UNIVERSITY of CALIFONIA Los Angeles

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFONIA Los Angeles Navigating between the Religious and the Secular: Responding to the Muslim ‘Woman Question’ in Diasporic Britain A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Women’s Studies by Sabah Firoz Uddin 2013 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Navigating between the Religious and the Secular: Responding to the Muslim ‘Woman Question’ in Diasporic Britain by Sabah Firoz Uddin Doctor of Philosophy in Women’s Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Sondra Hale, Chair This study is a story of the multiple sides of subject formation, the ways in which immigrant practice, cultural and religious, and the norms of British civil society operate in relation, each responding to the other. In this work I challenge generalized third-person notions of Muslim women as sites of oppression, and place British Muslim women at the center of their own stories. I investigate how South Asian Muslim women in Britain navigate between competing religio- cultural and secular discourse. In order to address gender discrimination in Muslim communities and at the same time, resist external ethnic, and religious stereotyping, I examine the following questions: How is Islamic identity asserted away from the “homeland,” and moreover, what are the larger consequences of these assertions to women? What are the mechanisms whereby Muslim women construct, challenge, contest, collaborate in, and negotiate religio-cultural readings of Islam? My work is at the crossroads of Islamic feminist theory, and immigration/diaspora studies. I draw on data collected through ethnographic work (in-depth interviews and media analyses) conducted in Birmingham, Britain. By analyzing the construction of women-only spaces, development of Muslim-centric media and the adoption of Islamic ii fashion, I demonstrate how British Muslim women respond to the Muslim “woman question” in a diasporic space and further postulate ways to integrate Muslim sensibilities into the secular public. iii This dissertation of Sabah Firoz Uddin is approved. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl Michael David Cooperson Dominic R. Thomas Sondra Hale, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv DEDICATION To my Ismi – a welcome distraction. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 - Overview and Theoretical Framework .............................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2 - The Deployment of Muslim Women-Only Spaces in the British Landscape ... 45 CHAPTER 3 - The (Re)presentation of the Female Muslim Self in British Knowledge Production ................................................................................................................................ 85 CHAPTER 4 - Fashioning the Muslim Woman: Exploring Dress Reform ........................... 124 CHAPTER 5 - Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 151 APPENDIX - Interview Index ................................................................................................ 160 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 166 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project would not have been possible without the tireless effort and guidance of my advisor, Sondra Hale. I am indebted to her for the unfailing personal and professional caring and support she provided me in this long journey. She has always been my advocate and I will always be grateful for her friendship. My other committee members, Dominic Thomas, Michael Cooperson, and Khaled Abou El Fadl deserve similar thanks. I appreciate their time and effort in helping me revise and clarify my writing. I would also like to express my gratitude to my husband, Ali. This project is a testament to you, and only you, for the sacrifices you made so that I can pursue my dreams. My family-my parents, my siblings, Tahir, Samina, Samah and Hanaa, also deserve special recognition for their unwavering love and support. They shared in my joys, and also my challenges and always had faith in me. Abba, in particular, I will always be grateful for your words of encouragement and reassurance when I needed it and a shoulder to cry on. Also, I would like to acknowledge my friends who have stood by me despite my absence in their lives. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the staff of the Women’s Studies department: Jenna Von-Miller Ah, Samantha Hogan, and Richard Medrano. They have always been there to help me when I needed them over my years at UCLA. My final thanks are reserved for the women in Birmingham. Their life stories lay the foundation of this project. They generously made me a part of their lives. I am grateful for their candor and honesty. I will always be in awe of their resilience despite the challenges they face. vii VITA EDUCATION Masters of Arts, Women’s Studies University of South Florida June 2003 Bachelor of Arts, Women’s Studies University of Massachusetts at Boston Summa Cum Laude May 2001 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Teaching Fellow, Women’s Studies, UCLA Fall 2009 The Politics of Fashion: A Global Inquiry into the Construction and Adornment Women’s Dress Teaching Assistant, Women’s Studies, UCLA Fall 2008, Winter 2006, Introduction to Women’s Studies Winter 2005, Fall 2004, Spring 2004 Instructor, Women’s Studies, University of South Florida Fall 2002, Spring 2003 Introduction to Women’s Studies RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS “A Parallel Public Sphere: Muslim Women-Only Spaces In Diasporic Britain”. The (Muslim) Woman Question-Competing Representations, Contested Futures: Critical Islamic Reflections Conference 2010. Yale University, New Haven, CT, April 2010. “The (Re)presentation of the Female Muslim Self in Alternative British Muslim Knowledge Production”. 7th European Feminist Research Conference: Gendered Cultures at the Crossroads of Imagination, Knowledge and Politics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands, June 2009 “The Deployment of Muslim Women-Only Spaces in the British Landscape: Is it a Move from the Margins?” Gender and Power in the Muslim World -11th Annual Women’s History Conference, Sarah Lawrence College, NY, March 2009 “Organic Feminism within Islamic Thought: Questions of Theory, Identity, Legitimacy, Authenticity and Belonging”. Co-authored by Azza Basarudin. Thinking Gender: Graduate Student Research Conference. UCLA Center for the Study of Women, CA, March 2005 viii “In Negotiation with Islam: Possibilities of Gender Reform in a Modern Islamic State”. Session Chair. Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, HI, January 2005. “Chechen Female Suicide Bombers: An Answer to the Woman Question”. Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, HI, January 2005. “Organic Feminism within Islamic Thought: Questions of Theory, Identity, Legitimacy, Authenticity and Belonging”. Co-authored by Azza Basarudin. International Seminar on Islamic Thought, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 2004. “The Woman Question: The Ghandian Perspective”, The Association for Research on Mothering’s 7th Annual Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada, October 2003. “The Exploration of Human-Rights Education in Pakistan and the Mobilization of its Media”, Southeastern Women’s Studies Annual Conference 2003, Virginia Tech, VA, March 2003. “The Limitations of Transnational Human-Rights Oriented Activism in Opposing Honor Killings”, Southeastern Women’s Studies Annual Conference 2002, Valdosta State University, GA, March 2002. FELLOWSHIPS Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship 2010-2011, Finalist Quality of Graduate Education Grant, Spring 2010 Center of the Study of Women Travel Grant, Spring 2009 UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2009-2010 Quality of Graduate Education Grant, Winter 2009 Quality of Graduate Education Grant, Winter 2007 Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship, 2006-7 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in French, 2006-7 Declined Center of European and Eurasian Studies Pre-Dissertation Summer Fellowship, Summer 2006 Quality of Graduate Education Grant, Winter 2006. Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Arabic, 2005-6 ix Chapter 1 – Overview and Theoretical Framework In this study, I investigate how South Asian Muslim women in Britain navigate between competing discourses of the religious and the secular and how their navigation relates to concepts of citizenship, nation and the notion of a religio-cultural Islam. Further, I explore the diverse iterations of Islam outside the context of their imagined Muslim homeland. The dilemma for women in this study is to address the gender discrimination that exists in their diasporic community and yet avoid contributing to both the stereotypes and ethnic, racial, and religious discrimination that is external to these Muslim communities. My aim is to develop theoretical responses to the following broad research questions: How does the case of British South Asian Muslim women in Birmingham give us more information about how Islamic identity, in general, is asserted away from the “homeland,” and moreover, what are the larger consequences of these assertions for Muslim women? What are the mechanisms whereby Muslim women, in this particular context, construct, challenge, contest, collaborate in, and negotiate religio-cultural1 readings of Islam? Emanating from these macro research questions are the following sub-sets of questions that relate to my case study: 1. What is the organizational

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