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).

Pesquisar sexualidade na religião é uma tarefa complexa. Por mais que exista uma tentativa de afastar a religião do debate sobre a sexualidade, é fato que há um importante entrelaçamento entre essas duas categorias. Em todas as sociedades definem-se as normas sexuais e delineiam-se quais seriam as transgressões, sendo a religião uma das instâncias de sua regulação. No caso do Islã, por estabelecer um código de conduta a ser seguido em todas as esferas da vida dos muçulmanos e das muçulmanas, inclusive no que diz respeito à vivência da sexualidade, sexo e prazer apresentam algumas especificidades. Para entender quais são as práticas, vivências e sentidos atribuídos à sexualidade neste campo, é preciso antes considerar as prescrições do que é lícito (halal) e ilícito (haram) de acordo com a religião, em seus próprios termos. A partir do diálogo com dez mulheres muçulmanas brasileiras revertidas e da inserção e circulação da pesquisadora em campo islâmico, serão tecidas reflexões sobre a concepção islâmica da sexualidade e suas implicações para o exercício da sexualidade feminina. A análise dos dados está apoiada nos referenciais teóricos advindos tanto da psicanálise como da antropologia. O trabalho apresenta que, apesar das prescrições existentes mesmo dentro da licitude do casamento, a prática sexual no Islã extrapola a finalidade reprodutiva: há um incentivo aos prazeres, colocando a satisfação sexual como um direito de ambos os cônjuges. Por um lado, torna-se crucial relativizar o clichê da mulher muçulmana sexualmente reprimida: diferentemente do que se pensa no senso comum, o sexo do ponto de vista islâmico não é tabu. Por outro lado, é preciso assumir que a sexualidade é uma arena em que o desejo convive e disputa com prazeres e perigos; facilidades e resistências; saberes e poderes / To research sexuality in religion is a complex task. While there is an attempt to alienate religion from the debate about sexuality, there is an important connection between these two categories. Sexual norms and their transgressions are defined in all societies and religion is one of the instances in which they are regulated. In the case of Islam, by establishing a code of conduct to be followed in all spheres of life of Muslims, including the experience of sexuality, sex and pleasure have some specificities. In order to understand the practices, experiences and senses attributed to sexuality in this field, one must first consider the prescriptions of what is lawful (halal) and unlawful (haram) according to religion, in its own terms. From the dialogue with ten Brazilian Muslim women reverted to Islam and the insertion and circulation of the researcher in the Islamic field, reflections will be outlined about the Islamic conception of sexuality and its implications for the exercise of female sexuality. The analysis of the data is supported by the theoretical references derived from both psychoanalysis and anthropology. This dissertation argues that despite the prescriptions even within the lawfulness of the marriage, sexual practice in Islam extrapolates the reproductive purpose: there is an incentive to pleasures, placing sexual satisfaction as a right of both spouses. It becomes crucial to relativize the cliché of sexually repressed Muslim women: unlike common sense, sex in Islam is not taboo. On the other hand, it is urgent to assume that sexuality is an arena in which desire coexists and disputes with pleasures and dangers; facilities and resistances; knowledge and power

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / The Islamic dress code has been forcibly imposed on the women in Sudan, since 1983, and many feminists researchers have criticized the practices of the veil as a tool to oppress women. This study aimed to explore a group of Sudanese women, currently living in South Africa, experiences and perceptions of the veil, whether the veil is a religious dress code or a tool that has been used to exercise inequality. / South Africa

Historically, various minority groups have faced multiple forms of prejudice and discrimination. The sources of such attitudes are mainly ignorance about these groups. One such group is Muslims living in western countries. The fear and dread of Muslims and Islam has deep historical roots; however, these attitudes escalated after the September 11 tragedy. After September 11, Muslims became the headlines of news and Americans were exposed to distorted images of Muslims in the media. This misrepresentation of Muslims in the media led to yet another form of xenophobia, which resulted in ‘othering’ Muslims. In schools and universities, the story was not different. In the following study, I discuss the ‘othering’ of 6 international hijabi Muslim women studying at a Midwestern University in light of the Islamophobic tendencies developed after September 11. I create narratives of these experiences to understand how hijabi Muslim women make sense of their experiences in relation to the larger sociopolitical discourse. These narratives contribute to the larger effort of creating an equitable educational experience for students from all backgrounds.

