Lives Of Muslim Women Research Articles

Culinary Placemaking: Cookbooks as Artifacts of Displaced Muslim Women's Lives

Abstract: This article considers cookbooks written by two displaced Shia Ismaili Muslim women—Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's The Settler's Cookbook and four editions of Noorbanu Nimji's A Spicy Touch —to discover how food becomes a means of placemaking in the diaspora. The authors fled East Africa in the 1970s when Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda and anti-Asian sentiment reverberated in other East African countries as well. They made their way to Europe and North America. Cookbooks were often the earliest texts penned by Ismaili women in the diaspora, yet they remain an understudied archive. This article considers such cookbooks as they give a rare account of this minority Muslim community's settlement in the West. Through the cookbooks we uncover women's contribution to the biological and cultural reproduction of this religious community and discover that placemaking has a culinary dimension. Indeed, studies of refugee placemaking often focus on the built environment; this article extends the definition of place-making to include sensory experiences through which displaced people remember and craft new attachments. Cooking and eating are some such experiences. An examination of Muslim women's culinary placemaking thus enhances our understanding of refugee life and its intersection with religion.

Women’s Reproductive Rights: Between Shariah Demands and Equal Rights

Every woman has the right to determine her reproductive role. This right entitles a special emphasis on women’s ability to make decisions and choices about controlling their bodies, sexuality, and reproductive functions. However, the practice of these rights must be in line with Islamic principles and, at the same time, celebrate existing human rights. People often misunderstand this right as a license for women to control their husbands. Significantly, this right is examined within the Syara framework and implemented following mu’āsharah bi al-ma’rūf recommendations. This study employs a qualitative descriptive approach, incorporating research from scholars and religious interpretations on the equality and harmony of these rights in the lives of Muslim women. This initiative provides a balanced interpretation of the implementation of Muslim women’s reproductive rights by Islamic teachings.

What Social Workers Need to Know about Muslims: An Analysis of the Contemporary Social Work Scholarship.

This article analyzes peer-reviewed English-language social work scholarship on Islam and Muslims published between 2011 and 2021. Of these 127 articles, 70 journal venues are represented, and first authors are primarily American (44 percent), followed by British (15 percent) and Canadian (11 percent). A total of 70 journals published studies analyzing data related to Muslims/Islam and social work, with 46 consisting of only one publication between 2011 and 2021. A total of 13 of these journals had a SCImago Journal Rank indicator of over 0.5, and three with rankings over 1.0. The volume of publications was high in 2015 and 2020, in particular. Major themes include faith-aligned and strengths-based approaches, the importance of mosques in the lives of Muslims, the relevance of the hijab in the lives of Muslim women, and the prevalence and impact of sociopolitical stereotypes. The conclusion calls for still greater culturally respectful approaches to the profession that include Islam and Muslim individuals/communities and ensuring that ethics and practice/research continue to evolve in ways that are culturally relevant to diverse communities.

How do religious beliefs impact economic inactivity among British-Pakistani Muslim women?

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between economic inactivity and religiosity. The aim of the analysis of qualitative data presented here is to examine whether, and how, religious beliefs impact on decisions British-Pakistani Muslim women make about economic activity. Analysis of interview data reveals that none of the interviewees held the belief that economic activity was impermissible (haram) for women in Islam. However, some interviewees held religiously-informed beliefs that paid employment was undesirable, with marked differences in attitudes to economic activity by both age and migrant generation. Alongside this, interviewees described structural constraints to economic activity, for example, limited opportunities for well-paid, local, part-time work. Overall, religious beliefs emerge as significant in the lives of Muslim women because they allow them to make sense of, and find value in, their marginalised positions in relation to the labour market rather than as drivers of economic inactivity.

Deconstructing Hijabs in Sabyn Javeri’s Hijabistan

In the contemporary world of racism and Islamophobia, the Hijab is just the tip of an iceberg, while its meanings are far deeper and more complicated. These heterogeneous meanings of the Hijab and its wearer in the outside world are well handled by Sabyn Javeri, a Pakistani award-winning author and Professor, in her short-story collection called Hijabistan. Comprising 16 politically provocative short stories based on the metaphorical interpretation of the veil in the lives of Muslim women, Javeri challenges the single one-dimensional narratives of hijabi identity by presenting the real usage of Hijab in the right and wrong way within the current society. In each story, the Hijab, takes on a new role; for some it becomes a weapon to satisfy one’s urges, while for others it functions as a source of patriarchal oppression or a symbol of segregation from mainstream society. There are also a few who wear the Hijab as a badge of honor, while others do not see it as a barrier within their active sexual life. The paper focuses on these multi-dimensional meanings of the Hijab while critically analyzing how the characters achieved their goals while wearing the veil and how some are seeking their identity.

