Daring to be Different in an Imagined Muslim Ummah in Ghana: A Critical Reflection of a Non-conformist Muslim Woman

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how individuals often negotiate the complex terrain between their own idiosyncrasies and the expectations of their religious communities—which sometimes leads to the multidimensionality of social exclusion. With Aarifa Mohammed, a Muslim woman who does not wear the veil, as a case study, I argue that Islamic identity is more nuanced than just individuals acquiescing in an imagined veil-oriented identity, while also maintaining that Muslim women who refuse to wear the veil in public suffer from some degree of social exclusion. Methodologically, this chapter is based on a longitudinal study, which “gathers data at multiple time points and provides more of a ‘moving picture’ of events, people, or social relations across time” (Neuman, W. L., Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson Education Limited, Essex, 2014, p. 42). I incorporated three years of multiple observations of and interviews with Aarifa. As religious leaders appeal to doctrines to shape practices, as part of defining the boundaries of their faith, I define religious communities as imagined communities. But religious communities in a non-theocratic Ghana do not possess coercive power to compel their members to submit to their ethical boundaries. For this reason, these communities deploy multidimensionality of social exclusion to define their ethical boundaries. While this means of defining religious boundaries is virtually shared by all the religious communities in Ghana, I focus on Islam, which has since the 1990s impressed on its women constituency to use the veil as their religious identity in both private and public spheres.