacking. This issue is even more so for IPV survivors/victims for minority communities such as Australian-Muslims. The lack of cultural and religious sensitivity that many immigrant women experience with the CJS deters them from accessing the CJS. In addition, the contrast between the mediation processes in courts and those of religious requirements may make the mediation processes ineffective if they do not include the perpetrators in the mediation process. Furthermore, for many migrant women, their lack of knowledge about their rights under the Australian legal system renders them powerless to undertake active action against IPV in their relationships. Due to the lack of research on Muslim women's experiences, it is difficult to ascertain how the justice system response can effectively address IPV issues for Australian Muslim women. It is therefore necessary to solicit Muslim women's views and explore past experiences with the justice system to inform future reforms that will better meet the justice response needs of Muslim women in Australia. This article explores Muslim women's positive and negative experiences with the justice system in response to their IPV victimization. It also investigates the constraints that have deterred Muslim women from seeking assistance from the Australian criminal justice system (ACJS), particularly in the reporting of intimate partner violence. The findings of this research give voice to Muslim women's past experiences with the CJS. It is expected that the findings will influence practical outcomes that can facilitate strategies by the CJS to promote inclusiveness among Muslim women to increase their confidence in the CJS.

Young Muslim women: the ambivalences of speaking out

ABSTRACT This paper explores how a small group of young Australian Muslim women are engaging with the discourses of gender, religion and culture in their lives. It draws on data gathered from a study that evaluated aprogramme designed to support learning and public action for human rights. The paper highlights these young women’s experiences of the double bind of racism and patriarchy in their lives around familial/community and public ideas about what it means to be a good Muslim woman. In light of this burden of representation, the paper draws attention to the ambivalences of responsibility and risk the young women express about speaking out against the issues that concern them. We conclude with a consideration of the significance community-driven and localized advocacy represents in Muslim women moving beyond the double bind.

Australian Muslim women and fitness choices – myths debunked

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to better understand the underrepresentation of Muslim women living in Australia in physical activity and in group-fitness classes in particular. The authors contend that the Australian fitness industry has ignored the needs of this group through stereotypical islamophobic views focusing on religious dictates as the prime barrier for participation of this group. This study debunks this myth showing that motivations for exercise are complex and multi-faceted.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted interviews and a focus group with 27 Muslim women living in Australia. Through this method, the authors explored the role of religiosity and national culture in attitudes towards participation in exercise, gym attendance and group fitness classes.FindingsThe authors confirmed that while religion impacted the form and place of exercise options, it did not impact the overall motivation to engage in exercise. This study found that group-fitness classes offered by gyms did not particularly appeal to this group of women, partially due to their religion (this form of exercise being too aggressive and immodest) and partially due to their ethnic background. Exercise options that were more social were favoured. The authors found that notions of femininity and culturally embedded expectations for the role of women were more powerful predictors of exercise engagement and choice of exercise type.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is exploratory in nature and as such its findings are restricted to the small sample. To extend this study’s implications, a larger empirical study should be conducted and needs to also consider the intersection between national culture and religiosity on decision-making.Practical implicationsThis study has practical implications for the fitness industry attempting to attractive new markets in a multi-cultural population. To attract Muslim women, gyms and fitness centres need to consider providing appropriate areas for women to exercise that allow them to maintain their modesty. To attract this segment, fitness products that are focused on a holistic approach to wellness and highlight opportunities for social interaction should be developed. Focusing on this group as a market segment needs to include a broader contextualisation of their lifestyles and individual situations and should not just focus on their religion.Social implicationsThe requirements of the Muslim religion for women to adopt conservative dress and to avoid contact with men do hinder their ability and also their desire to exercise to maintain a healthy mind and body. Many of these women would like to exercise but find it difficult to find the right settings and form of exercise that suits their needs. Engaging in exercise with others is also an important way for these women to integrate into their communities and to assimilate with the national culture.Originality/valueThis research is original in that it is one of the first to explore attitudes of Muslim women towards exercise and group-fitness classes in Australia. In particular, it includes an examination of the impact of religiosity on motivations and attitudes towards fitness and is the first to consider the relationship between religion, ethnic background and notions of femininity in the context of fitness. The influence of religiosity is an area heavily impacted by cultural bias and stereotyping, and it is therefore important for a deeper understanding of this issue in the services domain.

Strategies of resistance to anti-Islamic representations among Australian Muslim women: an intersectional approach

ABSTRACTContemporary anti-Islamic discourses in Australia construct Islam as an uncivilised belief system and its Muslim followers as homogenous unassimilable Others. Within these discourses, the diversity among Muslim women has been overshadowed, and they are constructed as a monolithic ‘veiled’ woman. Drawing on 20 conversational interviews with veiled and unveiled Australian Muslim women from various cultural backgrounds, this paper explores the diverse ways in which Muslim women resist and challenge anti-Islamic discourses on Islam, Muslims and Muslim women. Guided by intersectional theories on identity and resistance, our analysis show that the women drew on discursive and performative strategies to contest anti-Islamic representations that homogenise and vilify Muslims and construct Muslim women as veiled and oppressed. The findings also show that the ways in which women contested hegemonic anti-Islamic representations were diverse and informed by intersecting power and social locations, including race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Implications for research on resistance and identity negotiations of minority groups are discussed.