난민의 식탁(Refugee Cuisine)

This paper discusses how the view of migrant Muslim women has changed from a security perspective to an object of coexistence. To analyze this process, the paper examines women in migration, immigrant Muslim women in the migration security debate, and the representation and evaluation of immigrant Muslim women's lives in the concept of Refugee Cuisine. In particular, this study introduces the concept of Refugee Cuisine, which has recently been used to refer to the food culture of immigrants, and discusses the implications of this concept. In conclusion, this study examined how migrant Muslim women, who have been categorized as uninitiative, passive, and socially disadvantaged, are expressing their identity and functioning as part of society.

The Aurat March (2018-2022) in the Context of Gendered-Islamophobia: A Case of Muslim Women’s Identity in Pakistan

The role and identity of Muslim women around the world is one of the crucial issues in the current era. Women rights’ activists and other contributors seek to highlight women issues through their work and marches. The present research explores that how these marches are contributing hugely in presenting the image of women in any country to the world. The researcher addresses the cultural and religious differences in terms of gendered Islamophobia and the impact of Aurat March while constructing or contesting the women identity in Pakistani society. Through an analysis of Aurat March, researcher highlights the ways in which the biased representation of Muslim women lives can be either limiting or encouraging. The impact of these events can be reason of rise in negative attitudes and scattered stereotypes, or it might initiate peaceful dialogues and affective measures. The research also analyzes that how a minor negligence can be an additional certificate in the world of Islamophobia and an increase in international narratives against Muslims, Islam, and Pakistani society. The research paper seeks to argue how Aurat March, influenced by secular modern trends transmit Islamophobic stereotypes towards Islam: Muslim women, in general, and Pakistan in specific context. The paper will conclude by analyzing the important insights to counter the gendered Islamophobia in the lives of Muslim women while limiting themselves into gender, culture, and religion. Keywords: Aurat March, gender discourses, Islamophobia, Muslim women, Pakistan

Routes, Roots, and Rihla: Cartography of Feminine Islam in Contemporary Anglophone Travel Narratives by Muslim Women from India

Drawing on Anees Jung’s Night of the New Moon: Encounters with Muslim Women in India (1993) and Nighat Gandhi’s Alternative Realities: Love in the Lives of Muslim Women (2013), two contemporary anglophone travel narratives documenting the lives of Muslim women, the article explores the cartography of feminine Islam in the Indian subcontinent and argues that both authors, in mapping the geography of Muslim women, take inspiration from Rihla narratives, the medieval Islamic genre of travel literature. It explores how the generic esthetics of Adab-al-Rihla (travel literature) resonate with the esthetics employed by the authors in their “eye-witness” accounts of Muslim societies: how journeys in search of Muslim women bring the traveler close to Talib-e-’ilm (knowledge-seeker) of Rihla, how, through their discoveries, the authors reclaim the domain of knowledge production, how the narratives, by incorporating everyday and commonplace, along with ‘aa’jaib and nawadir (strange and rare), remediate sublimity of the genre, and how do the authors map secular and sacred in Muslim geographies raising questions about the spaces that women inhabit. Furthermore, it investigates how, by revealing the feminine, both texts contest the inherent masculinity of Rihla tradition and challenge the hegemonic narratives about women and lived Islam in the subcontinent.

Daily Life of Muslim Women and Health Lifestyle in Three Southern Border Provinces, Thailand

Daily Life of Muslim Women and Health Lifestyle in Three Southern Border Provinces, Thailand

Further investigation of the effects of wearing the hijab: Perception of female facial attractiveness by Emirati Muslim men living in their native Muslim country.

