Australian Muslim Women and Understandings of Islam, Being Muslim and the Veil

Abstract

This chapter explores how the Muslim women in the study negotiated Islam and ‘being Muslim’ in complex and plural ways. The findings demonstrate diverse accounts of being Muslim through various discourses, grouped into two major areas: discourses of being Muslim and of Islam, and discourses of the veil. These negotiations were not free-floating or arbitrary but rather demonstrated the ways the women negotiated and resisted patriarchy and racism, and were informed by ethnicity, migration, sect and gender, as well as the broader social context. Akin to a ‘borderlands’ subjectivity, the findings also demonstrate complex negotiations that reflect women’s subjectivities but also include diverse and contradicting constructions of being Muslim and of the veil. As the women shifted through these discourses, their subject positions as Muslims also gave way to diverse, complex and contradictory accounts of being Muslim, and demonstrated ways of knowing and being that transcended colonial logics. They negotiated the veil in ways that included rather than excluded diverse understandings, while making meaningful knowledges in regard to their own relationship with the veil.