WHAT IS THIS? IS IT?

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CHAPTER THREE
GENDER, GENERATION, AND THE REFORM OF
TRADITION: FROM MUSLIM MAJORITY
SOCIETIES TO WESTERN EUROPE
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Introduction: Muslim ‘diasporas’ in European societies
The acknowledgement of the durable settlement of Muslims in several
European societies has led to a variety of scholarly studies, among
which a trend has emerged that points out the inherently ‘European’
character of Islam. Its basic argument is that the emergence and set-
tling of Muslim communities in Europe contributes to massive trans-
formations of Islamic forms of organisation of social life, which escape
the traps of traditional authority in which Islam is supposedly still
mired in Muslim majority societies, and favour forms of individual-
isation. The first type of argument stresses, from a normative point
of view, that the inherently liberal and democratic public spheres of
Western European societies provide grounds for drastic changes in
Muslim thought and social practice and favour a version of Islam
with a specific European normative base, labelled ‘Euro-Islam’ (Tibi,
1998; 2000). This category ultimately de-legitimises any model of
Islam that deviates from an ‘enlightened European system of values’,
in harmony with ‘secular constitutions’, as Bassam Tibi puts it (Tibi,
2000, 36). The second variant of scholarly approaches to European-
ised Islam (e.g. Babès, 1997; Saint-Blancat, 1997; Roy, 1998; Tietze,
2001) emphasises the plural and changing character of Muslim forms
of organisation and social life and identifies privatised components
of Islam through its encounter with secularised Western societies.
The key concept emphasised here is ‘individualisation of religion’,
which has so far been mainly used with regard to Protestant or
Catholic milieus in Western societies (Luckmann, 1991; Bellah, 1991;
Hervieu-Léger, 1993).
We agree that this second approach innovates substantially on pre-
vious ones and shows us a sociologically promising direction, since
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it stresses how the outcomes in Muslims’ social action is open to a
variety of influences related to social context. At the same time we
notice that this perspective tends to overestimate the fluidity of the
relationship between tradition and social action. The presupposition
of fluidity is often based on the presumption of an ineluctable ero-
sion—via fragmentation—of Muslim tradition. This view mostly sub-
stitutes or opposes notions of tradition to concepts of modernity, and
tends to emphasise ‘how modern’ Muslims in Europe have indeed
become. Furthermore, the overestimation of the pluralistic potential
within Western European societies can lead to an underestimation
of the de facto and also de jure restrictive conditions for spaces of social
action and claims of public representation for Muslims in Europe
(ranging from restrictive citizenship laws, through authorities’ tactics
of postponing their recognition of institutionalised forms of Islam, to
stigmatising discourses vis-à-vis Muslims in the public sphere). Finally,
if one ultimately assumes a full individualisation of religion and a
continuous erosion of traditions, one implicitly de-legitimises any
claims for public representation that go beyond the view of indi-
vidual citizens entering the public sphere as atomised units. Both
scholarly trends risk preventing us from taking into the focus of the
sociological analysis the potential of transformation and reform that
originates from within Muslim traditions, and their capacity to chal-
lenge and unsettle dominant notions of citizenship and the public
sphere, as well as the very notion of (modern) politics.
Our perspective throughout this article offers an alternative inter-
pretation, in that we assume that tradition-rooted categories of social
and religious authority do not impair by default autonomous social
agency, but are often their necessary condition. They are part and
parcel of the process—also located at the delicate juncture of inter-
generational change and conflict—through which forms of authority
are transformed through the impact of social powers (like those related
to education, social disciplining and social distinction), without this
implying a pre-fabricated and normative notion of ‘secularisation’.
The article will start with an introductory section on the role of
Islamic reform movements in the process of nation-state formation
and transformation in Muslim majority societies at the turn of the
19th century. This background analysis is important, since it provides
key knowledge about the way in which Muslim tradition has been
subject to transformations both through the encounter with other,
competing traditions and through internal interventions. We will focus
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on the extent to which key figures in the reform movements evoked
an axis of women’s education and Islamic modesty to articulate a
concern for the polity that cannot be reduced to mainstream modern
institutionalised forms of politics, either ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. In
the follow-up sections we will illustrate the challenge, and the related
transformative potential of the spontaneous and organised forms of
social action of Muslims in Europe towards dominant norms. By
focusing on Muslim women who publicly wear the headscarf in
France and Germany, we will show how the phenomenon of veil-
ing in Europe goes beyond the interpretation of a recent and swift
‘coming out’ of Muslims, or ‘re-Islamisation’. Instead it points to a
much longer and more complex process that has simultaneously to
account for the reform of Muslim traditions and the shifting config-
urations of social powers affecting nation-state institutions, gender,
intergenerational change, class and migration. The binding element
between the background analysis and the case study is our emphasis
on the potential challenge to dominant norms and discourses articu-
lated by Muslim actors—either publicly, as in the examples of Muslim
reformers at the turn of the century, or on a more informal level
of life politics, or rather of the ‘reform of personal life’, as in the
case of contemporary young women. These challenges, we will argue,
are situated and embedded in a discursive Muslim tradition which
has constantly been subject to internal transformations.
Muslim traditions, the reform process, and the
making of the ‘Muslim woman’
Our starting point is based on the assumption that the notion of
tradition is relevant for the sociological analysis of Muslim forms of
social life both with regard to Muslim majority societies and as far
as Muslim minorities in Europe are concerned. This requires a brief
introduction of what we mean by this concept. We conceive of reli-
gious traditions as both institutionally and discursively grounded and
as a set of moral and social references, which shape discourses and
social practices. A ‘living tradition’, as Alasdair MacIntyre calls it,
presupposes a variety of moral and even emotional dispositions on
the basis of which traditions are moulded and transmitted, formed
and re-formed. Such dispositions depend on institutional forms of
authoritative discourse and on the embeddedness of individuals or
groups in specific life narratives, which derive from the past.