The hijab is central to the lives of Muslim women across the world but little is known about the actual effects exerted by this garment on perceptions of the wearer. Indeed, while previous research has suggested that wearing the hijab may affect the physical attractiveness of women, the actual effect of wearing the hijab on perceptions of female facial attractiveness by Muslim men in a Muslim country is largely unknown. Accordingly, this study investigated the effects of the hijab on female facial attractiveness perceived by practising Muslim men living in their native Muslim country (the United Arab Emirates). Participants were presented with frontal-head images of women shown in three conditions: in the fully covered condition, heads were completely covered by the hijab except for the face; in the partially covered condition, heads were completely covered by the hijab except for the face and areas around the forehead and each side of the face and head; in the uncovered condition, heads had no covering at all. The findings revealed that faces where heads were uncovered or partially covered were rated as equally attractive, and both were rated as substantially more attractive than faces where heads were fully covered. Thus, while wearing the hijab can suppress female facial attractiveness to men, these findings suggest that not all hijab wearing has this effect, and female facial attractiveness for practising Muslim men living in their native Muslim country may not be reduced simply by wearing this garment. Indeed, from the findings we report, slight changes to the positioning of the hijab (the partially covered condition) produce perceptions of facial attractiveness that are no lower than when no hijab is worn, and this may have important implications for wearing the hijab in Muslim societies. Finally, we argue that the pattern of effects we observed is not explained by anti-Islamic feeling or cultural endogamy, and that a major contributory factor is that being fully covered by the hijab occludes external features, especially the hair and lateral parts of the head and face, which, when normally visible, provide a substantial perceptual contribution to human facial attractiveness.

Reproductive Health and Reproductive Justice for Muslim Women

Reproductive justice is defined as “women and girls achieving economic, social, and political power, and the resources to make healthy decisions about one's bodies, sexuality, and reproductive health for themselves and their families and their communities in all areas of [their] lives” (Zavella 2016, 1). Women of color are the targets of much prejudice in American society. (Ginsburg and Rapp 1995). Since September 11th and especially in the Trump era, Muslims continue to be “otherized” and racialized, further marginalizing Muslim women. Muslim women's reproductive health is impacted by reductive and essentialized perspective of their religious practice, a typical view held by contemporary America. Analyzing these disparities through an intersectional lens allows the researcher to confront popular essentialisms to understand the simultaneous interaction of race, class, and gender in the lives of Muslim women. Using this approach in her study of the reproductive health of African American women in Harlem, Leith Mullings (2005).identifies certain structural constraints, including political and economic factors, that cause stressors during pregnancy and health problems for both mother and child. Her findings and similar studies on Latina women beg the question: how do gender and racial discrimination, class bias, and Islamophobia affect the reproductive health of Muslim women? In this paper, I argue that intersectionality as a method and theoretical approach should be applied to Muslim women's reproductive health and reproductive justice issues, and I sketch out the beginning of an answer to that question.

The Sleeping Giant: Australian Rules Football in the Lives of Muslim Women in Western Sydney

The Sleeping Giant: Australian Rules Football in the Lives of Muslim Women in Western Sydney

Koranen er lyd

Denne artikel viser, at kvindelige, københavnske muslimer fra et konservativt moskemiljø bruger den reciterede koran som en integreret del af deres hverdagsrutiner og -praksis. Særligt er sammenhænge, hvor recitationen læres og øves, centrale, og kvinderne arbejder hele tiden på at forbedre og udvide deres recitationskompetencer, f.eks. ved at deltage i undervisning eller ved at lytte til recitation, når de tager bussen. Det er deres opfattelse, at deres recitation altid kan forbedres, og de indgår gennem deres konstante arbejde på at perfektionere deres recitation i det, der med inspiration fra Anna M. Gade (2004) kan beskrives som en vedvarende læringsproces med Koranen. Denne vedvarende læringsproces opfattes som en from og meningsfuld praksis i sig selv, og den er af stor betydning for kvindernes subjektivitetsformation og identifikation som dedikerede og fromme muslimer. Uden at gøre op med de konservative kønsopfattelser, der findes i det miljø, de er tilknyttet, viser kvinderne gennem deres daglige koraniske praksis et religiøst engagement, der lader dem fremstå som centrale islamiske aktører og bærere af Koranen.

