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Why Do Some Women Embrace Islamic and Protestant Revivalisms in Britain Today?

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Why Do Some Women Embrace Islamic and Protestant Revivalisms in Britain Today? Choosing a gendered solution: Why do some women embrace Islamic and Protestant Revivalisms in Britain today? Myfanwy Carmel FRANKS Thesis submitted for the degree of DPhiI The University of York Centre for Women's Studies October 1998 2 Abstract This is a comparative study concerned with why some women in Britain in the late 1990s choose to join revivalist movements in Protestantism and Islam. Revivalist movements, in reconstructing what they believe to be a' pristine' form of their religious past in the present, exhibit the nostalgia which pervades postmodernity. Revivalist religions (often called 'fundamentalist') have a reputation for the policing of gender boundaries and roles and the blanket subjugation of women. They do not, however, all do this in a uniform way, nor to the same degree because they are specifically articulated in relation to different people in diverse geographical and temporal locations. This study aims particularly to establish what the attractions might be for women in Britain who choose to swim against the prevailing consumerist current and affiliate themselves with such groups in a liberal democracy when women are supposed to 'have it all'. It aims to establish why some women should make this choice of a gendered solution to present day problems in an atmosphere of postmodern gender scepticism and difference. Using an ethnographic approach the inquiry uncovers a number of differences between Christian and Muslim respondents' attitudes to rights as well as to submission to masculine authority. The stereotypes of revivalist women as compliant, oppressed and mute are challenged by the words of the participants themselves in many ways. There are some shared outcomes, especially in relation to concerns about resistance to sexual objectification and issues related to motherhood and child care. The study, utilising a theoretical base of power and rational choice theory, seeks to identify to what degree these choices could be argued to have some kind of feminist agenda and the implications for feminist theory and women's studies are considered. 3 Acknowledgements Firstly I wish to express my gratitude to the ESRC for providing me with the scholarship without which I should not have been able to carry out this project. I wish to sincerely thank all the women who have participated in this study for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and experiences, and frequently, for their hospitality. I am grateful to religious scholars, Muslim and Christian who have offered their advice, help and guidance and to religious leaders for sharing their experiences and for their invaluable help. I would like to thank Mary Maynard and Anne Akeroyd for their help and suggestions. Special thanks is due to Neal Robinson for igniting my interest in Islam and for encouraging me to go on to do research. I am grateful for his comments upon some of the thoughts that appear herein. My thanks to Julie Reichert, friend and companion on the way on the other side of the Atlantic with whom I had daily E-mail contact and who is submitting her thesis for PhD at the same time as myself. A special thank you to Non Ceridwen, my daughter, for making the time to read most of the text and for her suggestions regarding grammar and also to Phil for his support and belief in me and in this study. My unrivalled gratitude goes to Haleh Afshar for her unstinting advice and support and for being there during the difficult times. List of Contents Page Introduction 9 ChaDter I - Survey of Literature 15 1. An overview of the literature available 17 2. Religion and violence against women 19 3. Postmodernism: women, politics and violence 20 4. 'Fundamentalism' and the construction of a fanatical 'other' 23 The Protestant origin of fundamentalism 23 Fundamentalism and present day Christian revivalist movements 25 'Fundamentalism', a term used pejoratively 25 Fundamentalisms and gender 26 Choice of term 27 5. Revivalisms - Christian and Islamic 28 Sunnis and Shi'is 29 Women and Sunni and Shi'i Islam 30 Ecstatic Religion 31 Millenialism, pessimism and Christian revival 34 6. Sociologies of Revival 34 7. Islamic and Christian revivalist groups in Britain 39 Muslim communities in the UK - a new generation 39 Christian revival in the UK 42 8. Revivalisms and gender 45 Christianity and women 47 Protestant fundamentalism and gender 50 Gender, separation, spaces and covering: covering in Christianity 51 Headcovering 51 9. Feminisms within religious traditions 54 Islamist feminists 56 Muslim feminists 57 Progressive readings of Islam 58 Feminist theology and Biblical feminism 59 A rejectionist approach 63 10. Revivalism - why do some women choose it? : some theories 64 Conclusion 76 Notes 80 Chanter 2 - Reflexive Methodology 84 Introduction 84 1. Feminist methodology and epistemology 85 Postmodernism 85 Objectivity 88 Objectification 89 Feminist empiricism and standpoint 90 Moral concerns - Feminist piety: The pristine researcher 91 Ethnography 92 2. Method 95 Sources of respondents and