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As highlighted by both Alasdair MacIntyre (1981 and 1988) and
Talal Asad (1998; 1999), who links MacIntyre’s approach with social
phenomena related to Islam, this understanding of tradition differs
substantially from the ideological usage of this concept by especially
conservative political theorists. We by no means contrast tradition with
reason and the stability of tradition with conflict or crisis (MacIntyre,
1981, 218–220; Asad, 1993, 200–236). Instead, we assume that tra-
dition is an eminent part of the motivational prism of social agents:
‘Living traditions, just because they continue a not-yet completed
narrative, confront the future whose determinate and determinable
character, so far as it possesses any, derives from the past.’ (MacIntyre,
1981, 223).
Consequently, we tend to consider the ‘reform of tradition’ as a
dynamic that cannot be reduced to social-structural fields but has to
account for—as in Talal Asad’s words—the inherent ‘search for
coherence’ (Asad, 1998) of traditions, a force that produces an impe-
tus to self-reform. We claim that if fragmentation occurs—which
indeed is the case—it is also because traditions, i.e. their discourses
and their institutions, as well as the practices they authorise, have
been exposed to permanent internal interventions, and this for quite
a while, not only in the modern (or supposedly post-modern) eras,
but since their inceptions. However, these interventions must be
authorised in some way, and the procedures of authorisation are
subject to ever deeper changes, variously related to social-structural
fields and dimensions.
A key background for concretising these introductory remarks, and
to introduce contemporary life politics among Muslims, is the process
of reform that took place especially in the second half of the 19th
century in the most important centres of the Ottoman empire.
1
Upon
the intervention of Muslim reformers engaged as public intellectu-
als, educators, and advisors to government, traditional forms of Islamic
reasoning acquired a public dimension: the process of formation of
virtuous Muslim selves, originally finalised to salvation, increasingly
ingrained into issues of collective welfare, social governance, economic
development, and public morality. This is not to say that in the era
1
A first collective effort to connect the reform discourse in the waning Ottoman
empire and especially in Egypt to contemporary issues involving Islam and gender
in the European metropolis has ushered in a collective work that builds the imme-
diate antecedent to the present article (Salvatore, 2001a).
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prior to the advent of modern reform movements Muslim traditions
were indifferent to the regulation of political authority and economic
activities. Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh) dealt indeed with a vast array
of social issues ranging well beyond ritual obligations, and backed
up the jurisprudence through a strong telos, defined by the pros-
perity of the community. However, a comprehensive concern for the
‘common good’, articulated with regard to standards set by the mod-
ern institutions of the state, society, and the economy (as well as the
very conceptualisation of these three spheres) has been only devel-
oped by Muslim reformers (and their more secular counterparts who
were often the reformers’ pupils). It occurred mainly through their
social projects and media, in the historical context of crisis and demise
of the Ottoman Empire, de-colonisation, and formation of nation-
states.
However, we cannot assume that the public intellectuals of the
Islamic reform were just playing into the hands of the nation-state.
They impacted on state educational and legal policies and initiated
autonomous projects within the associational life of the main urban
centres, whilst backing up both activities with a public discourse that
brought to bear a distinctive view of the Muslim moral being. From
that historical moment on, a whole spectrum of differentiated (and
often competing) attitudes of personalities, groups and movements
inspired by the reform of Islam has developed till today in the
definition and collective pursuit of social goods (Salvatore, 1997).
The advent of mass education and electronic media since especially
the 1960s has further intensified the reform efforts and the compe-
tition among groups and individuals (Eickelman and Piscatori, 1996).
What is shared by the public discourse of Muslim reformers and
their follow-up movements in the 20th century is a twofold mark of
distinction. First, they can hardly be described as ‘modernist’, in the
sense that their discourse is not based on the view of atomised social
selves engaging a direct relationship to an impartial (originally abso-
lutist) ruler, a view successfully developed in some parts of Europe
and ambivalently transported by European powers into their colonial
enterprises. The emerging forms of public engagement in the name
of Islam (which we can define as ‘public Islam’: Salvatore, 2000)
build on a distinctive type of legitimising discourse. Although it might
fit the nation-state framework according to circumstances, interests
and policies, public Islam is not an emanation of nation-state discourses
(Messick, 1993, Asad, 1999, Gasper, 2001). The public engagement
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of Muslim reformers is certainly inspired by a variety of sources of
influence, but nonetheless rooted in a genuine sense of belonging to
a tradition. It differs most notably from the secularist normative ideal,
which builds a key element in nation-state discourse. A second mark
of distinction is the reformer’s critique of local customs, situated
mostly in the politics of authenticity, and the call for a revivification
of the sacred core texts. This points to the process of negotiation
and struggle internal to Muslim traditions. Though often oriented
towards a glorified mythical past, such a conflicted process lies at
the heart of the self-reforming project.
The intellectual movement that positioned itself at the hub of the
emerging public sphere is often associated with the key-word of
Islamic ‘reform’ (ißlà˙). It took root in Egypt in the second half of
the 19th century. The dilemmas faced and the solutions devised by
the reformers cannot be formulated in terms of an allegedly ‘mod-
ernist’ approach of squeezing Islamic traditions into modern institu-
tions and leaving behind what was considered unsuitable. Although
the reformers did in fact dismiss several methods and institutions of
Islamic traditions in the educational and legal fields, they wanted to
redress and make fit again—which is the meaning of ißlà˙, improp-
erly translated as ‘reform’—and not to discard the theological and
conceptual apparatus of these traditions. A leitmotiv in the discourse
of ißlà˙ was the emphasis laid on the necessary acquisition, by the
faithful, of correct moral dispositions. This step was considered as
the condition for being able to address and admonish a fellow Muslim
and thereby rebuild a moral community of the faithful and contribute
to its prosperity. This was an essential condition of the public reason
envisioned by the ißlà˙, and it provided one major entry point of
Islamic notions of reason into the structuring of public discourse.
