Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

In 2004, a French law went into effect banning girls in state sponsored schools from wearing the hijab, a Muslim head covering. While the law also banned the Jewish kippa and large cross necklaces from being worn in public schools, the hijab took center stage in what became a worldwide media frenzy. The ban of the hijab as well as more recent laws that banned full face veils in all public spaces and a ban on Muslim prayer being performed in the street show a growing divide in the French populace. This thesis argues that these recent laws, as well as the rise in popularity of the far rightwing political party the National Front are evidence that France is moving away from its civic nationalist traditions and adopting a more ethnic based nationalism.

By looking at the hijab in context in the political, social, and domestic spheres of Tunisia, one gains a clearer understanding of the hijab’s complexity and a clearer understanding of each of those spheres. Politically, the condemnation of the hijab reveals the tension between the dominant, secular party and the Islamist movement, and the political oppression still prevalent in Tunisia. Socially, the wearing of the hijab reveals the tension between Orientalist perceptions of the hijab and the desire of Muslim feminists to create an authentically Islamic meaning of the hijab compatible with feminist ideas. Domestically, the hijab reveals the tension that remains between localized structures of patriarchy and individual women’s pursuit of liberation beyond emancipation and secularization. Despite the reforms established in the Personal Status Code and the secularization campaign by the government, they are not enough to completely alter negative domestic perceptions of women.

The population of 2nd generation Canadian-Muslim women who choose to veil, or wear the hijab, is steadily increasing. Rather than inquire why these women choose to do so, this study explores how Muslim youth use the veil as a fashion accessory. Guided by research questions that focus on the representation of the veil in popular culture, this study explores the veil as a sign as the women negotiate ‘being Muslim’ and ‘being Canadian’. Informed by a cultural studies conceptual framework, veiling in fashionable ways, or, ‘voguing the veil’, is explored as a form of ‘public pedagogy’ (Giroux, 2004). Using an Advocacy and Participatory methodology, the four women and myself engage in a collaborative inquiry examining meanings behind how we vogue the veil. Through a series of interviews, focus groups and journal entries accompanied by personal photographs (photovoice), the women and I co-construct narratives around their identity as women who veil in ways that contest dominant discourse. Together we explore the impact of constructs such as beauty, femininity and sexuality on our identities as Muslim women who veil in Canada. Co-constructing participant case studies permits readers “access to the world from the view-point of individuals who have not traditionally held control over the means of imaging the world” (Berg, 2007, p. 233), at many times surprising and contradicting what is ‘known’ about the veiled Muslim woman. The findings reveal themes that deeply impact how the women choose to veil. These themes include the strategies the women use to employ their veils as a means of agency and how, within and through different pedagogical spaces, the women’s performances and performativity of the veil shifts. The women in the study demonstrate that by ‘voguing the veil’, they are in fact attempting to transform the meaning of the veil as a marker of Canadian Identity. Using the voices, photos and narratives of the four women I argue that through ‘voguing the veil’ these young Muslim women are actively entering into and creating spaces so to be seen as an integral part of Canadian society and as such can be recognized as an emerging subculture.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The population of 2nd generation Canadian-Muslim women who choose to veil, or wear the hijab, is steadily increasing. Rather than inquire why these women choose to do so, this study explores how Muslim youth use the veil as a fashion accessory. Guided by research questions that focus on the representation of the veil in popular culture, this study explores the veil as a sign as the women negotiate ‘being Muslim’ and ‘being Canadian’. Informed by a cultural studies conceptual framework, veiling in fashionable ways, or, ‘voguing the veil’, is explored as a form of ‘public pedagogy’ (Giroux, 2004). Using an Advocacy and Participatory methodology, the four women and myself engage in a collaborative inquiry examining meanings behind how we vogue the veil. Through a series of interviews, focus groups and journal entries accompanied by personal photographs (photovoice), the women and I co-construct narratives around their identity as women who veil in ways that contest dominant discourse. Together we explore the impact of constructs such as beauty, femininity and sexuality on our identities as Muslim women who veil in Canada. Co-constructing participant case studies permits readers “access to the world from the view-point of individuals who have not traditionally held control over the means of imaging the world” (Berg, 2007, p. 233), at many times surprising and contradicting what is ‘known’ about the veiled Muslim woman. The findings reveal themes that deeply impact how the women choose to veil. These themes include the strategies the women use to employ their veils as a means of agency and how, within and through different pedagogical spaces, the women’s performances and performativity of the veil shifts. The women in the study demonstrate that by ‘voguing the veil’, they are in fact attempting to transform the meaning of the veil as a marker of Canadian Identity. Using the voices, photos and narratives of the four women I argue that through ‘voguing the veil’ these young Muslim women are actively entering into and creating spaces so to be seen as an integral part of Canadian society and as such can be recognized as an emerging subculture.

