Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Layla, Christopher R. Deacy

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Layla (2024), directed by Amrou Al-Kadhi.

Arab Feminism And The Hijab: Exploring The Intersection Of Feminism And Islam In Jordan, Melanie Kallah

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The goal of this qualitative research is to procure a definition of Arab Feminism from the religious and cultural beliefs of Jordanian Muslim women while also highlighting the feminist roots of Islam. The hijab is the perfect symbol to analyze Arab feminism under and discuss the difference between religion and culture.

This paper first dives into the history of the Jordanian women’s movement and the origins of today's activism. This hinges on the work of Rana Husseini, who has the only in-depth account of the Jordanian women’s movement. This history allows the reader to better understand the current conditions of …

Neither Fully Queer Nor Somali?: What Queer Somalis' Narratives Reveal About Space, Identity, And Community In Western Diaspora, Dominik Drabent

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The field of Muslim sexuality studies has grown over the past two decades because of the aftermath of 9/11. This master’s thesis is a textual content analysis of the personal narratives of queer Somalis in Western diaspora. It addresses the intersections of their identities that create unique forms of oppression. Not much research has been conducted on queer Somali communities. This analysis of queer Somalis’ personal narratives aims to illuminate parts of the invisibility of queer Somalis, their experienced accusations of inauthenticity, and the erasure of their existences. I utilize an intersectional, transnational feminist, queer, and Black feminist lens. By …

Combating The Misrepresentation Of Women In Quran Translations: Translational Interventions, Alalddin Al-Tarawneh

Journal of International Women's Studies

The discourse concerning Islam, and in particular the translation of the Quran, has had a profound impact on Western views of Muslim women. Most Quran translations are stained with mistranslations, resulting from translators adopting the literal approach for religious reasons that we will explore. This has an impact on many aspects of meaning, but especially the representation of women. It should be noted that this article is not influenced by the views of feminist groups who focus on seeking new interpretations of the Quran. Instead, it pinpoints the genuine interpretation lost in translation. This article endeavors to identify the translational …

The Expression Of The Hijab In American Sports Culture, Nicholas Duca

Sacred Heart University Scholar

Many sports in the West, specifically in American culture, permit religious symbols and practices. Yet Muslim women have been subject to discrimination, bigotry, and disrespect for wearing or wanting to wear a hijab. This study uses philosophical theory, data, and cultural information to explore the stigma behind Muslim women in America and their participation in the sporting activities that are held here. This piece explains how the hijab’s true meaning is dismantled through American culture and the religious meaning behind it, argues why it should be allowed in sporting events, and suggests ways to prevent discrimination against Muslim women who …

Hagar And Potiphar’S Wife: A Representation Of Egypt In Judaism And Islam, Nardine Attia

Capstone and Graduation Projects

As a nation and land, modern Egypt has gradually been depicted as a female. Considering Egypt’s prominence in Judaism and Islam, from a close reading of Jewish and Islamic texts pertaining to two Egyptian women—Hagar and Potiphar’s wife— various similarities could be noted between these female figures and Egypt as portrayed in the two Abrahamic religions. While Potiphar’s wife seems to be more representative of Egypt in Judaism and Islam, the different portrayal of both women across religious texts provides each with a space to reflect different aspects defining Egypt in each religion.

The Role Of Islam In Establishing Women's Rights In The Muslim World, Assad Khan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper examines the literature surrounding women's rights in the Muslim world to determine the factors that have contributed to the oppression of women in the Muslim world and to understand the role that different interpretations of Islam can have on either restricting or improving the status of women in the Muslim world. The practices of Muslim people as a population deviate from what is prescribed by Islam in some cases, contributing to the misconception that the restrictive practices toward women in many Muslim-majority countries are founded in Islamic teachings. Factors such as individual levels of religiosity and adherence to …

Efter Jobbet: En Inledande Diskussion Om Studiet Av Fritid, Leif Stenberg, Anders Ackfeldt

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Scrivere Di Islam. Raccontare La Diaspora, Simone Brioni Dr., Shirin Ramzanali Fazel

Department of English Faculty Publications

Scrivere di Islam. Raccontare la diaspora (Writing About Islam. Narrating a Diaspora) is a meditation on our multireligious, multicultural, and multilingual reality. It is the result of a personal and collaborative exploration of the necessity to rethink national culture and identity in a more diverse, inclusive, and anti-racist way. The central part of this volume – both symbolically and physically – includes Shirin Ramzanali Fazel’s reflections on the discrimination of Muslims, and especially Muslim women, in Italy and the UK. Looking at school textbooks, newspapers, TV programs, and sharing her own personal experience, this section invites us to change the …

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa’S The Liberation Of Women In The Age Of Revelation: A Translation And Critical Commentary, Ibtehal Noorwali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of Muslim scholars’ modern endeavors is to identify Islam’s egalitarian and liberating views on women as espoused by its earliest sources— the Qur’an and hadith. ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa makes such an attempt in his six-volume, Arabic book titled “The Liberation of Women in the Age of Revelation” (Taḥrīr al-Mar’a fī ‘Aṣr al-Risāla) published in 1995. He shows evidence from the Qur’an and authentic hadith reports for women’s autonomy, involvement in communal worship, public life, politics, battlefields, and professional work, among other activities. In an attempt to analyze and bring what was considered a ‘breakthrough’ in the Islamic …

Muslim Women In French Cinema: Voices Of Maghrebi Migrants In France, Shreya Parikh

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp's Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015).