A crucial issue in this regard is the upcoming woman’s question,
which turned out to be one of the most powerful topics for the
Islamic reformers’ goal to publicise a distinctive model of education.
The axis of gender and education through the inclusion of several
classes, including peasants, builds a momentum in which a distinction
from both colonial and nationalist discourses could be publicised.
The ‘virtual school’ for girls of the leading Muslim reformer 'Abdallah
al-Nadim (1845–1896) in forms of imagined dialogues published in
his journal al-Ustàdh (‘the professor’), sets him apart from the later
reformer Qasim Amin and even from the first Egyptian feminist
Huda al-Sha'rawi, who are considered the pioneers of the discourse
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on the emancipation of the Muslim woman in Egypt (Herrera 1999),
but who primarily addressed an educated audience. Al-Nadim’s goal
was to address girls from both urban and rural backgrounds and
from different social classes, and in some of his writings he used a
colloquial form of Arabic. His ‘educational’ discourse was geared
towards eliciting in the Muslim girls a traditional sense of obligation
as future wives and mothers in the context of emerging forms of
nuclear family fitting a national project of prosperity and indepen-
dence, within a socio-political arena dominated by colonialism and
resistance to it.
While being a sort of ‘pre-emancipatory’ discourse targeted to
women, al-Nadim’s school prefigures the view of the ‘good Muslim
woman’ that was to be later rearticulated under different social and
historical circumstances by the movement of the ‘new veiling’ during
the first half of the 1970s. Al-Nadim was a champion of a certain
type of education, designed to provide tools for household activities
and reflecting the image of the mother as the ‘cradle of the nation’.
His programme was radical both in its anti-colonial spirit and in
targeting the upcoming nation as a whole, and therefore those classes
and categories of the population considered at risk of being evicted
from the social fabric. He targeted especially the Muslim poor, in
the context of extremely low school enrolment rates of Muslim girls,
and thereby manifested a crucial concern of distinction from both
colonial and nationalist programs of women’s education. This edu-
cational program was from the beginning combined with a specific
Muslim dress code, which was designed to externalise women’s mod-
esty and simultaneously distinguish them from an emerging secu-
larised public (Herrera, 1999). The enforcement of a dress code
evidencing the modesty and virtuosity of an educated Muslim woman
has indeed been from the beginning a sensitive part of the reform
discourse, even at a stage where it is expressed in ostentatiously neo-
patriarchal tones and only by male actors.
The efforts of thinkers, associations and social movements trying
to gain a sense for the idea and the wish to live as good Muslims
(to live a ‘Muslim life’) under modern conditions have been partic-
ularly vigorous since the late 1920s, when movements like al-Ikhwàn
al-Muslimùn (the Muslim Brethren) tried to make Islam fit the require-
ments of social development under the conditions of anti-colonial
nation-state building. Within the Islamist socio-political movements
and their discourses, the issue of the woman, i.e. the ‘new’ mother-
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hood and housewifery, is more clearly inscribed in the project laying
the seeds for a truly Islamic society to come, a virtuous community
fitting and at the same time transcending the imperatives of national
liberation. This has been particularly clear in a later period, like in
the writings of Zaynab al-Ghazaly, the leader of the Muslim Sisters
in Egypt from the 1960s to the 1980s (Zuhur, 1992). In the context
of the crisis of the nationalist-developmentalist project, since the late
1960s new favourable conditions have been created for this kind of
discourse and mobilisation, simultaneously finalised to self-realisation
and reconstructing community, and Muslim ‘good life’.
The contemporary publishing scene presents a steady flow of lit-
erature and manuals directed to the ‘Muslim woman’, many of them
basically articulating the same combination of modesty and education,
and catalogues of duties related not only to family and neighbourhood,
but also to participation in the affairs of a wider community (poten-
tially ranging as wide as the whole transnational Islamic umma). It
is symptomatic that contemporary Muslim public figures attribute a
high value to religious education and guidance, which is considered
as the appropriate path to the rediscovery of ‘true Islam’. Parallel
to these developments there have been several initiatives, in Egypt
(Herrera, 2001), like in India (Winkelmann, 2001) and elsewhere, to
establish schools for the proper education of Muslim girls. The
affiliation of these initiatives to the broader colonial/post-colonial
reform movements is evident.
In particular the advocacy of female education by Islamic reform
movements gives credit to the argument, mentioned before, stress-
ing the internal logic of interventions within traditions, which induce
a reform characterised by a self-disciplining reflection and modula-
tion. At the same time the specific forms of education for women,
which are propagated in these discourses—motherhood, wifehood,
household skills, etc. on the one hand, and general and/or religious
education on the other—point to a tension between women’s entry
into public worlds and the limitation of their activities to domestic-
ity. The phenomenon of the ‘new veiling’ somewhat symbolises and
incorporates this tension. This complexity can be observed in different
times and various contexts, and finds indeed parallels within Muslim
‘diasporas’ in Europe today. Here the potential of intervention on a
tradition can be evinced even in a clearer way than in the context
of Muslim majority societies.
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Revival, invention or redefinition of tradition?
The Islamic headscarf in Europe
By moving to a micro-level of the analysis, we want to deepen the
argument that a closer scrutiny of Muslim diasporas in Europe reveals
a stronger power of living traditions, than the power reflected in the
idea of a free floating, deliberately chosen religious identity, as illus-
trated, for example, in the captivating formula of ‘believing without
belonging’ (Davie, 1990). What we are going to do is to look closer
at the phenomenon of new veiling in two Western European soci-
eties—France and Germany.
2
Without focusing on the practice of
veiling as such, we will analyse the modalities through which Muslim
tradition is reinterpreted by the individual Muslim living in a non-
Muslim-majority society. The focus group of covered women in
Western European societies provides an interesting case. On the one
hand, the discourses of headscarf-wearing Muslim women reflect per-
tinently both continuities and transformations within traditions, and
the hybrid forms of sociality which result from there. On the other
hand, the public visibility of the Islamic headscarf in Western European
societies has often been perceived in terms of an either/or logic,
which is characteristic for public discourses on Islam in Europe. The
headscarf has been either described as a sign of the ‘return’ to a
static tradition, incompatible with Western standards of women’s
emancipation, secularised publics, concepts of freedom and autonomy,
etc. (e.g. Galotti, 1994; Altschull, 1995; Thömmes, 1993; Tibi, 2000).
