Muslima : Islamisk väckelse och unga kvinnors förhandlingar om genus i det samtida Sverige

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is an analysis of interviews with and observations among young women in Sunni Muslim youth associations in today’s Sweden. The aim is to understand the women’s possibilities to act as individuals, as women and as members of religious/ethnic minorities. Postcolonial and gender theories are herewith combined to point at tensions among such social positions as well as between said theoretical perspectives. The examination of the women’s agency is performed through an analysis of their negotiations on gender, at the intersection with religion, “race”/ethnicity, age and generation. As indicated in the title of the book – Muslima (feminine form of the Arabic word “Muslim”) – the women are involved in complex processes of positioning, representation and lived experience. This ethnographic study of nine individuals has been aptly conceived in order to supply useful insights about such complexity, challenging the sweeping simplification of the women’s statements that often takes place in one-sided debates. Accordingly, the study illustrates empowering as well as hindering conditions for the women in an Islamic revivalist movement. It shows how they as pious activists gain authority in relation to non-Muslims and “cultural” Muslims such as family members. At the same time it offers insights about how the ethics of honor and shame are reproduced in relation to dominant gender orders in Sweden, former home countries and the global Islamic revival. Thus the women’s local diasporic experiences are stressed, along with transnational and global aspects, without which the women could not be adequately understood. Ultimately the women’s claim for recognition as subjects with agency is discussed in relation to contemporary debates on multiculturalism, identity politics and cultural citizenship.