Reflections on “Veiled meanings : Young British Muslim women and the negotiation of differences”

• Main Author: WOODS, Orlando
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
• Subjects: Muslim minorities; Muslim female identity; Religious difference; Gender and Sexuality; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/267
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Claire Dwyer’s (Gender Place Cult 6(1):5–26) study of the embodiment of difference by young Muslim women living in Britain was among the first by geographers to foreground the roles of both gender and the body on reproducing religiously defined differences. Published pre-9/11, it is prescient in that it explores the everyday experiences of Muslim minorities living in secular Western contexts before it became politically necessary to do so. Since then, the study of Muslim minorities, and the challenges they face in terms of integration, multicultural dialogue, and superdiversity, have become normative. Yet, Dwyer’s paper remains an enduring and important contribution to the field. Perhaps most striking is her bold claim that the veil is an “overdetermined” signifier of Muslim female identity, arguing instead that scholarship should embrace more hybrid, cosmopolitan, and intellectually progressive ways of thinking about religious difference. Claims like these continue to ring true today, and undergird a vibrant and theoretically progressive subfield of the geographies of religion that focuses on the intersections of gender, embodiment, and religion in pluralistic public spheres. This reflection contextualizes Dwyer’s argument and reinterprets it in relation to contemporary scholarship on Islam and gender.