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The Swedish national narrative regarding religion often highlights the 2000 separation of the Church of Sweden from the state and a steady decline in religiosity within the population. However, increased immigration since the end of the Second World War has resulted in rising religious diversity, particularly in the growth of Islam as a minority religion. As members of a minority group, Muslim women often face issues concerning their representation in the media, frequently connecting the women’s identities to debates about immigration, religion, and feminism in Sweden. Through understanding the role religion plays within the conceptualization of Swedish national identity, it becomes possible to then analyze how discourse about Muslim women in the media is associated with ideas of representation, religion, and national identity. In studying the discourse around the 2008 television program Halal-TV, newspaper articles about the program and the articles’ corresponding comment fields reveal recurring themes about media representation, perceptions of national belonging and diversity, and attitudes towards minority groups like Muslim women. In conducting a critical discourse analysis of the online discourse through the lens of postcolonial feminism, media reception theory is used as a theoretical framework to illustrate how the online discussions about Halal-TV constitute a public sphere on issues of sameness and diversity, media representation, and religion in Sweden. This case study thus acts as a glimpse into the concurrent Swedish society and media institutions’ approaches towards religious and cultural diversity and representation in the public broadcasting media.

In this project, I suggest a Deleuzian ontological perspective to address the interconnected and relational constitution of Muslim women‘s experiences and practices to illuminate the multiple-layers of their lives. Namely, I call into question the category ―Islamist,‖ used for contemporary headscarf-wearing women in Turkey, and examine how this categorization erases contingency, specificity, and relationality of women‘s experiences. For this purpose, I articulate the conception of body as a relational and affective multiplicity based on a Deleuzian ontology. According to this ontology, bodies are composed of an infinite number of smaller bodies through the confluence of relations and the creative capacity of affects, which are produced by this relational flux. Since the body is a relational and affective aggregate and a multiplicity within an assemblage, it is not a stable ontological essence or determined by overarching structures, but it is instead dynamic, continually changing, and always in a process of becoming. Since this Deleuzian approach problematizes the stability and singularity of identities, it offers a radical change for the framing of the question of Muslim women. This approach provides useful means to illuminate the experiences, desires, and practices of women in their contexts and through the particular characters of their relations and affects. Therefore, this project stresses the idea that we need analytical tools which allow us to attend to dynamic configurations of Muslim women without reducing them to existing categories or marginalities. / Religion

The study examines the extent to which pregnancy is perceived as a means of status enhancement through interviews of a sample of 118 currently married Muslim women. Data for the study were collected from the Northern Mindanao Region of the Philippines. This study is part of a larger study that included both Christians and Muslims. The Christian sample was the subject of an earlier study by Bautista (1986). Socio-demographic variables included in analyzing pregnancy as status-enhancing were: age, educational attainment, socio-economic status, social activity, modern role orientation, and the total number of pregnancies. Multiple regression analysis indicated modern role orientation as the only significant variable to influence pregnancy as status-enhancing. Age and education of the respondents were found to have significant effects on the total number of pregnancies. Direct and indirect effects of independent variables (age, education, and socio-economic status) on pregnancy status and the total number of pregnancies were also tested. Findings reported by Bautista (1986) on Christian respondents were also found similar to the present study on Muslim respondents: Muslim women tend to regard pregnancy as status-enhancing rather than status-degrading. However, the expected effect of pregnancy status upon the total number of pregnancies was not supported. The study hopes to stimulate more interest on the area of pregnancy status and fertility behavior. / M.A.

Chi, Zeyu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-93). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter One --- Background of the Research and its Main Theoretical Questions --- p.4 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Liberating or Burdensome? Case Study of the Veiled --- p.36 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Fitna and the Universal Norms of Practical Reason --- p.46 / Chapter Chapter Four --- The Ontological Significance of Veiling --- p.67 / Conclusion --- p.83 / Bibliography --- p.91