The Hijab and Work: Female Entrepreneurship in Response to Islamophobia

This article focuses on the emerging phenomenon of Muslim women’s entrepreneurial networks in France. It seeks to illustrate a causal relationship between a sociopolitical context where state secularism (laicite) has been abusively interpreted as a blank check to enforce religious neutrality in France, which has therefore inadvertently encouraged these entrepreneurial networks. As such, this article positions these networks as form of empowerment to overcome the sense of humiliation, isolation, and exclusion produced by the current context of state secularism in France, rather than solely an illustration of an independent entrepreneurial spirit. The labor market appears as a field in which social and political practices regulating religious visibility have been enacted within a context of religious tensions in French society rising since the late 1980s (Bauberot 2000). This occurs between the pre-eminence of individual freedoms in secularism and the anticlerical tendencies that can be inferred from recent decisions made by French courts. Based on observations of participants in two women’s entrepreneurship networks made as part of my doctoral research on the impact of la nouvelle laicite on the lives of Muslim women in France, this article also draws on qualitative interviews with over 30 Muslim women entrepreneurs and dozens of participants involved in professional network initiatives. Because these networks are rapidly evolving and relatively new, my fieldwork data addresses a significant gap in the literature concerning this particular aspect of the debate concerning laicite. This study makes it possible to observe how in a key part of the private sector—that of entrepreneurial self-employment—the question of the place of religion and its expression in society is a consequence of a particularly French shift away from a common-sense duty of religious neutrality, the result of mounting layers of political debate over the hijab at schools, universities, and hospitals. The Baby Loup case legally confirms the gradual prohibition of public displays of religion outside of the public-sector work environment.

Muslim Women in America: Challenges and Politics of Diversity Within American Muslim Community

This paper will examine the complexities of the struggles faced by young Muslim women within the American Muslim community. Data are part of a study aimed at understanding the ways in which the gendered religious identities of Muslim women are constructed in the United States. This work seeks to address the dearth of research on the lives of Muslim women, and to identify and enhance an understanding of the issues and challenges they face during the process. Participants include 15 women, 18–22 years old, who graduated from an Islamic school in the mid-Atlantic region of America (ISA). Two phenomenological interviews were conducted with each participant. Data were analyzed using critical discourse and content analysis techniques. Findings point towards conflicts within, including those related to the rich racial and ethnic diversity in the community, and to the patriarchal norms that still prevail. Some of these norms along with the perceptions and experiences of American Muslim women guiding their lives will be shared, and will be located within a larger discussion on how the obstacles towards their contribution to this diverse social setting can be dealt with.

Quality of Work Life of Muslim Women

Human beings are basically psychosomatic entities. They join organizations in their capacities to satisfy their economic, social and psychological needs. In any organization an employee has to adhere to the given quality of working life and play pre-formatted prescribed roles. Hence, a good quality of working life in any organization play an integral part to develop employee’s working skills, positive attitudes towards their job in particular and organization as a whole, level of job satisfaction and commitment for their respective organization. This theoretical endeavor reviews the historical perspective of quality of work life, nature and definitions of quality of work life, dimensions of quality of work life, construct of quality of work life, components of quality of work life and approaches and scopes of quality of work life. This article also explores some important aspects of Muslim female employee where quality of work life has positive effects. The article concludes with vibrant implications of quality of work life in any organization which is in thrust of development.

Autobiography and Muslim Women’s Lives

The article presents literary criticism of the book Lahore With Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani-Style by Fawzia Afzal-Khan. It references the article Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity by historian Joan Wallach Scott. Particular focus is given to a psychoanalytic reading of Afzak-Khan's memoir which explores the role of autobiography in the cultural representation of Muslim women's lives. Topics discussed include oppression, Islam, and feminism.

Some views on the life of Muslim women in Turkestan in the late XIX - early XX centuries

Issues of public health and education of Muslim women much gained in importance in Russian Turkestan in the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. In the 1880s European classes, clinics and other institutions were set up in local towns. The first clinic for indigenous Muslim women and children, for instance, appeared in Tashkent in 1883. Gradually they caught on. These changes were well reflected in mass media, mostly newspapers, which constitute an important yet poorly studied primary source for the study of pre-Revolutionary Turkestan.

Contending with the Hyphen(s): Muslim women negotiating identity, gender and conflict in New Zealand

This article examines processes of identity creation in the lives of Muslim women in New Zealand who have experienced their young-to-mid adulthood after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Identity construction for these women has subsequently become increasingly complex negotiating between popular essentialist stereotypes often ascribed to Islam, and dynamic conditions of diaspora and minority contexts. These macroscopic issues are negotiated in the processes of the women’s identity articulations. Drawing on the narratives of individual women of Islamic faith, as well as theoretical perspectives regarding ‘hyphenated identities’, this article explores the syncretic formulations of identity that contradict stereotypical notions, and which advocate for women and create new avenues for the conceptualization of self–hood.

English

English