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149 pages

English

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This book resists the homogenization of Muslim women by detailing the diversity in their lives and by challenging the dominant paradigm of Arabized Islam as the sole interpreter of the faith. Though much has been written on the Middle East, there is a huge gap in research on Asia, which has two-thirds of the world's Muslim population. These essays reveal that the lives of Muslim women are impacted not only by Islam but also by local politics, class, religion, and ethnicity. Through ethnographic research and other methodologies, the contributors describe how economic globalization, construction of sexualities, and diasporic expectations shape women's lives. The book focuses on women's negotiations and resistances to global, national, and local patriarchies in an attempt to empower themselves.
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh

Part I. Globalization and Transnationalism: The Muslim Woman and Public Space

1. “Just 6P on a T-shirt, or 12P on a pair of jeans”: Bangladeshi Garment Workers Fight for a Livable Wage
Shelley Feldman

2. Dilemmas of Women’s Movements in Turkey: Labor, Charity, and Neoliberal Patriarchy
Damla Isik

3. Complicated Belonging: Gendered Empoerment and Anxieties about “Returning” among Internally Displaced Muslim Women in Puttalam, Sri Lanka
Sandya Hewamanne

4. Women in Post-Conflict Sweat, Pakistan: Notes on Agency, Resistance, and Survival
Lubna Nazir Chaudhry

Part II. Muslim Women: Lived Realities, Resistance, and the State

5. Maintenance for Divorced Muslim Women after the Muslim Women (Protection of Right on Divorce) Act 1986: A View from the Lower Courts
Sylvia Vatuk

6. Gender, Sharia, and the Politics of Punishment: A Contemporary Malaysian Case
Maila Stivens

7. At the Forefront of a Post-Patriarchal Islamic Education: Female Teachers in Indonesia
Ann Kull

8. Education, Gender, and Islam in China: The Place of Religious Education in Challenging and Sustaining “undisputed traditions” among Chinese Muslim Women
Maria Jaschok and Hsu Ming Vicky Chan

Part III. Women’s Voices and Agency: Challenging and Reclaiming Islam

9. Cosmetics, Fashion, and Moral Panics: The Politics and Ethics of Beauty in a Girls’ Dormitory in Kabul
Julie Billaud

10. Negotiating Polygamy: Islam, Gender, and Feminism in Indonesia
Sonja van Wichelen

11. South Asian Muslim American Girls: Resistance and Compliance in Public and Private Spaces
Marcia Hermansen and Mahruq F. Khan

Contributors
Index

Sujets

Islam

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	11 septembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438457765
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Asian Muslim Women
SUNY series, Genders in the Global South

