South Asian Muslim Women Research Articles

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.

Mumtaz Bibi's broken heart

This article investigates the formation of a political consensus between conservative ulama, Muslim reformers, nationalist politicians and women's organisations, which led to the enactment of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act in 1939. The Act was a radical piece of social legislation that gave South Asian Muslim women greater rights for divorce than those enjoyed by other women in India and Britain. Instead of placing women's rights and Islamic law as opposed to each other, the legislation employed a heuristic that guaranteed women's rights by applying Islamic law, allowing Muslim politicians, ulama and women's groups to find common ground on an Islamic modernity. By interrogating the legislative process and the rhetorical positions employed to achieve this consensus, the paper hopes to map how the women's question was being negotiated anew in the space created in the legislatures. The legislative debate over family law redefined the boundaries of the public and the private, and forced nationalists to reconsider the ‘women's question’. The transformation of Islamic law through secular legislation also gave greater licence to the courts in their interpretation, and widened the schism between traditional practitioners of fiqh and modern lawyers.

‘They're more like ordinary stroppy British women’: Attitudes and expectations of maternity care professionals to UK-born ethnic minority women

To explore the attitudes and expectations of maternity care professionals to UK-born ethnic minority mothers. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 30 professionals from eight NHS maternity units in England that provide services for large proportions of women of black Caribbean, black African, Indian, Pakistani and Irish descent. All the professionals reported providing care to both UK-born and migrant mothers from ethnic minorities. Most of them felt that they could differentiate between UK-born and migrant mothers based mainly on language fluency and accent. 'Westernized dress' and 'freedom' were also cited as indicators. Overall, professionals found it easier to provide services to UK-born mothers and felt that their needs were more like those of white English mothers than those of migrant mothers. UK-born mothers were generally thought to be assertive and expressive, and in control of care-related decision-making whereas some South Asian Muslim women were thought to be constrained by family influences. Preconceived ideas about ethnic minority mothers' tolerance of pain in labour, use of pharmacological pain relief measures and mode of delivery were recurring themes. Women's education and social class were felt to be major influences on the uptake of maternity care, regardless of ethnicity. Professionals appeared to equate the needs of UK-born ethnic minority women with those of white English women. Overall, this has positive implications for care provision. Despite this, specific behavioural expectations and unconscious stereotypical views were evident and have the potential to affect clinical practice.

South Asian Muslim Women Speak for their Rights and Resistance

South Asian Muslim Women Speak for their Rights and Resistance

Being a South Asian Muslim woman and mentally ill in the UK

Razia Akhtar graduated with a first-class degree in psychology from the University of Leeds this summer. I was lucky enough to supervise her project which was a grounded theory analysis of interviews Razia conducted with South Asian Muslim women who attended a day centre at which she volunteered. I asked Razia to write a summary of her project for the newsletter as her research was of such a high standard and provides a unique insight into an important issue. If you are a new graduate who conducted a qualitative project, or a supervisor who has been impressed by qualitative research conducted by an undergraduate student, we would be interested to see a similar summary of the work.

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.”

Negotiating with patriarchy: South Asian Muslim women and the appeal to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan

This article explores the tensions within the nineteenth-century discourse of reform and change among Muslims of South Asia. Contrary to a commonly held view that within this discourse women were mostly invisible, this article documents a deep concern of women not only for their degraded position but also for the ill fate of their community. As most dominant historiographies of social change in South Asia have effaced Muslim women's independent activism, this article uses purdah to examine how women negotiated their identities within the context of public space. This interesting negotiation literally took place in 1884 from behind the purdah when women chose an effective strategy to act as their own advocates by documenting their voices. This historic event took place in 1884 when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan toured the Punjab, India. The article is testimony to nineteenth-century South Asian Muslim women's feminist consciousness and the contested nature of Muslim identity.

Negotiating with patriarchy: south asian muslim women and the appeal to sir syed ahmed khan

Negotiating with patriarchy: south asian muslim women and the appeal to sir syed ahmed khan

The Impact of Religio-cultural Norms and Values on the Education of Young South Asian Women

This paper is a discussion of how the educational attitudes, perspectives and experiences of young South Asian women in schools and colleges in the city of Birmingham, UK, are affected by domestic religio-cultural norms and values. Taking into consideration social class and the different types of schools they attend, young South Asian women were interviewed and surveyed to ascertain the effects of religion and culture upon education. The empirical findings show that all young South Asian women had supportive parents who actively encouraged them in education, irrespective of religion. For young Muslim women a strong bond between religion and individual was found, but for Hindus and Sikhs it was more tentative. For young working-class South Asian women, Hindus and Sikhs also regarded religion as less significant in their lives, but for Muslims it was again seen as crucial--but certain practices were argued to be more cultural than religious, and thereby problematic. For some young South Asian Muslim women, it leads to further marginalisation in education, given that they also originate from lower social class positions.

Promoting physical activity in South Asian Muslim women through "exercise on prescription".

Promoting physical activity in South Asian Muslim women through "exercise on prescription".

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.