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How does a socially marginalised group of women within Islam experience and respond to exclusion and rejection from UK mosques? This topic is aimed to be explored in this essay by analysis of a campaign driven by Muslim activist group MPAC(UK), presented in a Crescent Films production documentary, Women Only Jihad. The analysis aims to identify verbal and physical stances toward women’s inclusion as well as exclusion in UK mosques in order to reach an understanding on why Muslim women are excluded and how they respond to such rejection. This has been completed with a qualitative content analysis which has allowed coding and categorisation of verbal arguments and accompanied physical actions represented in the film. The resulting empirical material has in turn been interpreted and analysed according to Woodhead’s (2012) theory on relations between religion, power, and gender. Woodhead provides a model of four different types of strategies that social religious groups can acquire in order to challenge or confirm normative gendered power structures. The verbal and physical stances and arguments initially identified have been analysed according to the fitting strategies that Woodhead provide in the aim of classifying MPACs response to exclusion. The results suggest that the men in power of the UK mosques tend to value traditional norms of segregated mosques which has been identified through verbal arguments on mosques exclusivity and cultural traditions. Furthermore, physical actions from the men represented in the film supports this claim by e.g. physically hindering MPAC access to the mosques. These results suggest that the men from the mosques acquire consolidating strategies in relation to gendered power structures, which enables them to maintain power to define the mosques availability to women. In contrast, MPAC’s campaign has been identified as using tactical strategies in order to gain power in a system which disadvantages women. Several arguments and stances have been identified to confirm that MPAC uses tactical strategies such as e.g. arguing that women have religious rights to the mosque as well as should have equal rights in order to gain religious knowledge, spiritual guidance as well as being part of a community. |
