New Frontiers in Islamic Feminism: How Islamic Feminism is Being Shaped by Digital Media

Abstract

By examining how Muslim women bloggers ground their feminism in Islam, this research disrupts oppositional framings of Islam and feminism. This study looks at how Muslim women bloggers on the Muslim Girl website highlight the feminist bent of Islamic teachings. The project asks: 1) What are some sources that contemporary North American Muslim women bloggers draw upon to (re)claim religious authority for themselves and to support feminist interpretations of Islam? And 1.1) In the North American context, what factors shape the narratives of faith that Muslim women bloggers espouse and how so? Addressing question 1, Muslim women primarily draw on Quranic verses, Hadith (Prophetic sayings) and Sunnah (Prophetic practices) to reclaim religious authority and derive feminist interpretations of Islamic teachings. Other methods for rooting women’s religious authority within Islamic precedence include referencing examples of Muslim women leaders and feminist icons, and highlighting the feminist organizational principles of early Muslim societies. As for question 1.1, Muslim women bloggers’ engagement with narratives about Islam is shaped by various factors, including prevailing perceptions about the hijab, the intersecting effects of race, sexual orientation and other axes of identity, and the contours of digital platforms through which these discourses travel. Muslim women’s lived realities are also shaped by dominant conceptualizations of masculinity and femininity, and by overarching nationalist narratives. In this terrain, Muslim women are resisting multiple interconnected systems of oppression, including patriarchy, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, imperialism and settler colonialism. Through their resistance, Muslim women call for transnational, intersectional and anti-racist feminism that prioritizes indigenous resistance, centers marginalized perspectives and emphasizes allyship. In other words, Muslim women foreground anti-imperialist and decolonial feminism that challenges hegemonic narratives about white saviourism and disrupts Eurocentric visions of women’s empowerment. This research also illustrates that thinking of Islam as being invariably patriarchal ignores long-standing feminist resistance in Muslim communities, resistance that is often informed by Islamic teachings.