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Challenging Identities
Challenging Identities

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Chapter Synopsis

  

Introduction

 

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Chapter 1:The Challenge of Being Muslim
Shahram Akbarzadeh

While Western feminism deplores the plight of Muslim women as powerless victims of a misogynous religion, institutional and social pressures put serious limits on the public presence of Muslim women who wear the hijab. Those who don't wear the hijab face another set of pressures that question their authenticity as Muslim. Non-hijabi Muslim women are not seen by the mainstream community as representatives of Islam in Australia, a view shared by the more conservative segments of Muslims. This dilemma forces a difficult choice on Muslim women who feel as much part of Australia as Islam (without wearing the hijab).

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Chapter 2:The Attitudes of Imams towards the Inclusion of Women in Mosque Activities
Jamila Hussain

In the Australian media, imams are often stereotyped as ignorant, uneducated men with poor English skills. They are widely believed to preach misogynistic attitudes towards women and to incite violence against the west, leading young men astray and corrupting the community. In this chapter, Jamila Hussain discusses the results of a survey of some Sydney imams, which investigated their levels of education, proficiency in English and attitudes towards women in their mosques and mosque associations. There are some surprising results.

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Chapter 3: Contracts with Clauses: The Secret Politics of Being and Becoming Muslim. Karen Turner

This chapter explores how women who convert to Islam experience and embody the ideological shifts and lived realities of their new religion. Drawing on the metaphor of ‘the closet' I explore how different women engaged in secret practices in their journey to become Muslim. I argue that the experience of conversion is never fixed, but rather relational and fluid, and the construction of a new identity often entails a performance of conflicting and contradictory roles for families, friends and their new community. Torn between the public and private demands of the various ideological and social categories that inform their lives, some converts choose to live secret lives before ‘coming out' as a Muslim. In order to negotiate the sometimes hostile environment they now find themselves in as veiled Muslim women, they use an array of elaborate practices which enable them to conceal, reveal, deny, constrain and hide aspects of their new self as they come to terms with their identity as Muslims.

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Chapter 4:Racism and Resistance: Everyday Experiences of Muslim Women
Alia Imtoual

Through anecdotes and narratives from young Muslim women, this chapter examines the places where ‘everyday racisms' are played out in the interactions between individuals. Specifically focusing on the racisms these women experience on the basis of their religious affiliation, the analysis describes both these racist interactions and the women's responses. It focuses particularly on giving voice to women and honouring their agency:to name and counteract religious racism in a variety of settings and a myriad of ways.

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Chapter 5:Shari'ah, State Law and the Divorce Dilemma: Challenges Facing Muslim Women in Western Countries
Anisa Buckley

The aim of this chapter is to identify the challenges facing Muslim women when seeking divorce in Western countries. It will first provide an overview of the debates on gender and Islamic laws and ensuing women's activism in Muslim and Western countries, leading to the discussion of what I term the ‘divorce dilemma' as experienced by Muslim women in Western societies. It will then detail how Muslim communities in the West have responded to the challenges facing Muslim women in the area of divorce, and the problems that have arisen regarding the term ‘Shari'ah'. Finally, it considers the kinds of research needed to adequately capture the multiple dimensions of Muslim women's experiences of divorce in Western societies.

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Chapter 6:Multiculturalism and Its Challenges for Muslim Women. Ghena Krayem

Is Multiculturalism bad for women? This question was asked by the well-known feminist Susan Moller Okin. She argued that policies that seek to accommodate cultural and religious diversity ultimately compromise the individual rights of women as they generally perpetuate patriarchal cultures and practices. This chapter explores the relevance of this question to Muslim Women in Australia, with particular reference to the accommodation of Shari'ah or Islamic Family Law. It is argued that whilst Moller Okin raises some significant concerns that need to be addressed when considering multicultural policies, these policies are not necessarily bad news for women. Rather, for Muslim Women in Australia, such issues should be considered on a case-by-case basis, with prominence given to the lived experience and voice of Australian Muslim Women.

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Chapter 7:The Identity of the ‘Australian Muslim Woman' in Sport and Recreation.
Helen McCue & Fatima Kourouche

Recreation and sport in Australia remain contested areas for women and even more so for Muslim Australian women. This chapter explores the hypothesis that Muslim women are engaging with the dominant discourses of both Islam and Australian in recreational and sports culture in a fluid and dynamic two-way process that actively contests their exclusion from this significant aspect of Australian social and cultural life.

Contrary to the normative discourse surrounding Muslim women and sport, Muslim women in Australia do in fact participate in a wide variety of sporting and recreational activities within their own religious understandings of modesty, covering and gendered spaces. The chapter describes how Muslim women have resisted the dominant discourses of power in social structures in relation to swimwear, as well as in swimming and gym spaces, and in several competitive sports. Through contesting these discourses and occupying, through agency, these ‘spaces of autonomy' they have created a new identity of self. In so doing myths around Muslim women and sport in Australia have been challenged and a new discourse in these contested areas has emerged. Such agency is contributing to the development of new meanings in religion and sports culture as well as to the emergence of a newly empowered negotiated self, a new identity: that of the Australian Muslim sports woman.

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Chapter 8:Double Bind and Double Responsibility: Speech and Silence among Australian Muslim Women
Shakira Hussein
Gender issues have played a central role in public discourse on Islam in Australia. This has placed Muslim women in a 'double bind' between racism and patriarchy, as well as burdening them with a duel responsibility to respond to negative stereotyping of Muslim women as victims and Muslim men and victimisers. While the double-responsibility generates pressure to 'speak out', the double bind imposes pressure to maintain silence.

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