Abstract
Similar conservative discourses on marriage, sexuality, and gender emerge from two waves of fieldwork that were conducted in Quebec (Canada) among young female converts to Islam and young Pentecostal women. The narratives support the broader literature on women who have embraced orthodox-style religions and find in the theology of submission the normative means and space to develop their own individual agency. This chapter explores the current conservative renewal from the perspective of young female Muslims and Pentecostals. I first explore their discourses regarding marriage, divorce, sexuality, chastity, and family, which shape representations of both men and women. I then examine the complexity, nuances, and contradictions of these narratives (dialectics of modernity and tradition, rupture and continuity) in which pious women construct an alternative femininity and their own understanding of feminism as an ideology of empowerment that draws on moral normativity.
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Notes
- 1.
Ba’alat teshuva is a Hebrew term that refers to Jews who, not having been socialised in the tradition, nevertheless choose to embrace orthodoxy.
- 2.
The data were collected as part of an extensive research project that was directed by Deirdre Meintel from 2006 to 2014. The project aimed to document the diversification of the religious landscape in Quebec. It was funded by the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
- 3.
All the quotes in this chapter are my translations of extracts from the interviews I conducted.
- 4.
At the church Origine de Vie pour les Nations, many of the interviews and observations were undertaken by Charlotte Guerlotté, a Master’s student in anthropology, under my supervision at the University of Montreal.
- 5.
All the names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.
- 6.
This is my translation of ‘ni par l’égalité stricte entre hommes et femmes ni par l’infériorité de la femme, mais par une dichotomie sexuelle qui s’exprime par la complémentarité’.
- 7.
This quote is part of the respondent’s narrative.
- 8.
The term ‘bled’ Arabs refers to people from the Maghreb (North Africa) who immigrated directly from their rural milieu to the West and do not possess the cultural and social competencies of their new country of residence (Peretti-Ndiaye 2008).
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Mossière, G. (2019). Religious Orthodoxy, Empowerment, and Virtuous Femininity among Pious Women: A Cross-Religious Reading Between Muslim and Pentecostal Youth. In: Arweck, E., Shipley, H. (eds) Young People and the Diversity of (Non)Religious Identities in International Perspective. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16166-8_12
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