Or it has been interpreted as a religious marker leading per se to the
emancipation of Muslim women and thereby indicating the move
2
This section is mainly based on a set of 40 qualitative interviews conducted by
Schirin Amir-Moazami with veiled women of the second and third generation of
Muslim immigrants in France (Marseille and Paris) and Germany (Berlin). The
fieldwork has been carried out between Autumn 2000 and Autumn 2001. The inter-
viewees were aged between 16 and 33. The majority was either studying, or actively
involved in a profession. Four women were not working in the period of the inter-
view because they had young children, but they mostly stressed their intention to
continue to work or to study at a later stage of their lives. The majority lived in
neighbourhoods considered as ‘socially disadvantaged’ (Kreuzberg, Wedding and
Neukölln in Berlin; Northern banlieues in France). Coming from migrant families or
(as in two cases) from families of migrant families, they all shared a similar socio-
economical background (mainly working class). All women were involved in a Muslim
organisation, either as members, and sometimes in leading positions, or in terms of
benefiting more or less regularly from their services (prayer rooms, conferences,
women’s groups, religious instruction, etc.)
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towards a ‘modernisation’ of Islam in Europe (Nökel, 1997; Venel,
1999; Karakasoglu-Aydin, 2000; Klinkhammer, 2000).
The phenomenon of veiling in European societies cannot simply
be interpreted as a religious practice transmitted from one genera-
tion to the next. On the one hand it is not mandatory, on the other
hand we can observe a constant rise of young covered women, for
whom the headscarf mainly externalises a discovery of a different
kind of Islam, distinct from the images propagated in the majority
society, and also different from the versions transmitted by the for-
mer generation. However, even if we might find elements of ‘invented
tradition’ by looking at covered women in Europe, on a closer scrutiny
the importance given to the headscarf occurs mainly with the backup
of a more solid ground of a living tradition of women’s modesty,
which was duly reshaped in the discursive and socio-political con-
text of reform in the colonial era.
A crucial aspect in this context can be denoted as the ‘intergen-
erational twist’, which leads to both a rediscovery via redefinition of
Muslim traditions and to shifts in terms of religious authority. As we
will show later in more detail, the women with headscarves often
oppose their own versions of Islam to the ones of the former gen-
eration, and challenge through their education and religious knowl-
edge certain norms and values hitherto taken for granted. They
criticise, for example, the practice of forced marriages by pointing
to their right to choose their husbands, or at least to accept or to
refuse the parents’ suggestions—a right which they support with ref-
erence to the Qur"àn. The practice of forced veiling is also con-
demned with reference to the necessity to discover its importance in
a conscious way.
It is important to remember in this context that the transmission
of religious knowledge and practice, or of religious traditions in a
wider sense of the term, is not necessarily a linear process, a one-
sided transmission from one generation to the next, but can very
well work the other way around. This aspect is crucial in the dis-
courses enacted by covered women. The women do not only often
claim to have encouraged their mothers to cover themselves or to
don the veil in a ‘correct way’, as against supposedly incorrect cus-
tom-based fashions. They also commonly underline that they have
sometimes encouraged their parents to reflect over the meanings and
implications of religious practices. However, the extended family
affects the ways in which the ‘new’ forms of the ‘true Islam’ are
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moulded and articulated by the women. The question of gender roles
and relations shall further on serve as a key example to scrutinise
this ambiguity.
Contrary to the dominant discourses on gender equality in Western
European societies, the covered women interviewed in France and
Germany mostly refer to the ‘Islamic’ approach to the ‘complemen-
tarity’ of sexes. Consequently, they associate a distinct set of tasks
and duties with a relatively confident conception of gender distinc-
tion. Thus, the women consider men as responsible for feeding the
family through work outside of the household, and women as pri-
marily enclosed in the domestic sphere, being in charge of the house
and kids. This division is often regarded as sacred and God-given
and therefore as a more or less untouchable norm.
According to this distinction the Islamic headscarf constitutes an
instrument for hiding female sexual attractiveness, since women are
considered as particularly seductive. By pointing to such ‘naturally
given’ differences between men and women, the women reproduce
a common dichotomy that associates the body with femininity and
the mind with masculinity (see Butler, 1990). While articulating the
attempt to overcome this dichotomy by hiding the female body and
thereby getting closer to the mind, which is associated with the other
sex, the women in fact reinforce the boundaries by following dress
codes that are exclusively attributed to the feminine sphere: the head-
scarf incorporates the taboo of displaying femininity, while it is itself
a strong expression of femininity. On the other hand, the attempt
of ‘going back’ to the noblest dimension of the person, the mind,
by hiding markers of one’s sexuality, presupposes the existence of a
certain essence ‘responsible for the reproduction and naturalisation
of the category of sex itself ’ (Butler, 1990, 20).
In the distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘aesthetic body’
(see also Göle, 1996), the women sometimes put forward a quite
polarising discourse vis-à-vis the majority of non-covered women,
whose sinful behaviour puts them opposite the ‘good Muslim women’.
Thereby some women construct a scheme which does not leave much
space for varieties or in-between components: either a woman wears
the headscarf, or she is symbolically naked. To be covered implies
thus to be purified, whereas being uncovered symbolises to be ‘open’—
a term commonly used by the women—and to be therefore exposed
to seduction. It signifies impurity, since the risk itself to seduce is
considered as ˙aràm.
