British South Asian Muslim Research Articles

Intersectionality as personal: the science identity of two young immigrant Muslim women

ABSTRACT This paper studies intersectional multiplicity by encompassing the ways individuals shape relationships between social structures and their science identity. We discuss the science lives of two sixteen-year-old British South-Asian Muslim women studying in a single-sex independent school in London, both of whom aspire to science careers. Adapting McCall’s ‘intracategorical complexity’ in favouring a case study approach, we present the multiplicity of our participants’ relationships with exclusion and inequality, discrimination and privilege within their lived social settings, and how these relationships shape their identities and ambitions to become scientists. Our findings reveal that despite their similarities in their societally ascribed intersectional makeup, Ayesha and Hanya differ in viewing their intersections as challenges and/or opportunities. They both portray agentic control towards ‘going against the grain’ as future women scientists by negotiating their intersections as they develop their science identity.

Courting agency: gender and divorce in an English sharia council

ABSTRACT Sharia councils have been in existence in England since the 1980s, providing advice and guidance in matters of Islamic family law. The vast majority of their users are women applying for Islamic divorces. The ulamā (scholars) at the councils encourage reconciliation and only grant divorces where this is deemed impossible. This paper, based on observations at a large sharia council in East London, supplements earlier institutional analyses by focusing not on what the ulamā are doing, but on what women are doing at the council. The paper identifies a spectrum of compliance with the council and its procedures, ranging between those who say they just want what the sharia wants, to foot-dragging, actively contesting the ulamā and exiting the council. Further, these forms of engagement may change over time. Overall, the paper contributes by illustrating the complexity of British South Asian Muslim women’s identities and affiliations and engaging with questions of gendered agency. It is clear that even when women petitioners contest, confront or exit the council, they may inscribe their moves within, rather than in opposition to, Islamic norms and values. The paper draws out the wider political implications of this non-opposition between Islamic subject positions and agency.

A British South Asian Muslim relational negotiation of divorce: uncoupling beyond the couple

Through analysis of the narratives of one British South Asian Muslim woman contemplating divorce, this article explores how the termination of marriage is negotiated within families. The article charts the involvement and emotional implication of multiple family members in the decision at multiple levels: the interpersonal, via their involvement as sounding boards, advisers and mediators, and the intersubjective, as people’s sense of their own internal will or resolve to divorce is dialogical and unstably tied to others’ expressed views. The negotiation of divorce is an agentic intervention in the reordering of relationships and sheds light on wider processes linking agency, culture and belief. While these multiple levels of the relational negotiation of divorce may be particularly piqued in South Asian contexts, there are wider implications for sociology as, in contrast with individualisation theory, uncoupling is shown to involve more than the feelings and choices of just the husband and wife.

Questioning the Category of ‘Spiritual Capital’ Drawing upon Field Studies of ‘Spiritual Entrepreneurs’ and their Role in the Economic and Social Development of British South Asian Muslims

The article explores the categories “social” and “spiritual capital” used by sociologists and argues that, on the basis of field studies, by the author and also Pnina Werbner, carried out on “spiritual entrepreneurs,” namely South Asian origin Sufi shaykhs in the UK, the category of “spiritual capital” needs to be sharpened, even redefined, in order to create distance from the category of “social capital.” The article critically explores a number of social theorists who have commented on spiritual capital as a form of social capital and challenges their understandings of religious phenomena.

Making Gender Ma(R)King Place: Youthful British Pakistani Muslim Women's Narratives of Urban Space

This paper draws on a case study of youthful British Pakistani Muslim women located in one of the largest Pakistani Muslim communities in the UK, in the city of Birmingham, to examine their narratives of urban space. These narratives illuminate the performance of gendered, Muslim, public spatialities, a term I use to refer to the spatial practices and personal geographies of the body and territory. I explore the ways in which the everyday life world that cuts across South Asian Muslim society and a public realm encoded with secular liberal democratic values configures the spatial ranges, practices, and personal geographies of youthful Pakistani Muslim women. I identify the ideological, material, and affective modalities through which these are given form at the intersection of place, ‘race’, gender, and religion. Finally, I illustrate the ways in which the dynamic multiethnic, multicultural milieu of Birmingham's ‘Little Pakistan’ localities offer youthful Pakistani Muslim women alternative repertoires for remaking the self, promoting cultural change and a greater sense of inclusiveness and belonging In doing so I foreground the fluidity and dynamic character of British South Asian Muslim cultures, contesting their representations as fixed and bounded

