Women in major world religions like Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism do not hold official authority to lead religious practices in their places of worship. For this reason, the acknowledgement of their informal responsibilities and contributions to society has also been largely ignored. Even though women do not hold leadership positions in most faiths, their contributions to community building and social cohesion are crucial.
The lack of official authority is often misinterpreted as a lack of agency in the religious community. In reality, the critical role of the community’s emotional support system provided by Muslim women is elusive but not adequately acknowledged. The aim of this small conversation is to bridge the gap between informal and formal recognition of Muslim women’s agency and their representation.
In Islam, the dichotomous position of women and men in official social spaces is implicitly viewed by non-Muslims in the context of women’s role to be submissive in nature. My understanding of women’s work in informal settings challenges the existing stereotype about Muslim women by non-Muslims. The informal space encompasses domestic gatherings or visiting any recreational place as a group, outside of religious institutions, where women are actively engaged in many kinds of activities as a part of creating their own shared safe space. Such gatherings and activities are not defined as religious practice, but it is powerful to offer meaningful interaction and a means for building a religious community.
Based on my ethnographic observations of my local mosque in the Midwestern United States, I have observed women actively participating in social activities and building social cohesion through empathy and bonding. Women’s activities are crucial to creating a socially cohesive Muslim community and creating a sense of home, especially for the immigrant members of the community. Together, American and non-American Muslim women create a feminine religious space beyond ethnicity, race, and citizenship.
Muslim women offer resources and time to immigrant people who experience nostalgia and anxiety in this foreign land. For instance, during any pregnancy, or after giving birth, Muslim women initiate a meal train for up to several weeks for pregnant women or new moms. Community members, who are eager to support, utilize various digital platforms to manage who is providing food on which day. Members who belong to the local mosque practice such kind of work not only as a religious community but also as a cultural and social community. Another important instance I have observed is when members lose a family member, the Muslim women group tries their best to be with the person as a support system. The emotional support during this period helps its members to cope with grief and anxiety.
There are also communal events designed to facilitate friendship. After Eid, Muslim women celebrate with a women’s party in which only women are allowed to participate. This kind of informal party offers them a unique space to celebrate life and helps them cope with busy and mundane schedules. They create friendships and personalize their understanding and belief of Islam through meeting Muslim sisters from different parts of the world. In the context of American culture, their engagement helps to create a Muslim space within the wider the non-Muslim context and preserve their Muslim identity.
The lesser visibility in formal religious settings does not limit women’s agency in faith communities. Creating their own arenas of activities offers an alternative discourse for future scholars and researchers to look at the agency and contribution of Muslim women.
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Niger Sultana is a third-year Ph.D. student at the Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University Bloomington. With her focus on ritual, religion, and politics of tradition, her Ph.D. dissertation topic is the South Asian Shia diaspora community. Sultana is an assistant professor in Bangladesh in the Folklore department at JKKNIU and is now on study leave. She is the current Vice president of the Bangladeshi Students Association at IU.
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