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However, the women are by no means unanimous in their way
to use the headscarf or to follow Islamic dress codes. Sometimes they
diminish by themselves the distinction between the ‘pure’ covered
and the ‘impure’ open woman by embracing aesthetic aspects of sex-
uality—make-up, high heals or tight clothes. This is why some women
distinguish different practices of veiling and oppose ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
ways to wear the headscarf. The ‘wrong’ version can be the ‘tradi-
tional’ usage (i.e. leaving some hair visible), as it has often been worn
by the first generation of Muslim immigrants (see Gaspard and Khos-
rokhavar, 1995, 34ff.). Here, the headscarf also functions as a marker
of belonging to a popular class. We can observe a clear tension
between the tradition of veiling as reconstructed by the majority of
the women as specifically religious and scripture-based and what
could be defined as the ‘migrated traditions’ (also defined as ‘new
veiling’ in some literature on Muslim majority societies: cf. MacLeod,
1991; Adelkhah, 1991; Göle, 1996). The ‘wrong’ way of wearing the
headscarf can also be the more commodified and aestheticised ver-
sion, as mentioned above. In this sense, a clear distinction between
the aesthetic body, usually connected to ‘Western’ sexual standards,
and the sacred Islamic body is actually questioned through the com-
bination of ‘sacred’ and ‘aesthetic’ elements practised by the women
themselves. Through this interplay of sacred and aesthetic elements
the headscarf might even become a vehicle of sexual attraction.
More importantly, the denouncement by some women of right
and wrong versions of the headscarf marks an internal boundary,
according to which the ‘community’ of veiled women is getting much
more fragmented than often presented in public discourses, or by
the women themselves. It is thus not necessarily always within pre-
supposed dichotomies, such as German/Turkish, Muslim/Christian,
Oriental/Western, etc. that distinctions are put forward. The bound-
aries are much more differentiated and can very well also be con-
structed along the lines of different versions and interpretations of
Islam, although the women refer to the same sources (cf. also Schiffauer,
2000). The different versions of covering can therefore become an
element in a strategy of life politics based on a ‘distinction’ in the
Bourdieuian sense, though not in the first instance in terms of belong-
ing to a certain social class, but rather in the sense of belonging to
the group of ‘good’ vs. ‘less good’ Muslims.
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Between ‘political motherhood’ and the entry into public sphere
The emphasis in the discourses of covered women lies in the first
instance on the importance of (Muslim) motherhood which Pnina
Werbner (1999) characterises as ‘political motherhood’. This reveals
indeed similarities to theological-political discourses of female or male
Muslim activists in Muslim majority societies both at the turn of the
century (e.g. Shakry, 1998; Kandiyoti, 1998) and today (e.g. Abu-
Lughod, 1998; Riesebrodt, 2000; Adelkhah, 2001). In order to enhance
the status of maternity some women refer to the Qur"àn, and/or to
a ˙adìth, in which the role of the mother is sacredly validated. In
this perspective the nature of the woman as the mother and ‘lady
of the house’ is by no means regarded as a limitation, but as a priv-
ilege in a double sense. Firstly, because the woman is relieved of
earning money, this duty being exclusively predestined for men.
Secondly, since in this conception giving birth implies ‘by nature’
bringing up the children, women are considered as those who trans-
mit norms and values to the next generation and therefore retain a
large social and political responsibility. As the ‘first teachers of the
children’,
3
they are supposed to be in charge of the construction or
maintenance of society as much as of the Muslim community. In
this sense the domestic sphere is not a merely private domain which
is formative for processes of personality-building, but turns out to be
a largely societal space. It provides and substitutes a sense of belong-
ing, which the wider public (i.e. public institutions) often fails to pro-
vide to Muslim minorities in Europe, and in the longer run contributes
to the rise of a ‘counter-public’, as Leonie Herwartz-Emden puts it
for the German context (Herwartz-Emden, 1998, 79).
Consequently, the concept of work (outside of the domestic sphere)
as a source for women’s self-realisation is, if not absent, connoted
differently in the life conceptions of these women. Working outside
of the house is not in the first instance associated with the attain-
ment of personal autonomy, but is rather considered as a necessary
tool for supporting the family and thus as a means to serve the col-
lective welfare. However, the idea of women’s autonomy is not com-
pletely dismissed in the discourses of these women. It is articulated
3
Interview, Marseille, May 2001.
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65 orxrrn, orxrn.+iox, .xr +nr nrronv or +n.ri+iox
in different terms and from a different angle and not without a cer-
tain degree of ambivalence.
We face a growing complexity when we deepen the analysis of
the women’s understanding of public/private engagements. In fact,
at a closer scrutiny one could see that although most women pri-
marily refer to those Islamic norms that confine women to the pri-
vate realm and assign them mostly the roles of mother and spouse,
this does not necessarily signify passivity or indifference towards pub-
lic engagements. Most notably when being asked about their per-
sonal life strategies, the women quite often distance themselves from
their confident claims for strictly defined gender roles. Those who
are working or studying emphasise their ambition to continue either.
The role of the housewife and mother therefore does not necessar-
ily prevent the women from occupying or envisaging other roles.
Moreover, when asked about their personal life conceptions, the
women often put forward their goal to share tasks and duties both
inside and outside of the household despite the supposedly Islamic
role of women being complementary to men. More adequately, the
concept of complementarity itself can become flexible to the extent
that some women refer to the model of the Prophet in order to
stress the desirability, in Islam, of husbands who help their wives in
household duties, since ‘the Prophet also used to play with the kids’.
4
Especially their longing for education, but also for a profession,
alters the boundaries of what their own version of Islam prescribes
in terms of women’s participation in public life. Both general and
religious education turn out to be one of the most important fea-
tures in their life politics, while it is not always limited to the goal
of achieving better skills for raising children or more effective ways
of transmitting Islamic norms and values to the next generation. The
tradition of stable gender roles is thus rhetorically preserved, but in
practice renegotiated, according to the concrete life situations in
which the women find themselves. Or to put it differently, for the
majority of the women the reference to a predefined gender rela-
tion often turns out to be more appreciative than normative. It serves
as a standard for maintaining an Islamic ideal of ‘complementarity’
as opposed to ‘equality’, but not always as a yardstick for orienting
4
Interview, Marseille, April 2001.
