By Iman Dawood
Gender-traditional religious communities, which promote strict gender relationships based on male headship and women’s submission, have been the subject of much public fascination. Many movies, television series, memoirs, news articles, and blog posts have sought to capture and make sense of the journeys of women who have been involved in and later moved out of these communities. Netflix’s well-received series “Unorthodox,” for example, depicts a young woman Esty who leaves her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in New York. During this “feminist escape,” Etsy flees her arranged marriage and “repressive” religious community, travels to Berlin, and adopts a secular life.
Departures from other gender-traditional religious communities tend to also be depicted in a similar, sensationalist light. An article featured in the New European titled “Lifting the Veil,” explores two women’s departures from Salafism, an “ultra-conservative” Islamic movement that requires strict gender segregation. “Lifting the Veil” shows how these women gradually embrace secularism, become more “modern,” wear Western clothes, and abandon pious acts after leaving Salafism. In most of these narratives, freedom and fulfilment for women are only possible through an abandonment of all religious beliefs.
My research complicates the narrative on women’s departures from gender-traditional religious communities by showing how piety and feminism can come together to motivate women’s exit from these communities. Based on interviews with 20 Muslim women, who joined the Salafi community in London between 1980s and 2010, and later moved out of Salafism, I argue that women may continue to attach themselves to religious beliefs and practices even after developing reservations about the way women are treated in these communities. I show how my participants developed a pious feminist consciousness, one that involves the identification of gender inequality in gender-traditional religious communities as well as the development of an oppositional consciousnesses in which religion is critically understood to contest women’s subaltern positions in these communities. I outline the stages involved in the development of this pious feminist consciousness and detail the different experiences that have led to women moving away from gender-traditional religious communities towards more egalitarian approaches to Islam.
Their pious feminist consciousness first grew through an identification of the inequalities within gender-traditional religious communities. After experiencing repeated issues in gender-traditional communities, women may come to understand that these problems are not their individual failings, but originate with the way they are treated in their respective communities. After my participants struggled with Salafism’s strict approach to gender segregation which restricted their abilities to study or work, marriage norms that demanded feminine submission, and the unequal division of domestic labour, they began to wonder if their feelings of confusion, disappointment, and dissatisfaction could be traced to their gender identities. The second stage of the development of a feminist consciousness entails the development of an oppositional consciousness. The women in my research rejected many Salafi gender norms and adopted a more egalitarian approach drawing from the larger Islamic tradition. They drew on examples from the Prophet Mohamed and his companions to challenge Salafi gender norms. They believed that they have the same rights as men in terms of education and employment, and that household labor should be shared.
This pious feminist consciousness contributed to women’s disillusionment with Salafism, and in some cases, disaffiliation from their religious communities. However, moving out of their communities has not meant a rejection of religion; instead, it has deepened their engagement as they explored what their religion, Islam, offered toward gender egalitarian worlds.
Iman Dawood is a Postdoctoral Research Associate the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include religious and cultural change, political participation and activism, and gender.