Abstract
The presence of a growing number of Muslims in Western countries has raised the issue of the female believers’s clothing practices and the messages their modes of dress convey about their position(s) with respect to these societies. Ethnographic case study conducted among female converts to Islam in France and in Quebec between 2006 and 2008 sheds lights on various strategies for combining Muslim dress codes with Western styles. This contribution illustrates how these new Muslims produce and embody their emerging Muslim feminist subjectivities by negotiating religious and dress rituals and prescriptions. As these practices are aimed at shaping a universalistic vision of Islam, they also draw on their feminist and moralistic reading of sacred texts that accommodates the local context and culture by conveying a vision of the Muslim modern woman endowed with agency. These strategies are nonetheless constrained by the social and religious pressures exerted by the adopted religious community, as well as by the local politics of identity.
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Mossière, G. (2019). Islamic Dress as Identity Politics Among Converts in the West. In: Lukens-Bull, R., Woodward, M. (eds) Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73653-2_75-3
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Islamic Dress as Identity Politics Among Converts in the West- Published:
- 04 October 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73653-2_75-3
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Modesty and Style in Islamic Attire: Refashioning Muslim Garments in a Western Context- Published:
- 02 March 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73653-2_75-2