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This thesis concerns female Islamic dress, the hijab, in contemporary urban Finland. The hijab is not merely a symbol or an inevitable embodiment of either female oppression or agency, but rather is a form of dress that is simultaneously social, mental, material, and spatial. The approach developed here captures the multiple dimensions of the hijab as it is lived and experienced. The thesis draws upon ideas from a range of social theorists, including Bourdieu, Lefebvre, Goffman, and Gramsci. These ideas are deployed to understand the conscious and semi-conscious dress strategies and practices that veiling Muslim women use to manage various everyday issues and challenges. I investigate questions concerning how social, material and spatial relations both impact upon, and are negotiated by, the wearing of the hijab. The research was conducted in Helsinki using ethnographic methods, such as semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The main groups of informants were Finnish converts to Islam, Somalis, and Shi'a Muslims from Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the sample covered women of various ages, educational backgrounds, and professional positions. The empirical chapters are organised according to four major themes: Politics, Materiality, Performance, and Visibility in Public Space. According to the findings, Muslim women in Finland negotiate their dress strategies with reference to Finnish ‘mainstream' society, religious doctrine and the demands of their particular ethnic communities. Dress strategies and practices are found to be bound up in complex but identifiable ways with factors such as fashion markets and dress availability, diverse modes of embodiment and habituation, and the socio-spatial relations which produce and are produced by the Finnish built environment. In sum, by focussing on the lived experience of wearing the hijab, many of the more simplistic politicised understandings of Muslim women and their characteristic forms of dress can be challenged and superseded.

This dissertation provides a critical discursive analysis of videos, blogs, and social media posts created by two African-American Muslim women who live in the Southern United States, Najwa Niang and Nadira Abdul-Quddus, who make up the, group, Muslimah2Muslimah. As African-American women who do not speak Arabic, Najwa and Nadira fall outside of normative institutions of Islamic learning. Thus, they have taken to YouTube to create their own interpretive communities based on their interpretations of English translated versions of the Qur’an and hadith. Through fashion and beauty tutorials on YouTube, Najwa and Nadira they perform a new Muslim cool, centering their Blackness, and challenging hegemonic formulations of Islam that subordinate African-Americans. I argue that for Najwa and Nadira, fashion is a form of embodied theology. The use their stylized bodies to reimagine religious authority, knowledge transmission, and the image of Muslim womanhood by centering Black expressive culture. My dissertation provides an important intervention in the fields of religious studies and material Islam, highlighting how debates around race and gender are enacted in everyday life.

<p> </p><p><strong>Bakgrund:</strong> I dagens Europa finns aktörer med delade åsikter kring hijab och dess betydelse. Debatten handlar om att eventuellt förbjuda slöjan i det offentliga rummet, detta på grund av att den bland annat anses vara en symbol för kvinnoförtryck. Ett förbud kan eventuellt leda till att de muslimska kvinnorna isoleras från samhället och integrationen försvåras.</p><p><strong>Syfte:</strong> Syftet med denna studie är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer undersöka en grupp muslimska slöjbärande kvinnors erfarenheter kring hijab. Det är även intressant hur föreställningar och upplevelser om slöjan hänger samman med processer som rör identitet och kultur. En människas identitet och kulturella tillhörighet kan krocka med omgivningens, därför är det intressant att undersöka om dessa muslimska kvinnor upplever sig som stigmatiserade.</p><p><strong>Metod:</strong> Studien är baserad på en kvalitativ metod. I de kvalitativa intervjuerna användes en halvstrukturerad intervjuguide med tre övergripande teman. Insamling av materialet har skett via livsvärldsintervjuer med tio respondenter och under samtalets gång har följdfrågor ställts som varit relevanta i det unika mötet.</p><p><strong>Teori:</strong> Studiens teorietiska utgångspunkter är identitet, kultur, kulturmöten och stigmatiseringen. Dessa har varit till hjälp i analyseringen av materialet samt i besvarandet av syftet och frågeställningarna.</p><p><strong>Resultat:</strong> Resultatet visade att det fanns delade uppfattningar om hijab och dess betydelse i samhället. Kvinnorna i studien har en stark självbild liksom identitet och kultur som bidrar till att de känner självsäkerhet gällande valet av att bära slöja. Delar av samhället har dock en annan uppfattning om slöjan och vidtar i många fall diskriminerade åtgärder för att visa deras inställning.</p> / <p><strong>Background</strong>: Today in Europe there are actors with shared views about the hijab and its importance. The debate is about possibility of banning the veil in public places. Hijab is particularly considered a symbol of female oppression. A ban could lead to the point that Muslim women would isolate themselves from society and integration gets more difficult.</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this essay is that through qualitative interviews analyze experiences of the veil in a group of Muslim women. It is also interesting how perception and experience of the veil is linked to processes related to identity and culture. A person’s identity and cultural affiliation may collide with its surroundings. We are therefore also interested if the Muslim women see themselves as stigmatized.</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> The study is based on a qualitative method. Qualitative interviews which is a half structured interview, has been used in this essay. An interview guide with three overarching themes has also been used. The collection of material has been through life-world interviews with ten respondents, and during the interviews, the following points were raised which were relevant in the unique meeting.</p><p><strong>Theory:</strong> The theoretical starting point is identity, culture, cultural encounters and stigmatization. These have been helpful in the analyze and to answer the question of our purpose.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> The results showed that there were different views on the hijab and its importance in society. The women in the study have a strong self-image, identity and culture that contribute to the self-assured security when it comes to the choice of wearing a veil. Parts of society have a different view of the veil and take different discriminating actions.</p>