Le Féminisme Et La Femme Musulmane En France, Anna Elizabeth Gagion

Honors Theses

My French thesis investigates how some definitions of French feminism and particular French feminist movements find themselves oppressing Muslim women. France is a country that has vigorously regulated the separation of Church and State since 1902 legislation that declared “la laïcité” (secularism) obligatory for all public education. In my research I have found that the general belief in France that religion should never have any bearing on political decisions has been beneficial to most French citizens, but it also appears to oppress a number of Muslim women, as witnessed by the on-going debate surrounding the headscarf ban in French public …

Women's Rights And Representation In Saudi Arabia, Iran, And Turkey: The Patriarchal Domination Of Religious Interpretations, Roumaissaa Tailassane

International Relations Honors Papers

This research paper is divided into three case studies: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. The main focus of the paper is to examine barriers to women’s economic and political participation as well as the limits on their rights within the family and society. All three case studies are Muslim-majority countries. The paper argues that the subordination of women is not intrinsic to Islam but stems from patriarchal interpretations of Islam by religious authorities working in conjunction with autocratic political leaders. Furthermore, the paper analyzes cultural, political, and economic explanations for limits on women’s rights in these Muslim-majority countries and shows …

Contemporary Temporary Marriage: A Blog-Analysis Of First-Hand Experiences, Sammy Z. Badran, Brian Turnbull

Journal of International Women's Studies

Within Islam, a temporary marriage generally implies a short-term marriage between a man and a woman that does not come with a long-term commitment and may or may not have an explicit, pre-established timeline or endpoint. The partial religious legitimation of temporary marriage via Islamic fatwas has recently revived the institution. Some suggest that the rising popularity is an attempt by individuals to fulfill sexual desires within the confines of a religiously-legitimized institution; while others argue that it can lead to exploitation and perhaps slavery of women and girls. Conclusions supporting both the positive and negative aspects of temporary marriage …

Hala, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Hala (2019), directed by Minhal Baig.

Dekalb, Illinois, Muslim Women’S Agency Negotiating And Re-Affirming Their Muslim Identity, Sinta Febrina

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Post 9/11 American Muslim women are stereotyped as victims of their patriarchal religion and as perpetrators of terror. These conditions led to the discrimination of American Muslim women which requires them to continuously strategize and negotiate their identity. This thesis examined DeKalb, Illinois Muslim women’s agency to strategize and negotiate their identity in lager American society. In this study, fifteen Muslim women from three different categories were interviewed: American-born citizens, naturalized citizens, and immigrants. This study found that Muslim women’s various backgrounds (country of origin, education, socio-economic status, and immigration status) affected their strategy and agency to negotiate and re-affirm …

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

Volume 8: Gender, Governance And Islam, Deniz Kandiyoti, Nadje Al-Ali, Kathryn Spellman Poots

Exploring Muslim Contexts

Analyses the links between gender and governance in contemporary Muslim majority countries and diaspora contexts.

Following a period of rapid political change, both globally and in relation to the Middle East and South Asia, this collection sets new terms of reference for an analysis of the intersections between global, state, non-state and popular actors and their contradictory effects on the politics of gender.

The volume charts the shifts in academic discourse and global development practice that shape our understanding of gender both as an object of policy and as a terrain for activism. Nine individual case studies systematically explore how …

Defying Marginalization: Emergence Of Women’S Organizations And The Resistance Movement In Pakistan: A Historical Overview, Rahat Imran, Imran Munir

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the wake of Pakistani dictator General-Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization process (1977-1988), the country experienced an unprecedented tilt towards religious fundamentalism. This initiated judicial transformations that brought in rigid Islamic Sharia laws that impacted women’s freedoms and participation in the public sphere, and gender-specific curbs and policies on the pretext of implementing a religious identity. This suffocating environment that eroded women’s rights in particular through a recourse to politicization of religion also saw the emergence of equally strong resistance, particularly by women who, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, grouped and mobilized an organized activist women’s movement to challenge Zia’s oppressive …

On The (Male) Fringes: How Early Religious Women Remain “Subordinate” In World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

Second Wave feminist researchers identified male-dominated curriculum formats in late twentieth century curriculum materials. This study builds off their work and advances the conversation of women’s inclusion by current United States secondary world history textbook content via a feminist lens to determine the extent of women’s agency in the accounts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The purpose was to determine if textbooks portrayed these patriarchal religions as exclusively male, thereby presenting inaccurate portrayals of the religions and the agents involved, which directly violates NCSS Standards. This study used critical discourse analysis to identify patterns of female marginalization and omission, indicating …

