Unveiled issues: reflections from a comparative pilot study on Europe's Muslim women

When?

Monday 1 March 2010, 17:00 to 18:30

Where?

Room 04AD00 (AD building, ground floor) University of Surrey

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Sara Silvestri

Sara Silvestri, City University, London

This paper presents some theoretical and methodological reflections drawing on an innovative empirical study by the author on the aspirations, potential and challenges of Muslim women living in three European countries. The research contributes to widening the contemporary understanding of Islam and Muslim women in the West by focusing on:

a.) their “agency” from within (not necessarily opposition to) tradition and

b.) their “relational” experiences (to their faith, their family, their friends, the society of origin, the European society in which they live), beyond narrow interpretive lenses such as Islamophobia, sharia law, and religious symbols.

This research foregrounds the voices and the issues of concern of Muslim women living in Europe, rather than focusing on them as passive objects of research and victims of domestic violence and patriarchal oppression. Whilst indicating the shortcomings of existing interpretive frameworks and rigid scholarly categorisations concerning Muslim communities and Muslim women in Europe, the paper argues for the need to put at the centre of analysis the “individual”, as a woman and as an evolving agent of transformation.