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66 scninix .vin-vo.z.vi .xr .nv.xro s.r\.+onr
conduct in a once-and-for-all defined manner. On a closer scrutiny,
the ideal of clear-cut gender roles might be subordinated to concrete
life situations (career ambitions, study goals, or simply the necessity
to contribute financially to the family income).
It is nonetheless necessary to remember that the women often
have to face rather restrictive practices of gender inequality within
their own family contexts. This clearly puts limits on their ambitions
for autonomous life goals and public participation in society. The
weight of the institution of the family (as of a network with rela-
tively closed milieu boundaries) seems often to be neglected in
approaches that overestimate the processes of emancipation and indi-
vidualisation among Muslims in Europe (Babès, 1997; Venel, 1999;
Klinkhammer, 2000). These women are the ones who often experi-
ence repression, once they go too far in their criticism of certain
norms and values, taken for granted by the former generations, or
once they gain too much autonomy from their family environment
(see Khosrokhavar 1997b; Saint-Blancat, 1997; this has also been
confirmed by some of the interviewees in the present study).
These young women often experience a strong tension between
an inferiority in the family environment and the autonomy they have
gained in society (see Saint-Blancat, 1997, 124). Most commonly
women of the second generation are those onto whom ‘migrated tra-
ditions’ are projected the most pointedly—customs that are supposed
to be in danger of extinction in the ‘host’ societies, such as family
honour, women’s sexual abstinence outside of marriage, or (quasi-)
arranged marriages. This tension itself reveals the sociological ambi-
guity of unspecified notions of traditions as inherited customs that
ignore the inherently dynamic character of living traditions, which
cannot just be transplanted from one place to another without under-
going changes and creating or modifying fields of social power.
5
The scarce capacity of a tradition to ingrain into the mechanisms
of social fields (here mainly the school, peer groups, leisure time,
associational life) is what can trigger either an attempt to reject, or
to revitalise it. Thus, the increasing involvement of the women in
these fields of semi-public and public life, including leading positions
in female sections of Muslim organisations, and the constantly rising
5
As Edward Shils puts it: ‘The revival of a tradition almost inevitably involves
changing the tradition’ (Shils, 1981, 246).
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67 orxrrn, orxrn.+iox, .xr +nr nrronv or +n.ri+iox
levels of education—compared to the former generation—provide
them with tools to struggle against male dominance and differential
treatments in the family milieu. Here Islam can become a means for
reinterpreting certain elements of ‘migrated traditions’ experienced
as too strict. The defence of Islam is then situated in a critique of
custom. Islam then becomes the religion that prescribes equality
before God, regardless of gender. The most relevant aspect in which
‘equality before God’ is transposed into daily life experiences con-
cerns the demand for the (sacred) right to accumulate knowledge
through education, which is not limited to the domestic sphere and
which therefore requires some involvement in public life. In order
to back up this demand, the women frequently refer to the ‘model
of the Prophet’, who prescribed to both men and women to search
for knowledge, ‘even if it is in China’.
6
Or they refer to female
Muslim figures like 'À"isha, the wife of the Prophet, and her active
involvement in society. Or, more generally, they point to the model
of the Prophet himself, through whose life and teaching a large
amount of rights was granted to women.
In this context we should additionally consider the counter-
discursive potential of such arguments. The women not only oppose
their idealised model of women’s rights in Islam to their parents’
understanding of gender relations. They also argue assertively against
the dominant images of the oppressive and anti-egalitarian character
of Islam towards women. One can often witness an insistence on
the privileged position of ‘women in Islam’, which is targeted against
images and discourses on Islam in European societies. The experi-
ences of a strong stigmatisation, often channelled through public dis-
courses on the backwardness of women in Islam (see Pinn and Wehler,
1995), obviously affect the way in which Islam is lived, reclaimed,
and represented by these women.
As in the colonial context, gender roles and relations in Islam pro-
vide a key issue in the struggle for counter-discursive strategies in
the lives of these women. They manifest the importance to be pub-
licly involved explicitly as Muslim women, by issuing a distinctive
and positive image of Islam. The result is quite often a sort of mir-
ror image of the stereotypes commonly projected within French or
German public spheres on the unequal and oppressive character of
6
Interviews, Berlin, November 2000; Marseille, May 2001.
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68 scninix .vin-vo.z.vi .xr .nv.xro s.r\.+onr
Islam towards women: a ‘duplication’ effect that leads to a sort of
‘hyperdiscourse’ of Islam created by auto- and heterostereotypes
largely mediated by mass media (Salvatore, 2001b). Consequently,
the women tend to turn these images upside down and present
Western conceptions of gender relations as a source of women’s
oppression. While claiming purity for ‘women in Islam’, they under-
line the abusive constraint of external beauty ‘in the West’. The re-
definition of Muslim tradition produces a token of distinction towards
both the first generation and the dominant discourses in society.
By criticising the authoritarian methods of education, with which
most of the young women have been confronted throughout their
socialisation, they valorise an education based on mutual understand-
ing and equality, again by invoking Islam. The ‘wrong reference’ to
Islam, as some women denounce it, used by the former generation
as a means to legitimise prohibitions and restrictions, is uncovered
and replaced by their own ‘right’ and ‘purified’ versions. These are
based on (re)-readings and a (re)-interpretation of the sacred texts,
and provide a ground for the struggle for women’s dignity. The ref-
erence to Islam here becomes a means in the battle for more equality
in those contexts in which the former generation has expanded the
spheres of ˙aràm for women.
According to the concrete situation and also the socially situated
contexts in which one lives, Islam can thus be a reference for both
women’s limitation to domesticity, and for redefining gender roles,
and therefore allowing for a distinctive entry of young Muslim women
into the public sphere. These two claims can even occur in one and
the same discourse. Which of them turns out to be the most powerful
is still an open question, exposed to constant shifts.
