Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-244).

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In this narrative study, I explore the transformative visual cultural dialogue behind the sight of the veil or veiled women in Denton, Texas as a Western culture. The narrative is constructed from the experiences of three Western non-Muslim women participants who wore the veil publicly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, especially Denton, Texas, for about two weeks, in the spring of 2014. The main question for this study is: How do veiled Western women incite transformative visual cultural dialogue and ideas concerning veiled women? To gather rich data to answer the study's question, I utilized qualitative narrative inquiry to explore the transformative dialogue that the veil, as a visual culture object, can incite in non-Muslim Western women's narratives. The study involves three participants who are non-Muslim American women who voluntarily wore the veil in public and recorded their own and other's reactions. The participants' interviews and diaries demonstrated that the veil incited a particular perceptive dialogue and often transferred negative meanings. For example, the sight of the veil suggested the notion of being Muslim, and consequently, the ideas of not belonging. The reactions the participants received were either negative verbal interactions or physical ones, both of which are limited in this study to face gestures or some form of negative body language that is meant to be a message of disliking. In summation, this study shows that the women's veil is a visual culture symbol that transfers negative meaning in the DFW area in Texas.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on June 11, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 69 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-68).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Oct. 22, 2007). Directed by Leila Villaverde; submitted to the School of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-252).

This thesis is an exploratory qualitative case study of Western Muslim women‟s religious experiences in Scotland. It situates piety as an object of research and was based on two and a half years of extensive participant observations and conversations with thirty Muslim women aged between 20 and 50 from diverse backgrounds, who regularly took part in religious circles where knowledge and practices of Islam are exchanged, learnt, authenticated, questioned and disseminated among the participants. It incorporated historical research methods such as library research method and interviews with the local Muslims in an attempt to research the history of Muslims‟ settlement, the establishment of mosques in Scotland and the emergence of Muslim women‟s religious gatherings in the localities. This study posed following questions: (a) How did the Muslim women individually and collectively cultivate piety? (b)What were the factors that led the women to return to their faith and attain piety? (c) What are the religious sources they used to nurture their piety? And (d) How did they approach the sources and deal with everyday situations in their surroundings as faithful and pious western Muslim women? This study has argued that piety is not a hidden characteristic in one person but it is observable through various expressions. For examples, through their collective participations in the piety circles and Islamic classes and the contributions they made for themselves, their family and the Muslim communities after they got inspired, learnt and motivated from their religious circles and members. The presence of structured organisations of Muslim women religious circles represents the presence of Muslim women‟s autonomous religious movement and their involvement in the transmission of Islamic knowledge at an informal level. It was through discussions about Islamic texts such as the texts of the Quran and Hadith during their gatherings, that the women found their own religious autonomy and the realisation that Islam serves as a liberating tool in many ways in their lives.

This work examines the relationship between multiculturalism, feminism and violence against women within the context of Muslim women in Scotland.  It problematises multiculturalism and feminism by critiquing the difficulties which arise when multiculturalism is unqualified and feminism is constructed from white middle-class Western liberal values.  This illuminates the interstices created in binary thinking by employing intersectional and interdisciplinary methodologies.  The work uses categories which relate to women’s social and political status, such as human rights, citizenship, immigrants status, refugee, asylum-seeker and ‘paperless’ as they apply to women in the study.  These categories are then used to interpret violence against women as it is, or may be experienced by Muslim women in Scotland. The aim is to develop critical multiculturalism and pluralize the category ‘woman’ in order to move beyond binary notions of difference and sameness, employing intersectional approaches in a move towards a more fluid and holistic understanding of identity.  The limitations of gender as a category of analysis and the importance of ethnicity, religious affiliation, class, dis/ability, maternal status and generation in the construction of identity, changes in life-cycles and geographic location, make the appeal of an intersectional approach and methods explicit.  This is because intersectional approaches recognise that in order to create as inclusive a view as possible, there are categories which could be equally relevant.  To create responsive, flexible and cost-effective social policies there are a number of disciplines and themes to be traversed and the work moves between religious studies, gender studies, globalisation and social policy in order to contribute to the development of new, inclusive methods and theories regarding critical multiculturalism and Muslim women in Scotland.

As part of the British government's Prevent strategy following the July 2005 attacks in London, Muslim women were engaged and empowered as allies to tackle violent extremism. This empowerment greatly improved the social and economic status of Muslim women in Britain. However the primary objective, to prevent the escalation of violent extremism, was not achieved. Furthermore, the way in which Prevent was implemented significantly damaged relations between those who were involved in the strategy and those who were excluded. The overarching research question was: 'How has the role of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim women in British society changed from the period 1995 to 2010 as a result of the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks and the government's Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) strategy or Prevent agenda?' This, and a number of sub-questions, were examined using a mixed methodology approach, which included information drawn from academic literature, open source reporting and journalism, as well as surveys, interviews and focus group discussions with British Muslim women. The study concludes that Muslim women took advantage of the opportunities offered to them by the British government as part of the Prevent strategy, not particularly with the intentions of preventing violent extremism, but more because their progression was an assertion of their own human rights. However, during this time, many Muslim institutions were being ostracised by the government because of their Islamic school of thought, older Muslims and Muslim men were excluded, and Muslims experienced resentment from non-Muslim communities that had lost their government funding due to the exclusive focus on the Muslim community. The findings of this study imply the need for further research into some of the issues highlighted above, also advocating the commissioning of an urgent review of the British government's Prevent agenda, to include the policies that conflate Islam and violence.