interviewees 96 Access 101 6 Participant observation 104 Questionnaires 109 Respondents to the questionnaire 111 Interviews 113 Life histories and oral histories 113 Recording oral histories 114 Conducting an interview 116 Power 118 Difficult issues - caught in the crossfire: reframing 123 Conclusion: mixed methods 125 Notes 128 Chapter 3. Marriage Obedience and Feminine Submission 129 Introduction 129 The concept of submission 130 The question 132 Muslim responses 132 Christian responses 135 Submission in Evangelical Christian marriage 136 Leadership and submission 140 Responses that disrupt the stereotypical image 144 Conclusion 149 Notes 152 Cha pter 4. Rights and Responsibilities 154 Introduction 154 1. Rights and responsibilities 155 2. Prelslamic and PreChristian conditions 159 3. Respondents and their rights under British Law today 163 4. Rights and religious affiliation 165 Christian responses 165 Muslim responses 167 Marriage, motherhood and divorce 168 5. Claiming Islamic rights and the Biblical feminist equality to serve 169 Islamic feminist approaches to claiming Islamic rights 170 Women's Tafsir 174 Conclusion 175 Notes 179 Chapter 5. Modesty 181 1. Modesty and head covering in Islam and Islamic revival 182 Hajib and Hijab 182 Hijab: criticisms and counterarguments 183 Why is hijab such a potent symbol in Islam? 186 7 Hijab in Britain 190 Experiences of women who wear hijab in Britain today 191 2. Modesty and head covering in Christianity and the New Christian Churches 199 Modesty 201 Head covering 201 Christian responses: modesty 202 Covering in Christianity 204 Modesty and everyday life 208 Conclusion 210 Notes 213 Cha pter 6. Why do some Christian and Muslim women choose revivalisms? 215 Empowerment 216 Rational Choice Theory 220 The Christian respondents 222 Sacrifices 223 The Muslim respondents 226 Converts: family and friends 227 The gains 229 Spiritual gains 230 Intellectual gains 231 Emotional gains 234 Practical gains 236 Material gains 239 Conclusion 242 Notes 244 Conclusion 245 Notes 252 Bibliography 253 9 Introduction At a time when an emphasis on difference has largely eclipsed any shared feminist voice this study began as a quest for shared views amongst disparate groups of women. It is a project that will touch on many areas of women's lives where there are indeed some shared anxieties and concerns. These include issues connected with finance, exploitation through the beauty myth, the avoidance of sexual objectification, marriage, mothering and family life, justice in the workplace and how to balance the difficult juxtaposition of work outside the home with concerns about child care. Although these issues might manifest themselves differently for different women who are from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds they remain matters of importance for many women. Despite earlier feminist struggles and progress made, these problem areas of women's lives have never actually gone away nor found an all-time resolution. This study is about women who choose a gendered solution to the above problems in the I 990s by joining revivalist religious groups in Christianity and Islam. These are groups which above all have the reputation of producing a highly controlling religious environment with an agenda of the subjugation of women. By 'revivalist' movements, as I shall explain more fully in Chapter One, I mean present day reconstructions of faiths which attempt to reproduce an unsullied tradition of (in this case) Christianity or Islam. In doing so they reflect a longing for an unobtainable authenticity; the nostalgia which pervades post or late-modernity. Women who join revivalist groups by choice in a liberal democracy, if anything, represent a counter culture. This prompts me to ask the questions: What are the possible attractions of such movements to women who are adherents and recruits? Are they really as oppressive as their reputation would 10 have us believe? If they are, how far do the achievements of Western feminism permit young women in Britain to choose to experiment with participation in patriarchal groups, to opt for, for instance, segregation, without a sense of having closed a door behind themselves and having thrown away the key? How far, if at all, do liberal and Western feminist discourses enter revivalist discourses? Most importantly are women who join these religious movements taking the line of least resistance or are they, in some way, resisting? If the latter is the case, to what is the resistance addressed? What does the choice they make tell us about our own society? Another aim, then, has been to put the stereotypes, such as the belief that women who choose Islamic and Christian revivalist faith communities are compliant, submissive and oppressed, to the test In reality many women take this path as a matter of informed choice and there is evidence that some women who are high achievers affiliate themselves with these kinds of revivalist movements. So how far do real women involved in Islamic and Protestant revivalist movements fit the acquiescent image? It is often said that research is biographical (Foucault in Martin, Gutman & Hutton 1982:11) and the motivation for this study is connected with my biography.
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