Abstract
My ethnographic fieldwork conducted with female converts to Islam in France and in Quebec (Canada) shows that, for these women, being Muslim does not necessarily mean wearing clothes with ‘oriental’ designs. Rather, they are starting their own clothing companies so as to produce distinct Muslim-Western fashions that they promote through the Internet. By interpreting Islam in a context where Muslims are a minority religious group, converts construct alternative religious and social representations of Muslim identity that accord with their feminist interpretation of the Qu’ran while simultaneously incorporating the Western background within which they were socialized. In this regard, the strategies that they develop for wearing the veil and for integrating into their environment (family, workplace, etc.) make it clear that fashion, religion and politics are interacting in multiple, creative ways. In this paper, I look at how new Muslim feminist subjectivities are produced and realized through habits of dress, resulting in new representations of the body. I explore this issue by considering dress and hairstyle strategies developed by Muslim converts, in order to examine new perspectives on the place of gender in religion as it relates to particular social contexts.
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Notes
This category includes second generation immigrants who are born in Western countries as well as the so-called ‘1.5 generation’ who arrived at a young age and have been raised in Western countries.
“Pickthall, Muhammad M. (2006) The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an, Beltsville: Amana” In Berglund (2008).
« Sahih Muslim, see http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html» In Berglund (2008).
http://www.n-ti.com Accessed 23 April 2010. See also : http://www.al-furqane.com.
http://www.alfurqane.com Accessed 17 June 2010.
Jensen (2008) also observes that in Denmark, Islam mainly attracts young, urban people.
In Canada, anti-discrimination laws and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demand that accommodation be made to various minorities provided that they do not cause “undue hardship”.
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Mossière, G. Modesty and style in Islamic attire: Refashioning Muslim garments in a Western context. Cont Islam 6, 115–134 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-011-0180-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-011-0180-9