Muslim Women In Britain Research Articles

Collective vulnerability between the researcher and the researched: a reflection on researcher positionality and ‘safety’ in the study of Islamophobia in economic Muslim migrants

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on collective vulnerability shared between the researcher and the researched, specifically in relation to studying the impact of Islamophobia in South Asian Muslim women in Britain. I reflect on my PhD study, and explore the tensions within the research space vis-à-vis researcher positionality. Puwar’s ‘Space Invaders’ is employed to explore the possibilities of disrupting power within research. This paper, therefore, reflects on the role of ‘collective vulnerability’ as a key to creating and maintaining a ‘safe’/ ‘counterspace’ to dislodge the trappings of employing a vertical gaze on data.

"You Need To Let Go of Control”: Critical Reflections of a Participatory Action Research Doctoral Project with Muslim Women in Britain

This article explores the ethical and practical complexities of conducting participatory action research (PAR) as a doctoral student and shares findings from a doctoral study co-developed with Muslim women living in Britain to promote social change. Through the development of a visual methods (Photovoice) project, 16 Muslim women collaborated to document new understandings of what Muslim womanhood, religious agency, and empowerment mean to them, within the broader context of gendered Islamophobia. The findings reveal the complexities of establishing an equal partnership, and negotiating power dynamics, trust, ownership, and group conflict in PAR, which problematises assumptions around community empowerment within participatory approaches. The article concludes with critical reflections captured during the project, which advances understandings of how diverse Muslim women respond to PAR within the British context.

Interfaith Marriages in Islam from a Woman’s Perspective: Turkish Women’s Interfaith Marriage Practices in the United Kingdom

Interfaith marriages among Muslim immigrants in the UK are under-researched, despite the increase of these marriages; and Muslim women’s exogamy is even less researched. Such a practice is controversial since it is regarded by Muslims as being both religiously and socially unacceptable. Inter-religiously married Muslim women in Britain come from different ethnic backgrounds, but the focus here is on Turkish Muslim women. Examining the stories of twenty Turkish women in the UK who are currently in interfaith unions, this article discusses the Islamic view on women’s interfaith marriages. This research assesses the impact of individual women’s decisions, the challenges they face theologically and socially, and the strategy they adopt to deal with their unique situations and their individual experiences. It reveals that Muslim women rely on two main strategies to deal with religious differences within the context of family life: pre-marriage discussion and conflict avoidance.

Guidance as ‘Women’s Work’: A New Generation of Female Islamic Authorities in Britain

This article is about a new publicly visible generation of female Islamic authorities in the UK and the ways in which they make sense of what it means to be a female authority within largely male-dominated structures of knowledge production. These authorities are setting up their own institutes and emphasising the importance of drawing from within the Islamic tradition while contextualising it in the British context. On the one hand, they stress their unique ability as women to provide personal and collective guidance, based on relationships of empathy and care, that addresses the needs of Muslim women in Britain. On the other hand, they recognise the limitations of presenting guidance as ‘women’s work’, and they seek to pluralise their roles or to present gender as irrelevant in their work. By navigating between accepting, pluralising and transcending female modes of authority, they carve out legitimate spaces for themselves as female leaders while developing and imagining new understandings of Islamic knowledge and plural models of pious leadership. I argue that these multiple ways of making sense of their experiences move us away from theorising female religious leadership solely through binary tropes, such as liberal/orthodox Islam, resistance/compliance, enabling/constraining, which continue to shape research in the field.

Resisting Fragmentation: An Exploration of South Asian Muslim Women’s Resistance as Resilience in the ‘War on Terror’ in Britain Under the Lens of Hegemony

In Britain, the ‘war on terror’ exposes fissures, breaks and dislocations in the inter-relationship/inter-connection of South Asian Muslim women with dominant political and social systems. This paper uses Antonio Gramsci’s conception ‘hegemony’ to elucidate South Asian Muslim women’s struggle to retain, and extend identity formations in conditions of harm and political and social environs of hostility. It departs from conventional studies by using hegemony as struggle for domination as the theoretical frame to explore the psychological effects of political harm to self and identity. Gramsci’s notion of ‘the war of position’ locates the ‘war on terror’ as historic/temporal, a prolonged struggle for domination/hegemony in British/South Asian Muslim relations. This paper employs findings from ethnographic research to make the case that, in this hostile environment, South Asian Muslim women in Britain are engaged in counter-hegemonic resistance in the generation of hybrid identities. Securing new identities requires considerable psychological and cultural flexibility; it involves repositioning fragments of self to reformulate, to create, identity in a climate of hatred and fear.

Jihadi brides, Prevent and critical thinking

An analysis of the Prevent programme and its impact on teaching critical thinking skills in the classroom, with a particular reference to radicalised young Muslim women in Britain.