The emerging life conceptions are incommensurable in culturally
specific ways with the dominant ones in the host societies, which none-
theless might, at certain points, have informed them. At the same
they are quite different from any previous understanding of women’s
roles in the household and family, in most of the cases experienced
and transmitted by the former generation. The reinterpretations of
Muslim tradition developed by these young Muslim women can thus
be assessed as an original transition from a social order in which
patriarchal structures are increasingly threatened, to another kind of
social order. However, this ‘new order’ cannot be assimilated to the
one dominant at least in the discourse of the ‘host’ societies. It is
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69 orxrrn, orxrn.+iox, .xr +nr nrronv or +n.ri+iox
our contention that the life politics of these young Muslim women
impinge upon Muslim traditions in somewhat unprecedented ways.
Among the family and community milieus, the women’s conscious
and consistent recurrence to Islam in several cases initiates indeed
changes in the way in which certain rules are negotiated internally
to Muslim traditions and communities or—as in Farhad Khosrokhavar’s
(1997b) or Stefano Allievi’s (see his chapter in this volume) words—
‘neo-communities’ in Europe. For example, the reference to equal-
ity in Islam often holds a key position in the process of re-evaluating
gender roles. It is invoked by the women for negotiations and com-
promises, especially as far as the demands for female education and
marriage strategies are concerned. Traditions are thereby not com-
pletely turned upside down or erased, but redefined from ‘within’
and in a framework available to the women within their family inter-
locutors. They consistently demand—though in different guises—the
‘return’ to a Muslim way of life, and at the same time condemn
those interpretations of Islam that may confine them into the domes-
tic space or turn them into subjects of male dominance. This strat-
egy enhances their power by situating their claims at the core of the
tradition. More than that, it gives them interpretative authority,
according to a claim of moral correctness that is at the core of the
classic repertoire of several generations of Muslim reformers. We
maintain that these redefinitions of tradition follow in the first instance
an internal logic, a reform of tradition from ‘within’, although
influenced, of course, by the redefinition of fields of social power.
As claimed by Alasdair MacIntyre, it is namely this internal con-
tested component which keeps traditions alive: ‘traditions, when vital,
embody continuities of conflict’ (1981, 222).
At the same time, being familiar with the legal systems and dom-
inant norms of the societies in which they have been growing up,
these women demand active participation as Muslims through their
status as citizens to an extent that differs substantially from the so-
called ‘quiet Islam’ (Cesari, 1995, 34) of the former generation. This
attitude erodes both the image of their passive role in society, and
challenges the assumption of their ‘integration’ into the dominant
rules and norms of life conceptions. We see in this challenge a poten-
tial most notably for unveiling the contradictions inherent in the dis-
courses of equality and secularity themselves, which represent contested,
and still largely unfulfilled norms in Western European societies, and
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which often serve as instruments of social control and hegemonic
politics towards the claims-raising of minorities. This is also evidenced
in the discourses of the young Muslim women interviewed. They are
largely aware of the unbalanced effects that ‘abstract universalism’
can engender (see Khosrokhavar, 1997a). They critically point, for
example, to the ‘hypocritical’ attitude of the public conception of
French or German society as deeply anchored in human rights tra-
ditions, while Muslim women face restrictions and sanctions when
being covered in public institutions. Or they protest against the unfair-
ness entailed by the double standards with which dominant concepts
like laicité in France, or the status of co-operation between state and
religion in Germany are handled, once the question of Muslim rep-
resentation is on the agenda. By uncovering the ‘cultural impregna-
tion’ (Habermas, 1993, 181) of such concepts—contrary to their often
proclaimed neutrality—the women request to open them up to the
new cultural-religious constellations in society, engendered by processes
of immigration. They thus reclaim extended possibilities for public
forms of religious expressions, by taking up and reinterpreting dom-
inant tools and norms. This politics of re-description challenges dom-
inant interpretations which, especially in France, often ask Muslims
to limit religious expressions to the private domain. At the same time
it dislocates dominant notions of the legitimate boundaries of the
public sphere, as manifest in the enduring hostility—also reflected in
bans and prohibitions—of wide sectors of European societies towards
the active presence and participation of veiled women in the public
sphere.
Conclusion: Muslims’ social activism and the
boundaries of the public sphere
The example of veiled women in France and Germany is an example
of a phenomenon that can be observed on a wider level and is char-
acteristic for an intergenerational struggle for the transformations of
Islam(s) thereby engendered in contemporary Europe. Accordingly,
a relatively strong family network and related custom-based versions
of Islam are confronted with increasingly intellectualised and localised
views (in the sense of a recourse to the sacred sources and a per-
manent reflection on the implications of what it means ‘to be Muslim’
in a non-Muslim society) put forward by the younger generation,
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often under the label of an ‘authentic’ Islam. This confrontation also
contributes to shifts in Muslim authority towards more flexible and
pluralised forms. The ensuing politics of authenticity serves to further
fragment traditional sources of authority (as, for example mosque-
based imams, or parental authority) to the extent that the locus of
the ‘real’ Islam and the identity of those who are allowed to speak
on its behalf are becoming elusive.
This tendency is obviously reinforced by the comparatively high
degree of social power and competence among second and third
generation Muslims, as manifest in their networking and interacting
with the rest of society, their familiarity with its intellectual avatars
and political tools, and, most importantly, their mastery of the dom-
inant language. Traditional sources of authority are thereby not nec-
essarily or always directly attacked, but challenged from ‘within’ and
also with the internal tools of argument and confutation that are
part of the dominant tradition. This points to a continuity in the
way in which a discursive Muslim tradition is shaped and redefined
via internal interventions, which is characteristic for our understanding
of (religious) traditions in more general terms. Especially the refer-
ences to the ‘true Islam’ and the politics of authenticity, while being
inspired by complex sources of influence, find antecedents in the
colonial/post-colonial situation of Muslim majority societies. Both
contexts—though different in time and space—can be compared inso-
far as the intervention and domination by other traditions seem to
increase the degree of reflexivity as much as the efforts for self-reform
in Muslim tradition—whatever the concrete outcomes of these efforts
might be.
