Women’s presence and role in contemporary mosques in Western Europe is debated within and outside Muslim communities, but research on this topic is scarce. Applying a feminist lens on religion and gender, this article situates the mosque as a socially constituted space that both enables and constrains Western European Muslim women’s religious formation, identity-making, participation, belonging, and activism. Informed by qualitative interviews with twenty Muslim women residing in Norway and the United Kingdom, the article argues that women’s reflexive engagement simultaneously expresses compliance with, and challenges to, male power and authority in the mosque. It contends that a complex practice of accommodation and resistance to “traditional” gender norms is rooted in the women’s discursive positioning of “authentic Islam” as gender equal. While men typically inhabit positions of religious and organizational power in mosques, the article also suggests the importance of male allies in women’s struggles for inclusion in the mosque.
AcknowledgmentsThe author wishes to thank Esmeranda Manful (UK) and Beatrice Halsaa and Hanna Helseth (Norway) who, as part of the Work Package 4, Strand 2 team of the FEMCIT project, conducted the interviews with religious women. She also wishes to thank the editors of the journal and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and very useful comments and suggestions. Preliminary project findings were reported in a working paper submitted to the European Union (see Nyhagen Predelli et al. 2010).
FundingThe research on which this manuscript is based, was funded by the European Union 6 th Framework Programme (project number 028746).
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AbstractThe concept of 'religious citizenship' is increasingly being used by scholars, but there are few attempts at defining it. This article argues that rights-based definitions giving primacy to status and rights are too narrow, and that feminist approaches to citizenship foregrounding identity, belonging and participation, as well as an ethics of care, provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious women understand and experience their own 'religious citizenship'.
Findings from interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Oslo andLeicester suggest a close relationship between religious women's faith and practice ('lived religion') and their 'lived citizenship'. However, gender inequalities and status differences between majority and minority religions produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship.
This article explores variation in how immigrant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway, interpret and practice gender relations within the framework of Islam. Religion, family, and work are important sites for the formation, negotiation, and change of gender relations. The article therefore discusses the views and experiences of immigrant Muslim women concerning wife-husband relations and participation in the labor market. Four analytical types of views toward gender relations are introduced, and the variation in gender practices and views found among Muslim women in Oslo is discussed in relation to these types. The analysis suggests that immigrant Muslim women use Islam as a flexible resource for interpreting gender relations. It also shows that while women generally uphold a religious ideal of complementary gender roles, their actual practice often contradicts with and contests this ideal.
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