Facultamiento Transgresivo: Queerificando Las Espiritualidades
 De Las Mak Nyahs De La FundacióN Pt
 En Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, Joseph N. Goh

Conexión Queer: Revista Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Teologías Queer

The article explores the transgressive empowerment of mak nyahs —male-to- female transsexuals— by queering their spiritualities to reveal the multiple, migratory movements of gender identities. The essay seeks to expose the heterosexist persecution of mak nyahs that assume monolithic forms of Islamic religiosity. In so doing, it argues that the interminable resistance and transgression of oppressive sexual and gender normativities form a migratory praxis of power shifts that generate empowerment for the mak nyahs. The objective of such an exploration is to reveal and name in a more articulate fashion the passion and alacrity with which mak nyahs live and …

La Violence Sexuelle Faite Aux Femmes Musulmanes Dans Les Banlieues : Le RôLe Des IdéOlogies Fondamentalistes D’Islam, De La Stigmatisation De L’Homme Musulman Et Du FéMinisme Blanc, Elsa Farooq

Honors Theses

In a post-Harvey Weinstein world, sexual assault and sexual harassment have become a daily conversation around the world; however, frequently missing in this conversation are the voices of minority women. In France, sexual violence against Muslim women in the low-income housing areas called banlieues has been an issue for some time, with factors such as fundamentalist Islam, the stigmatization of Muslim men, and what some have called “white feminism” contributing to the problem as well as to the difficulty of talking about it. Underlying these forces is France’s colonial past, which has shaped how and why sexual violence has become …

Feminism In The Works Of Fawziyya Abū Khālid, Muneerah Badr Almahasheer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Feminism in the Works of Fawziyya Abū Khālid" Muneerah Badr Almahasheer examines how the Saudi poet Fawziyya Abū Khālid (1955–present) addresses feminism in her poems. Although distinct, Islam is frequently conflated with Arabic culture; consequently, women's role in Islam is commonly misunderstood. Therefore, following Western feminists, Muslim feminists have called for readings and understandings of the Qur'an, wherein the authority of the historically patriarchal interpretations is not assumed, and the sanctity of the text is valued. Through this lens, Abū Khālid's poems critically interrogate Arabic Muslim identity, particularly with regard to gender. A selected reading of Abū …

What All Americans Should Know About Women In The Muslim World: Clarifying Stereotypes About Muslim Women In Morocco, Alexandra M. Krain

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

The stereotypes about Muslims in Morocco as well as Morocco in general are widespread and often incorrect. The present paper combines both scholarly review and personal experience to clarify stereotypes about public space, work, education, and personal life, focusing specifically on women. Hopefully, this analysis will assist in educating the public about Muslims in Morocco and reveal the under-appreciated similarities between Moroccan and American women.

Active Resistors: The Women Of Post-Revolution Iran, Sofia E. Mouritsen

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

In this paper, I challenge the notion that Muslim or Middle Eastern women are passive acceptors of discrimination. After examining how Iranian women resisted governmental discrimination following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I consider a number of factors that may have led to the reversal of some of these discriminatory policies in the 1990’s. How much of an effect did women’s demands for equality have on the government’s decisions? This question of effectiveness introduces a longtime debate between Islamic feminists, who advocate for working with the theocratic government and using Islam to frame their demands for equality, and secular feminists, who …

Winning The Game: Muslim Women And Sport, Claire F. Benstead

Student Publications

Female Muslim athletes face a number of obstacles when playing sports, both at home and abroad. For example, those who wear hijabs may be banned from playing a sport in certain countries or international arenas because their headscarves are deemed unsafe by the organization’s standards. By contrast, they may be required to wear a headscarf in other countries if they wish to compete publicly. By examining case studies from a variety of sports and countries, this paper explains how female athletes have worked to overcome these obstacles and fought for equality and the right to join the game.

Laughing Against White Supremacy: Marginalized Performance Of Resistance Comedy, Caren Holmes

Senior Independent Study Theses

This study examines the political influence of charged standup comedy as a form of protest in resistance movements against white supremacy. It examines the experiences of seven marginalized comics who confront oppression through this non-traditional and humor based form of protest. Over the course of two months I conducted and filmed eight in-depth, semi-formal interviews with seven comics of color; six women and one trans-non-binary person, as well as an academic who specializes in studying the production of “charged humor.” I attended more than 30 standup shows and filmed several performances. In my analysis I explore four major themes, (1) …

MaríA De Zayas And The Art Of Breaking Free, Erin Cygan

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This paper analyzes a short story by the 17^th-century Spanish author María de Zayas. In Her Lover’s Slave, Zayas’s protagonist Isabel Fajardo is raped and decides to transform into a Moorish slave woman in order to pursue her rapist throughout the Mediterranean and avenge her honor. I examine the effect of this transformation on Isabel, a Christian noblewoman who is subject to the restrictive honor code of early modern Spain, as well as the effect on her Spanish audience. I argue that Isabel’s tale sends didactic messages to early modern and contemporary readers, messages that promote solidarity among …

Positionality And Feminisms Of Women Within Sufi Brotherhoods Of Senegal, Georgia Collins

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.