1 May: Muslim Women Talk Back—A Political Transformation of Secular Modernity on International Workers’ Day

Abstract

1 May 2017 hundreds of Muslim women wearing the veil took part in an International Workers’ Day demonstration in Gothenburg. The Swedish modernity project places a strong value on the idea of secularism. However, while secularism and Christianity become inseparable and part of the imagined Swedish community, Islam and Judaism are excluded from the Swedish and European centre. An EU verdict that sparked the idea of a 1 May demonstration is one example of this historical process. Muslim women wearing the veil are not counted in the modernist work of gender equality in Europe and Sweden. This example is especially serious, and violent, in Sweden, where gender equality is understood as a national quality. This version of modernity offers a bright future for the hegemonic centre and requires others to assimilate. The hundreds of Muslim women in the demonstration challenged the notions that modernity and Swedish gender equality must, by definition, be secular/Christian. The women—who addressed themselves as important historical political subjects—performed through the demonstration a decolonial alternative to the story of Swedish anti-religious modernity. The existence of more than one linear path to gender equality undermines the narrative of colonial modernity and Swedish white exceptionalism.