Graduating towards marriage? Attitudes towards marriage and relationships among university-educated British Muslim women

This paper examines educated British South Asian Muslim women's conceptualisations, experiences of, and attitudes towards relationships and contemporary Muslim matrimonial practices, and notions of love and ‘Islamic’ or ‘halal’ relationships. Following a brief critique of representations of ‘arranged marriages’, this paper explores the shift from parentally arranged matrimonial matches to the highly individualised and commercialised matrimonial events that now characterise the British Muslim matrimonial scene. The paper highlights tensions between beliefs that the possession of a degree for Muslim women confers greater choice in matrimony and is thus highly beneficial in order to ‘secure’ an appropriate matrimonial match, and lived realities around difficulties in meeting suitable partners as factors such as increased age or being ‘over-qualified’ become significant. I argue that static terminologies such as ‘arranged marriage’ are no longer useful when describing processes of social change that are fluid and subject to continual negotiation and renegotiation and are contingent instead, upon localised, personalised, religious and transnational interpretations and influences.

Perceptions of the processes of radicalisation and de-radicalisation among British South Asian Muslims in a post-industrial city

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study exploring the perceptions of British South Asian Muslims in relation to the pathways towards radicalisation and the challenges of community leadership in relation to de-radicalisation. The study is based on in-depth interviews, using an ethnographic methodological framework, with a purposive sample of 30 Muslim men and women, including senior political figures, community leaders, religious figures and young Muslims (aged 18–25) from across the city of Birmingham, UK. The fieldwork was carried out between September 2005 and May 2007. Respondents reflected a general perspective that regards social exclusion, Islamophobia, lack of effective theological and political leadership, regressive anti-terror law and geo-political events as principal factors in the radicalisation and the de-radicalisation of British Muslims. These findings provide important insights into Muslims in Britain in relation to questions of ‘radicalism’ and politics, and they have specific implications for research, policy and practice in this area.

Integration, minorities and the rhetoric of civilization: the case of British Pakistani Muslims in the UK and Malay Muslims in Singapore

This article discusses, through a comparative approach, the experience of young Muslims in Singapore and the UK as far as integration is concerned. The paper suggests that one of the main issues faced by young Muslims, in both countries, is how they are represented and understood. Indeed, British South Asian Muslims as well as Malay Muslim Singaporeans are still living in a dynamic of postcolonialism. The heritage of British colonialism still, although latently, works through the creation of categories and classifications of how identity should be defined. In both the cases of British South Asian Muslims and Singaporean Malay Muslims, there is often an unspoken request for the imagined ethnic minority to mimic the ‘achiever’ majority. It is in this dynamic that we can recognize what I have called a ‘rhetoric of civilization’.

British Pakistani Muslim Women's Political Empowerment and Boundary Crossings: Case Studies

This paper traces the ways in which three Pakistani British Muslim women traverse a series of geographical and ideological spaces in their engagement with social justice issues and electoral politics. The women, all from the northern city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan, have been politically active in Manchester and Blackburn in northern England. Drawing upon in-depth interviews and several informal conversations conducted over a period of four years, I examine how these British Muslim women have resisted some of the constraints upon their lives – including those reproduced through negative media representations – through engagement with a series of spaces: national and regional spaces, geographies of home and family, gendered spaces, racialised spaces and public sites of resistance. British South Asian Muslim women’s identities continue to be associated with veiling, forced marriages, honour killings and non-integrated lives within the dominant culture. This essay aims to contest some of these stereotypical assumptions. In doing so, the paper provides insights into varying expressions among racialised populations as well as contributing to scholarship on the confi gurations between space and racialised people.

Identities and agency in religious spheres: a study of British Muslim women's experience

This article examines the ways in which British born South Asian Muslim women engage with Islam through study circles, using data drawn from participant observation of, and interviews with, 25 women in two major cities in northern England. I argue that the religious spaces within which the women participate allow them to assert various identities, as well as agency, as they collectively search to comprehend Islam. In particular, I demonstrate that in traversing these religious spheres, women transform them from male dominated sites to spaces wherein feminine, political and cosmopolitan identities are expressed. Scholarship on Islamic feminism in western contexts has focused on visible symbols such as the veil and little attention has been given to the social processes that Muslim women may engage in order to better understand and practise Islam. For the women who formed part of this study, the veil was only one aspect of their religious identity. In examining religious spheres such as the mosque, I argue these are not disembodied sites where only religious rituals are performed, but are created, discursive spaces and social networks that allow women to feel empowered within British society.