Centring Black Muslim women in Britain: a Black feminist project

Johnson, Azeezat. 2017. “‘You’re Othered here and You’re Othered there’: centring the clothing practices of Black Muslim women in Britain.” PhD diss., University of Sheffield.Although feminists hav...

WITHDRAWN: Explaining the labour market performance of Muslim women in Britain

WITHDRAWN: Explaining the labour market performance of Muslim women in Britain

The Right to be Human: How Do Muslim Women Talk about Human Rights and Religious Freedoms in Britain?

Abstract This article examines existing literature and data from qualitative fieldwork with Muslim women in Britain to analyse their narratives of human rights and freedom, as they live within plural European contexts. In scared, securitised and polarised Europe, Muslim women have become visible markers of otherness. Each Muslim woman becomes a fulcrum upon which Western values and morality are measured against the “other”, its values, its beliefs and its choices. In exploring the implications of societal othering on Muslim women’s experiences of their human rights, this article concludes that in social contexts that are polemical, becoming the other dehumanises Muslim women who thus become ineligible for “human” rights. In such contexts, a human rights-based approach alone is insufficient to achieve “dignity and fairness” in society. In addition to human rights, societies need robust and rigorous dialogue so that societal differences become part of a new mediated plural reality.

Can Religious Affiliation Explain the Disadvantage of Muslim Women in the British Labour Market?

This article aims to explain the labour market penalties among Muslim women in Britain. It draws on theories of intersectionality and colour/cultural racism to argue that the labour market experience of British-Muslim women is multiply determined via criteria of ascription such as ethnicity, migration status, race and religion rather than criteria of achievement. The study uses data from the Labour Force Survey (2002–2013) with a large sample (N=245,391) of women aged 19–65 years. The overarching finding suggests that most Muslim women, regardless of their multiple ascriptive identities, generation and levels of qualifications, still face significant penalties compared with their White-British Christian counterparts. The penalties for some groups, such as Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black-Muslim women, are harsher than for Indian and White-Muslim women, demonstrating how different social markers and multiple identities have contingent relationships to multiple determinants and outcomes.

Double Discrimination: An Examination of the Career Destinations of Muslim Women in Britain

For most Muslim women, it is these changing circumstances, this ebb and flow in the fortunes of Muslim communities that they have had to negotiate and which the young generation of Muslim women growing up in this country are now confronting. This generation of respondents perceived that there is a lack of comprehension by the older generation of the teachings of the Qu'ran. They believe that this older generation is bound by culture rather than religion while they themselves, are more educated and aware of the 'precise' teachings of Islam.

Getting comfortable to feel at home: clothing practices of black muslim women in Britain

This article explores the role of comfort as an affective encounter across bodies, objects (namely clothing) and spaces. I focus on how bodies that are marked as strange and a source of society’s discomfort negotiate this positioning through the presentation of one’s body. What does it mean for these bodies to be comfortable or uncomfortable? This question is answered through work done with Black Muslim women in Britain. By exploring how comfort is felt in relation to racially marked bodies, this article develops work on emotional geographies. Comfort is understood as both an emotional product and process that changes as bodies move across different spaces. In noting this movement, I also explore how boundaries around the body (enacted through e.g. the multi-dimensional hijab) presents a particular form of territorialisation that facilitates comfort as we present our bodies across different spaces. These boundaries can be both a source of comfort and discomfort through their positioning as deviant from social norms. In understanding the different roles of boundaries, I explore the social processes that construct comfort (or discomfort) as we move through different spaces. This is intertwined with furthering work on Muslim geographies by challenging the overwhelming focus placed on ‘public’ facing garments like the headscarf and abaya. Such a focus limits an understanding of the fluidity of Black Muslim women’s identities, and how these changes in our clothing practices affect and are affected by the relationships built across spaces.

Motherhood as Constructed by Us: Muslim Women’s Negotiations from a Space That Is Their Own

According to foundational Islamic texts, motherhood is a key aspect of women’s diverse social roles; however some Muslim religious commentaries position motherhood as the only aspect of women’s contributions to society. The everyday mothering experiences of Muslim women remain absent from these discussions. This anthropological article will examine Muslim women’s narratives of motherhood and mothering in contemporary Britain. In my research, Muslim women in Britain chose motherhood, firstly, as one of the many fronts on which to challenge patriarchy that is evident in some Muslim texts and to thus ‘reclaim their faith’ as articulated in foundational Islamic texts. Secondly, in their mothering experiences, Muslim women found a space of commonality that they shared with other women – motherhood was something these Muslim women believed they shared with their ‘sisters’ who were from backgrounds different to their own. Within their diverse and multifaceted struggles, Muslim women thus identified a space which they share with other women.

