Secular female self-definitions and religious male prescriptions

from Jonathan VanAntwerpen religion@ssrc.org to tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 22 Feb 2008 02:39 subject
Rethinking Secularism: A headscarf affair, a women’s affair?

"Women who are proponents of the headscarf distance themselves from secular models of feminist emancipation," writes Turkish scholar Nilüfer Göle today at The Immanent Frame(http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/), "but also seek autonomy from male interpretations of Islamic precepts. They represent a rupture of the frame both of secular female self-definitions and religious male prescriptions. They want to have access to secular education, follow new life trajectories that are not in conformity with traditional gender roles, and yet fashion and assert a new pious self. They are searching for ways to become Muslim and modern at the same time, transforming both."

Read Göle's entire post, along with earlier contributions from Jenny White and Joan Wallach Scott, here: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/category/secularism/. Jonathan VanAntwerpen Program Officer & Research Fellow Social Science Research Council 810 Seventh Avenue, 31st floor New York, NY 10019 phone: 212.377.2700 x612 email: vanantwerpen@ssrc.org blog: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/