Re-thinking sport: physical activity and healthy living in British South Asian Muslim communities

An increase in the participation rates of British South Asian Muslim communities in sport and physical activity is a high priority in both the sport and health sectors. Interventions emanating from the sport development sector have to date achieved little significant growth of activity. However, interventions within the health sector appear to be more successful in engaging South Asian communities in activity. This paper is based on field research in a Healthy Living Centre in Blackburn, a town with a large South Asian Muslim community. The research suggests that within such communities a mode of delivery grounded in physical activity and personal health is likely to be more successful than one based on sport and competition. However, it also identifies other cultural factors that will need to be addressed if participation rates are to be further increased.

Muslim Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in Britain

I explore British South Asian Muslim women’s experiences of higher education and how it impacts identity construction and negotiation. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-five undergraduate and post-graduate Muslim female university students, I reflect on their perceived and actual experiences. By stressing how representations of them influence their participation and experiences, I analyze how individual subjectivities are mediated and negotiated while reflecting common experiences. I also consider their accounts of the social and personal benefits they felt that they gained during their studies, as well as to the more disturbing and racialized aspects of their experiences. They differentiated between three overlapping forms of beneficial experience: academic, social, and personal. While instances of anti-Muslim racism were rare or subtle, certain university structures and expectations of what being a mainstream student means often contributed to a noted sense of “othering.” I conclude by highlighting how their accounts of their university experiences directly challenge those stereotypes that misrepresent educated Muslim women as “religious and cultural rebels.”

Muslim Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in Britain

I explore British South Asian Muslim women’s experiences of higher education and how it impacts identity construction and negotiation. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-five undergraduate and post-graduate Muslim female university students, I reflect on their perceived and actual experiences. By stressing how representations of them influence their participation and experiences, I analyze how individual subjectivities are mediated and negotiated while reflecting common experiences. I also consider their accounts of the social and personal benefits they felt that they gained during their studies, as well as to the more disturbing and racialized aspects of their experiences. They differentiated between three overlapping forms of beneficial experience: academic, social, and personal. While instances of anti-Muslim racism were rare or subtle, certain university structures and expectations of what being a mainstream student means often contributed to a noted sense of “othering.” I conclude by highlighting how their accounts of their university experiences directly challenge those stereotypes that misrepresent educated Muslim women as “religious and cultural rebels.”

The Predicament of Diaspora and Millennial Islam

This article considers the production of an Islamic utopian or millennial discourse by British South Asian Muslims in the diasporic public sphere and its possible impact on the younger generation of Muslims growing up in the UK. Associated with such a discourse, the article considers the vulnerability of diasporas – the process whereby global events can precipitate radical diasporic estrangement, leading to self-estrangement. Such estrangement is fed by moral panics, expressed in the speeches of politicians, in newspaper columns and global news reports. This exposes the fragility of multicultural discourses in the public sphere in the UK.

Modern Traditions? British Muslim Women and Academic Achievement

Participation rates in higher education for British South Asian Muslim women are steadily increasing. The aim of this article, therefore, is to explore motivations and influences for entering higher education and to consider how these may contribute to current discourses surrounding Muslim women in Britain. The possible impact higher education may have on their future relationships and lifestyle choices is also briefly considered. Various notions of 'agency' have been expressed that are characteristic of the ongoing complex assessments made by these women in relation to both perceived familial obligations and their own aspirations. Their articulations suggest that higher education is increasingly viewed as a necessary asset in maintaining and gaining social prestige. This preliminary research indicates that young South Asian Muslim women are continually negotiating and renegotiating their cultural, religious and personal identities and that these processes operate in complex and sometimes contradictory ways.

Negotiating diasporic identities: Young british south asian muslim women

Recent work by cultural theorists has celebrated the “cultures of hybridity” associated with diasporic populations. This paper draws upon research undertaken with young British South Asian Muslim women to explore some of the everyday dilemmas of negotiating diasporic identities. I begin by emphasising the contextual and contingent ways in which diasporic identities are expressed. Diasporic identities are always configured through gender, and I illustrate how the respondents negotiate diasporic identities in relation to both changing familial gender ideals and gender relations and against racialised gender stereotypes. Finally, I consider how the young women are exploring possibilities for reworking gender identities by drawing on alternative diasporic identifications.