Challenging stereotypes: Muslim girls talk about physical activity, physical education and sport

Often labelled as ‘problematic’ within health and physical education (HPE) and sporting literature, young Muslim women's participation is frequently understood through both cultural and religious limitations seen to be placed upon them. Although these factors are negotiated by many young Muslim women, and contribute to the way in which some will understand and participate in physical activity, it would be misleading of those working within the fields of HPE and sport to assume that these are definitive, and apply to all. Through exploring the diverse ways in which eleven young, Australian Muslim women spoke about, and engaged in, physical activity, we provide a different narrative for HPE teachers and community based practitioners to both consider and draw upon in their curriculum and policy design and daily practices.

Religious Conversion, Models and Paradigms

This papers examines the experiences of converts to Islam among Australian women in the milieu of polemic views and debates such as ‘Islam versus the west', which is most visible in the image of the ‘eastern' ‘oppressed' Muslim woman. Employing the experiences of Australian Muslim women converts in Melbourne, issues concerning identity politics, and the individuals and social dimensions of conversion are investigated. While there is an array of literature about Muslim women from various disciplines including anthropology, sociology, politics, cultural studies and gender studies, among others, this paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine debates that have based their discussion on the image of the Muslim woman. Marco debates concerning issues such as multiculturalism, integration, Islam and the West debates including the ‘clash of civilizations' have been largely centred on the image of the Muslim women. The debate concerning the inherent conflict between Islam and West intensified after 11 th of September 2001 with the terrorist attacks in the United States and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2002. It is during this critical period I interviewed Muslim converts in order to gain first-hand insight into their experiences as Muslims. This paper employs primary data collected during this historical period to examine issues regarding broader issues of identity politics, religious conversion as well as the everyday life experiences of female converts to Islam.

A multiculturalism–feminism dispute: Muslim women and the Sharia debate in Canada and Australia

Canadian Muslim women, as opposed to their Australian counterparts, have attained prominent social status not only in terms of their contribution to electoral politics but also in other political spheres. With its focus on the Sharia debate, this paper investigates one potential explanation for this difference. Challenging Okin's feminist perspective, which claims that multiculturalism is an undesirable policy for emancipation, it is argued that multiculturalism facilitates agency of female members of Muslim communities. A comparative examination of the Sharia debate between the two secular countries of Canada and Australia demonstrates that the former's more robust multicultural polity in terms of responding to requests to adopt the Sharia have not only culminated in Muslim women's empowerment but have enhanced their political representation. In contrast, Australian Muslim women have neither had the opportunity to articulate their position with regard to Sharia nor to contribute to an important issue that could have empowered them.

The masjid is for men: competing voices in the debate about Australian Muslim women's access to mosques

Muslims in Australia, as in other English-speaking and European nations, live as a religious minority where community infrastructure is still being built, thus intensifying the role of the local mosque as the centre of Muslim religious and community life. Despite evidence that the spatial sunna of the Prophet gave women full access to the masjid, many Australian mosques practise segregation and varying levels of exclusion, which disenfranchises the female half of the community. Segregation and exclusion are defended through use of the fear of sexual fitna trope that arose from patriarchal interpretations of, and interpolations into, Islamic source texts. Nevertheless, fundamentalist and contextualist voices have defended the right of women to fully access mosques. Contextualists in particular base this on the need to provide fresh fiqh interpretations appropriate to the exigencies of modern life, pointing out that many other traditional rulings from the fiqh of mosques have been abandoned or modified in the Australian context.

On being australian and muslim

Synopsis — The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges upon the role of Muslim women. The role and status of Australian Muslim women, in turn, can only be understood by considering the cumulative impact of the situation in which Muslims find themselves in Australia, religiopolitical developments in the Muslim world, and the recent developments in the international politics between the Islamic world and the West. Muslim women are caught in the middle. On the one hand, they feel it essential to demonstrate their loyalty, symbolized through veiling of an increasing number of Muslim women, to the world Islamic Ummah [community]. But by doing so they place themselves on the margin of the wider Australian community to whom Muslim women’s veiling symbolizes the “Other,” the peculiar and dangerous foreigners. This article deals with these dilemmas of Australian Muslim women and their role as defenders of Islamic heritage. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd

Woman and Islam

The identity of the Muslims in Australia, whether as Australians or as Muslims, hinges upon the role of Muslim women. The role and status of Australian Muslim women, in turn, can only be understood by considering the cumulative impact of the situation in which Muslims find themselves in Australia, religiopolitical developments in the Muslim world, and the recent developments in the international politics between the Islamic world and the West. Muslim women are caught in the middle. On the one hand, they feel it essential to demonstrate their loyalty, symbolized through veiling of an increasing number of Muslim women, to the world Islamic Ummah [community]. But by doing so they place themselves on the margin of the wider Australian community to whom Muslim women’s veiling symbolizes the “Other,” the peculiar and dangerous foreigners. This article deals with these dilemmas of Australian Muslim women and their role as defenders of Islamic heritage.