Join us for the Islamophobia Beyond Borders Workshop, in The Sir Duncan Rice Library, to discuss the international context, repercussions, and consequences of modern Islamophobia. Hosted by Professor Nadia Kiwan of the University of Aberdeen and Dr Jim Wolfreys of King's College London, inviting a host of prominent academics and civil society stakeholders to discuss and share.
Amina Easat-Daas, De Montfort University, UK: ‘The Nature of Gendered Islamophobia in France, England and Scotland: A Comparative Mapping Study’
In spite of the recognised globalising nature of Islamophobia and its gendered dimensions there remains a distinct lack of comparative analysis between cases, rather these are often examined as stand-alone national cases. Furthermore, although there is widespread acknowledgement of the centrality of France as a forerunner in the development and banalisation of gendered Islamophobia, particularly in the fields of policy, legislation, political discourse and popular narrative, the comparative study of France alongside England and Scotland remains all but absent in the literature.
This paper explores the potentials for comparative study of the nature of gendered Islamophobia towards Muslim women in France, England and Scotland via desk-based research of policy and legislative documents, analysis of political discourse, ideological frames (including laïcité, feminism, nationalism and Orientalism), and exploration of the popular narratives around Muslim women in each of the three cases. In addition to these, the paper posits that these can be analysed in relation to explicit interpersonal manifestations of gendered Islamophobia, ranging from but not limited to interpersonal attacks and denial of service and exclusion as experienced by Muslim women in the three national contexts.
Additionally, in light of the continued paucity of research centred on Muslim women’s voices and everyday lived experiences the paper looks at the ways in which the above research could draw on qualitative interviews with Muslim women in France, England and Scotland, and the potential substantive and methodological insights to be garnered in this area. Qualitative interviews with Muslim women from across a range of fields would better enrich the comparative understanding of Muslim women’s direct experiences of gendered Islamophobia and the ways in which they navigate burkini, niqab and hijab bans, exclusion from education and the labour force, and even interpersonal intersectional threat in the everyday.
Hanane Karimi, University of Strasbourg, France: ‘Gendered islamophobia as an indicator of the French hegemonic order’
The policy of the new secularism (la nouvelle laïcité) encompasses the introduction of laws, bills and regulations aimed at excluding the Muslim ‘enemy’ and Muslim women who wear headscarves, from the public arena, while consolidating the notion of a ‘Muslim public problem’. This policy has been in existence since the passing of the law banning the wearing of religious symbols and clothing in public schools on 15 March 2004. It identifies Muslim women who wear headscarves as rebels against the Republican order and enemies of Republican values. The 2015 attacks in France led to increased securitisation and criminalisation of Muslims, and the 2021 law consolidating the principles of the Republic illustrates well this suspicion-based politics. An analysis of the politics of the new secularism and the arguments justifying the discrimination and exclusion of women who wear headscarves reveals the hegemony of the categories at work. Designated as heretics to the hegemonic order, Muslim women expose a Republican order built on racialised hierarchies, based on belonging and appearance; and a gender-based hierarchy of femininities. This explains why they are excluded from universalist feminist struggles and alienated from hegemonic femininity. The confrontation between two representations of femininity assigns Muslim women who wear the headscarf to a paradoxical femininity in which the terms of femonationalism are explicit. This categorisation is revelatory of the sexist and racist foundations at work in a Republican order that acts as a white, neoliberal and capitalist hegemony.
Nadia Kiwan, University of Aberdeen, UK: 'Paris 2024: Femonationalism comes home to the Paris Olympic Games'
In this paper, I will critically examine how femonationalism has led to the exclusion of French athletes who wear the hijab from competing the national Olympic team. Beyond their removal from the French national sporting community, the hijab ban on French Muslim athletes has also removed the opportunity to be part of a transnational community within the Olympic village, where female athletes from other countries are allowed to wear hijab. The ban on hijabs for Muslim sportswomen has led to international outcry, with condemnation from organisations such as the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and is the latest and high-profile illustration of the ways in which French Muslim sportswomen are marginalised in both elite and amateur level sports across a range of disciplines from basketball, badminton, volleyball, judo and football. In this paper, I will therefore reflect on the French government’s discriminatory practices in the name of gender equality but will also consider spaces of resistance to such patterns of exclusion, via a case-study of the group known as Les Hijabbeuses, a social movement of female football players who wear the hijab and who have been campaigning for the right to compete in official French Federation matches. The Hijabbeuses have not only set up their own parallel games - Les Jeux des Hijabbeuses - but have been able to mobilise support transnationally, including from global sports brands, thus challenging femonationalist Islamophobia from both within the nation and beyond it.
- Venue
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library, Meeting Room 224
- Contact
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- Booking
- Online booking available