Embodied Faith and the Limits of Female Agency in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Does My Head Look Big in This?

Abstract

The present essay discusses Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Does My Head Look Big in This? by focusing on the rendition of Islam as an axis of social agency in an environment that is excessively antagonistic of any version of Islam that falls outside the contours of the “liberal model” morphed by the Western creed of equality, liberty. Amal, the protagonist, embodies the dilemmas of choice and agency within an ideological rubric which disassociates such notions from faith-based convictions. The analysis relies on the notion of Muslim agency as theorized by Saba Mahmood, for whom the conscious formation of deeply rooted religious subjectivities is sidelined within the modern secular rubrics of self-formation. The article also draws on W.E.B Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness to highlight the extent to which Muslim female bodies are caught at the intersection between religion and nation. Hence, this essay discloses the challenges facing Muslim women whose exercise of agency is tied to their religious beliefs in a backdrop characterized by multicultural and secular economies. More particularly, it explores Amal’s religious tradition of habituated practices—such as wearing the veil in a hostile environment—as embodiments of autonomous agency.

Gendered Orientalism and Syrian Women Refugees

“…That is, I seek to expose 'the gap' between the representation of Syrian Muslim women and their daily reality (Taha 2018). While I focus on the U.S., gendered orientalism is a global discourse that circulates in other states like France, Australia, the Netherlands, China, and India and has similar impacts (Dunn & Hopkins 2016;Hancock & Mobillion 2019;Najib & Hopkins 2019, 2020aRazack 2022;Shaker & Ahmadi 2022;Chaoui 2023).…”