“Muslim Women Seeking Power, Muslim Youth Seeking Justice”: An Edited Volume of Research Findings, Resources and Advocacy ()
ABSTRACT
This article gives an overview of a recently published book on the search of Muslim women and youth for social justice and equality, both in Mus-lim-majority cultures, and in Western countries of the Muslim diaspora. The theoretical and research model of critical realism is employed, in which levels of disadvantage and oppression are identified using a value-based approach. The model is applied to Islamic ontology, and the “middle path” of Islamic modesty, peace-making and compromise within multicultural, plural societies, with a focus on Islamic feminism. In a study of Muslim women in management in Western, Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, barriers to women’s employment are identified. Empirical work using “situation tests” comparing ethnically-identified CVs submitted in employment applications showed significant discrimination against Muslim women and young people in the spheres of employment in England and The Netherlands. A study of citizenship education in English schools showed that Muslim adolescents were particularly likely to adopt positive citizenship values, despite social pressures such as Islamophobia, which could lead to discrimination, and alienation. Case studies of Bangladesh and Pakistan (Muslim-majority cultures) in the search for social systems which could apply Islamic values in positive ways proved disappointing. We identified numerous ways in which girls and women in these cultures were exploited and oppressed, socially, economically and sexually. A final chapter explores why higher order values have so little purchase in some Muslim-majority (and other) cultures. The case study of women in Gaza, surviving intermittent warfare, did offer a model of Islamic peace-making, and prospects for a rapprochement of Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Humanist moral positions in seeking to establish co-operative multicultural, plural societies.