In a wider perspective these processes might at the same time ini-
tiate more general shifts from primarily ritual to social forms of Islam
in Europe—as Islam is becoming an all encompassing source which
structures the daily life conduct and at the same time serves as a
source of emancipation from the stereotype of the distinct Other
based on non-European ethnic origins. This yet speculative assump-
tion finds bits of evidence, for example, in the transformations of
mosques and praying rooms of Muslim organisations from sites pri-
marily devoted to ritual practice to institutions with much wider pro-
grams, ranging from conferences, through religious instruction, to a
variety of socio-cultural engagements. These developments do not
necessarily erase the power of religious personnel, but diversify it
and make it more subject to control and sanction. The extended
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role of imams from preachers to socio-political leaders and brokers
who increasingly negotiate between the community and local and
public institutions points to such changes (see Bistolfi, 1995, 40).
However, it would be reductive to explain the increased social engage-
ments of Muslim organisations solely in terms of the ‘new’ context
or through the development of a sort of ‘transnational literacy’ of
migrants and especially the youth. The confrontation with—and the
interaction within—European societies has indeed accelerated a process
of reform and the shaping of a social and public Islam that in Muslim
majority societies has emerged much earlier. This indicates, once
more, a continuity and not a disruption of Muslim tradition, or bet-
ter, a continuity of its reform. This wider background is necessary
to understand the more specific and multiple challenges implicated
in the life politics of Islamically committed, and covered, young
Muslim women in Europe.
If our observation is correct, then the roots of transformations in
organised forms of Muslim associational and public life cannot be
explained through the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ interaction between Muslim
‘communities’ and European authorities alone, but also with refer-
ence to the underlying life politics that are predominantly shaped
by the reform of tradition. As often confirmed in the literature, many
of the most powerful Muslim organisations have increased their port-
folio of socio-cultural activities in order to adjust to the demands of
the younger generation which is interested in finding linkages between
the majority society and their search for a conduct as ‘good’ Muslims
therein. Hence, coping with these demands also follows an internal
dynamic. This phenomenon cannot be easily explained by pointing
to the frequent suspicions and accusations put forward by public
authorities and media, according to which these forms of Muslim
public life are mere tactics of Muslim organisations designed to instru-
mentalise social engagement for the political mobilisation and radi-
calisation of young people, or for displaying a different, more apolitical
face to the public.
Simultaneously, such extended and mutating strategies of Muslim
groups necessitate a capacity to cope with legal procedures and local
political actors and public authorities in the ongoing struggles for
recognition and representation—a tendency which is indeed observ-
able among large parts of Muslim organisations in Europe (Bistolfi,
1995; Frégosi, 1998; Seufert, 1999; Amiraux, 2001). This can be inter-
preted as a step towards an involvement of socially and politically
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engaged Muslims within European public spheres, instead of their
isolation, as often supposed in public discourses. On the other hand,
expressing a basic loyalty to the constitutional states in Europe and
the acceptance of their basic norms does not necessarily imply an
adaptive step towards the privatisation of Islam and Muslims’ ‘inte-
gration’ into pre-established normative frameworks.
What emerges can be characterised as a ‘both/and’ logic of social
action. It points to a variety and open-endedness of processes of
redefinition of Muslim tradition in Europe, not yet once-for-ever
definable, and probably remaining conflicted and multi-levelled. Again,
the underlying life politics—as in the analysed case of young cov-
ered women—designs a model of potential civil activism that is not
strictly homogeneous with the dominant norms, so that while it could
fit an expanded view of public life in the host societies, it will most
likely continue to stir up the suspicion of public authorities and media
discourses for not being securely assimilated. This misrecognition cre-
ates strains in the normative structures themselves of European public
spheres, which risk betraying their promise of inclusiveness towards
forms of associated and public life furthering citizens’ participation
via the autonomous organisation of their own lives. It also relativises
the argument according to which pluralistic and liberal structures in
European societies have facilitated the emergence of organised forms
of Islam (Schiffauer, 2000; Amiraux, 2001).
The control of the public sphere by actors such as journalists,
politicians, or scholars, who publicly speak on behalf of Muslims,
and the systematic limitation for Muslim actors to represent them-
selves collectively, clearly delimits the supposedly open potential of
the public sphere and reduces the possibilities for ‘non-conformist’
Muslims to become equal actors in society. It can be interpreted as
a hegemonic policy of representation, dominated by the logic of
speaking about and not with the Other. The way in which public
debates on the Islamic headscarf have so far been dominated by
public intellectuals, politicians and journalists and only rarely left
spaces for the women to speak for themselves is a key example in
this regard (see Amir-Moazami, 1999, and 2001; Lutz, 1999).
To conclude, we would like to reiterate that the increasing demands
by Muslims to be publicly represented, which lead to questioning
certain public norms (ranging from a reconsideration of gender mix-
ity to food consumption in educational institutions), challenges the
idea of the ‘friendly’ coexistence with an ‘abstract, antiseptic Other’
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74 scninix .vin-vo.z.vi .xr .nv.xro s.r\.+onr
(Zizek, 1998) as between members of a pre-established consensus.
This situation turns Muslims into very concrete, i.e. ‘agonistic’ citi-
zens, standing up and raising claims that might shake some taken
for granted—and symbolically powerful—markers of ‘consensus’ within
Western European public spheres. Again, the outcomes of these chal-
lenges are still multiple and open-ended. So far, we suggest to con-
ceive of ‘integration’—to the extent we want to stick to this key-word
as a goal to be pursued within Western societies with significant and
growing Muslim populations—in a different way, namely as the devel-
opment of distinctive, and often competing forms of Islamically based
social agency within a plurality of traditions, which mutually affect
each other.
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