Introduction: An Ontological and Epistemic Journey

Abstract

This chapter introduces the reader to the overall objectives, rationale and key arguments of the book. It also outlines the book’s focus on the diversity of Muslim women who have been silenced by public and academic discourses. The study on which this book is based is introduced, and the personal, socio-historical, political and intellectual history of this study about the subjectivities of Australian Muslim women is set out. The chapter describes the way this book theoretically approaches Muslim women’s subjectivities—and how centring the voices of Muslim women aims to disrupt the narrow representations of and knowledge about Muslim women. In line with feminist philosophy, the voice of the author and the history of the book are brought to the fore. More specifically, the author engages critical reflexivity as a methodological tool to explore the ways her experiences, arising from these social locations, have informed her subjectivity as a second-generation Muslim woman in Australia and, in turn, have informed her epistemic location and the approach and motivations for the study. In doing so, and guided by her predecessors, the author thus demonstrates how she arrived at the decolonial feminist border methodology. Finally, an overview of the chapters that follow is presented.