Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Constructing Pathways to Contemporary Islam
- Section 1 Historical Trends in Contemporary Perspective
- Section 2 Contesting the Islamic Intellectual Tradition
- Section 3 Beyond the Arab Revolutions: Political Islam Revised
- Section 4 Contemporary Spaces of Critical Engagement
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
11 - The New Horizons of Piety: Religiosity and Moral Agency in the Modern World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Constructing Pathways to Contemporary Islam
- Section 1 Historical Trends in Contemporary Perspective
- Section 2 Contesting the Islamic Intellectual Tradition
- Section 3 Beyond the Arab Revolutions: Political Islam Revised
- Section 4 Contemporary Spaces of Critical Engagement
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This article focuses on the development of new forms of Muslim piety that challenge both Euro-American stereotypes of Muslim women veiling and conservative interpretations of the meaning of hijab in Islam. It shows how recent progressive readings of Islamic sacred texts, highlighting the spiritual equality of the sexes, are questioning persistent assumptions that Muslim women are required to veil. These progressive intellectual and theological voices are accompanied by the development of more popular and far reaching industries that are facilitating the emergence of new practices of piety: the Islamic fashion industry, Islamic beauty pageants, veiled dolls, and artistic voices. Taken together, these new modes of Islamic piety show the imbrication of religious expressions, faith, and global market forces.
Keywords: Islamophobia; resistance; secularism; human rights; female oppression; visual arts
One of the biggest misunderstandings of contemporary Muslim practice is undoubtedly that of Muslim women's dress. Politicians in Muslim-minority societies, like a large number of feminists and liberals around the world, berate the increased adoption of conservative Muslim women attire. Laws have been passed in France, Belgium, Germany, and across Europe over the past ten years legislating what Muslim women can wear and where. Behind these laws often loom the fear of Islamism, the threat of ISIS, and the alarm over the radicalization of Muslim youth, all camouflaged in a feminist rhetoric of women's and human rights.
In Europe, the anxiety over Muslim women's dress, and the resulting desire to legislate hijab appears systematically in the wake of bombings and terrorist attacks. It had resurfaced following the March 2016 Brussels attacks, the November 2015 Paris killings, and of course the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacres. Manuel Valls, France's prime minister at the time, did not hesitate to raise once more the question of veiling in France, calling this time for a ban of the hijab in universities. Ten years after banning hijab in public schools, and five years after banning the burqa in public spaces, Muslim women's dress continues to occupy political platforms in France, to fuel heated debates in the media and to divide citizens.
The political desire to regulate Muslim women's dress in Europe has often been expressed not only through laws and policies, but also through public denunciation of western designers who cater to Muslim women's dress.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pathways to Contemporary IslamNew Trends in Critical Engagement, pp. 265 - 286Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020