Imagining an Ideal Husband: Marriage as a Site of Aspiration among Pious Somali Women in London

This article is about “marriage talk” and the forms of imagination and aspiration that it entails. It draws on discussions and debates about ideal husbands among young Somali Muslim women in Britain who, in recent years, have begun practising Islam. Through these debates, these women draw on various different discourses, values, norms and ideals to re-think and re-imagine themselves in relation to multiple others, including kin, friends and God. Marriage, I argue, is a site of aspiration (Khan 2012), as it engages the ethical imagination—the means and modes by which individuals re-imagine relations to self and others (Moore 2011). By reflecting on, discussing and imagining a future spouse, these young women draw on different forms of knowledge in relation to enlarged visions of self and other. I demonstrate that analyses of the complexly constituted Muslim subject (Schielke 2010a, Deeb and Harb 2013) need to pay attention not only to the coexistence of multiple moral registers or rubrics, but also to how these connect to the ways in which individuals imagine new ways of being. The article brings to the fore the importance of intersubjectivity and shines light on the processes of imagining and aspiring, which are crucial for an understanding of the complex lives of young women who turn to practise Islam.

‘A second skin’: Embodied intersectionality, transnationalism and narratives of identity and belonging among Muslim women in Britain

The paper examines the narratives of three professional transnational Muslim women of Turkish, Pakistani and Indian heritage living and working in Britain. Developing a post colonial black feminist framework of embodied intersectionality, the analysis explores ways in which the regulatory discursive power to ‘name’ the ‘Muslim woman’ in the ‘West’ as either dangerous or oppressed is lived out on and within the body. Embodied practices such as choosing to wear the hijab, which one woman described as a ‘second skin’, allows an insight into the ways in which the women draw on their subjecthood and inner sense of self to negotiate the affective ‘postcolonial disjunctures’ of racism and Islamophobia which framed their everyday lives. Embodied intersectionality as a feminist critical theory of race and racism shows how gendered and raced representation is powerfully written on and experienced within the body, and how Muslim women's agency challenges and transforms hegemonic discourses of race, gender and religion in transnational diasporic spaces.

Muslim Women Negotiating Collective Stigmatization: ‘We’re Just Normal People’

In the post 9/11 and 7/7 era how does collective stigmatization impact on Muslim women in Britain? Drawing on interviews with women from diverse Muslim backgrounds, this article explores how they experience and seek to resist anti-Islamic stigma. Using a Goffmanian framework, I examine how women resist stigmatization by asserting their moral integrity and laying claim to ‘the normal’. Particular attention is paid to how normality is constructed through the presentation and dressing of the self in everyday encounters. While on the surface the women embrace a shared sense of being ‘just normal’, further analysis reveals very different interpretations of what that might mean. Thus, the article additionally questions what is meant by being a ‘normal’ Muslim woman in multicultural Britain and examines the extent to which this can ever be attained.

British football: where are the Muslim female footballers? Exploring the connections between gender, ethnicity and Islam

This research article explores the ways in which self‐recognition as a footballer, in terms of ethnicity, along with cultural values and religious adherence have impacted on the identities of members of the British Muslim Women’s Football Team and their choice to compete at the Women’s Islamic Games (WIG) in Iran in 2005. The article offers new information on an emerging research area, highlighting issues previously missing from accounts of girls and women’s football in the UK. The article adopts a social constructionist framework in unravelling the experiences and perceptions of the British Muslim Women’s Football Team and explores how identities are shaped and reinforced through playing football. The research findings of this study are based on five years of participant observation and 16 semi‐structured interviews with members of the British Muslim Women’s Football Team. Through a focus on interview transcript material this article seeks to entangle the complexity of gender, ethnicity and Islam and the ways in which these factors impact on the football identities of Muslim women in Britain. The experiences and perceptions of the players in the British Muslim Women’s Football Team are located within British football, and importantly, the article investigates whether there is room for the hijab in British football.

The geographies of veiling: Muslim women in Britain

ABSTRACTIn this article I reflect on the debates initiated by Jack Straw's article about Muslim women and the wearing of face veils (October 2006). I place this issue in a wider context, drawing on recent geographical work on Muslim identities. I begin by exploring the position of Muslims in contemporary debates about multiculturalism in Britain. I then discuss the dynamics of contemporary veiling practices and contested meanings of the veil. Finally, I draw on my own work, and recent work in fashion theory, to consider the complexities of dress choices for young British Muslim women and to challenge dominant discourses.

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.

Crossing boundaries: Racialised gendering and the labour market experiences of pakistani migrant women in britain

In this paper we discuss an interview-based study of the experiences of 27 first-generation Pakistani Muslim women in Britain who were looking for or undertaking paid work in the town of Reading. We explore the ways in which doing paid work enmeshes with the constitution of their gendered, racialised, and classed identities. These identities, we argue, are best understood in the context of an analysis that recognises the continuing importance of their relationship to a wider diasporic Pakistani/South Asian Islamic culture. We conclude that the place of paid work in the life of a “British Pakistani Muslim woman” is a contested area in which there are a number of competing ideas about appropriate work which are strongly related to the class position and lifestage of the women.