Debra A. Castillo and Shelley Feldman, editors
Asian Muslim Women
Globalization and Local Realities
Edited by
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Asian Muslim women : globalization and local realities / edited by Huma Ahmed-Ghosh.
pages cm. — (SUNY series, genders in the Global South)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5775-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5776-5 (e-book : alk. paper)
1. Muslim women—Asia—Social conditions. 2. Feminism—Asia. 3. Feminism—Religious aspects—Islam. I. Ahmed-Ghosh, Huma. HQ1170.A798 2015 305.48'697—dc23 2014041450
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh
P ART I
G LOBALIZATION AND T RANSNATIONALISM : T HE M USLIM W OMAN AND P UBLIC S PACE
1. “Just 6P on a T-shirt, or 12P on a pair of jeans”: Bangladeshi Garment Workers Fight for a Livable Wage
Shelley Feldman
2. Dilemmas of Women’s Movements in Turkey: Labor, Charity, and Neoliberal Patriarchy
Damla Isik
3. Complicated Belonging: Gendered Empowerment and Anxieties about “Returning” among Internally Displaced Muslim Women in Puttalam, Sri Lanka
Sandya Hewamanne
4. Women in Post-Conflict Swat, Pakistan: Notes on Agency, Resistance, and Survival
Lubna Nazir Chaudhry
P ART II
M USLIM W OMEN : L IVED R EALITIES , R ESISTANCE , AND THE S TATE
5. Maintenance for Divorced Muslim Women after the Muslim Women (Protection of Right on Divorce) Act 1986: A View from the Lower Courts
Sylvia Vatuk
6. Gender, Sharia, and the Politics of Punishment: A Contemporary Malaysian Case
Maila Stivens
7. At the Forefront of a Post-Patriarchal Islamic Education: Female Teachers in Indonesia
Ann Kull
8. Education, Gender, and Islam in China: The Place of Religious Education in Challenging and Sustaining “undisputed traditions” among Chinese Muslim Women
Maria Jaschok and Hsu Ming Vicky Chan
P ART III
W OMEN’S V OICES AND A GENCY : C HALLENGING AND R ECLAIMING I SLAM
9. Cosmetics, Fashion, and Moral Panics: The Politics and Ethics of Beauty in a Girls’ Dormitory in Kabul
Julie Billaud
10. Negotiating Polygamy: Islam, Gender, and Feminism in Indonesia
Sonja van Wichelen
11. South Asian Muslim American Girls: Resistance and Compliance in Public and Private Spaces
Marcia Hermansen and Mahruq F. Khan
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Diana Fox, editor of the Journal of International Women’s Studies , for inviting me to do a Special Issue on Gender and Islam in Asia five years ago. This book has its genesis in that project. This book would not have been possible without the brilliant contributions by the authors, and their patience. I would also like to express my gratitude to Shelley Feldman for her faith in me, and I appreciate her editorial comments. I am also grateful to my graduate student, Taylor Wondergem, who was always there when I needed technological assistance with formatting the essays and checking the bibliographies. I am extremely appreciative to Danielle Bauer for her skills, patience, and hard work in creating the Index. I am indebted to the external reviewers whose invaluable comments and appreciation of the text encouraged me to finish this task. I would also like to thank Beth Bouloukos, Rafael Chaiken, and Jenn Bennett at SUNY Press for their support and guidance. A big thanks to Teddi Brock for keeping the humor and cups of tea flowing in the office; both were essential to complete this book. I would also like to thank Soumitra Ghosh for his detailed editing of the Introduction, and Ernestine Piskackova for her thorough reading of the proofs.
“ At the Forefront of a Post-Patriarchal Islamic Education: Female Teachers in Indonesia ” by Ann Kull previously published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies , vol. 9, no. 3, 2009.
“ Education, Gender, and Islam in China: The Place of Religious Education in Challenging and Sustaining “Undisputed Traditions” among Chinese Muslim Women ” by Maria Jaschok and Hsu Ming Vicky Chan previously published in the International Journal of Educational Development , vol. 29, issue 5. Sept. 2009. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier.
Introduction
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh
Muslim women’s lives in Asia traverse a terrain of experiences that defy the homogenization of “the Muslim woman.” The articles in this volume reveal the diverse lived experiences of Muslim women in Islamic states as well as in states with substantial Muslim populations in Asia and the North American diaspora. 1 The contributions 2 reflect upon the plurality of Muslim women’s experiences and realities and the complexity of their agency. Muslim women attain selfhood in individual and collective terms, at times through resistance and at other times through conformity. While women are found to resist multilevel patriarchies such as the State, the family, local feudal relations, and global institutions, they also accept some social norms and expectations about their place in society because of their beliefs and faith. Together, this results in women’s experience being shaped by particular structural constraints within different societies that frame their often limited options. One also has to be aware of academic rhetoric on “equality” or at least women’s rights in Islam and in the Quran and the reality of women’s lived experience. In bringing the diverse experiences of Asian women to light, I hope this book will be of social and political value to people who are increasingly curious, particularly post 9/11, 3 about Islam and the lives of Muslim women globally.
Authors in this collection locate their analysis in the intersectionality of numerous identities. While the focus in each contribution is on Muslim women, they are Muslim in a way framed by their specific context that includes class and ethnicity, and local positionality that is impacted by international and national interests and by the specificities of their geographic locations. This diversity is reflective of the most pertinent sociopolitical and religious issues Muslim women face in each context. While some of the issues discussed may seem culture- and region-specific, they offer useful ways to think about Asia more broadly. Thus, the range of topics addressed in this book reveals the layers of complexity of Muslim women’s lives. For example, some essays show the contrast in women’s demand for educational reform in socialist and Islamic contexts, while others highlight the dilemmas of legal and religious norms that delineate Muslim women’s rights. Each essay is reflective of the specific historical, political, and cultural context, and therefore highlights the diversity of Muslim women’s lives.
The status of women or the “woman question” has been of much interest, debate, and conjecture over the last century and more. While concern over women’s suffering, declining status in society, and second-class citizenship has led to substantial research, policy and constitutional changes, and on-going debates, patriarchy as a deep-rooted institution continues to foster gender hierarchies. This is a consequence of the power of masculinities, and how femininities are defined in opposition and relation to masculinities of not just the populace but also of the nation (Ahmed-Ghosh 2012). Historically, and even more so today, women’s bodies and women’s lives are seen as national markers to define the purity, status, and legitimacy of the nation. Many feminists (Enloe 1989; Sinha 1995, 2006; Jayawardena 1986) have written extensively about this, particularly through the colonial era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where colonizers justified their occupation of the colonized country through the rhetoric of “civilizing” the nation, and where the civilizing pursuit became necessary because of the “improper” treatment of local women by local men. In this colonial process, the colonizers emasculated local men to establish their rule in the colonized nation by engaging in practices and rhetoric to justify their dominance not just politically but also, appropriately for themselves, through the empowering of masculinity. This led to a twofold situation where colonial men gained power over the colonized and, in the eyes of local women, degraded local men.
This argument is now visible in the justification of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that has led to hostile relationships between Muslim communities worldwide and the United States as well as other Western countries. Muslim women’s lives are once again being constructed in visible and public ways to justify military occupations and war through the discourse of “freedom, democracy and human rights” with the aim of “liberating women.” 4 Once again, Muslim men are being projected as emasculated males because they do not know how to treat their women. To put it in oft-quoted terms, the rhetoric is about “saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak 1988).
Given the range of reasons that have been deployed to justify U.S.-spearheaded global engagement, particularly in military conflict, bringing competing masculinities into the debate about women’s rights and lives becomes critical. Women as globalized property (Ahmed-Ghosh