Abstract
In Islamic Sisterhood: The Meaning of Veiling in Post-9/11 New York, Maruoka-Donnelly explores a range of nuanced meanings revealed by Islamic women’s veiling practices in post-9/11 America. More specifically, she asks, “In the face of escalating violence, danger, and Islamophobia post-9/11, why have some young adult, Muslim women in New York City chosen to wear a visible marker of Islam, the hijab?” (p. 3). Her response, or thesis, is that the post-9/11 resurgent veiling among young adult Muslim women is a way for them to express a new, second-generation, pan-ethnic sisterhood identity in a multicultural society in relation to “their family dynamics, friendship circles, marriage possibilities and neighborhoods” (p. 2).
Detailed over six chapters, a major contribution of this book lies in Marouka-Donnelly’s refined description of the heterogeneity of young adult women’s experience of being Muslim in post-9/11 America. Conducting 60 in-depth interviews and over three years of participant observation from 2002 to 2005, the author participated in and observed religious gatherings, nonreligious events, and social activities of two Muslim sisters’ voluntary groups at two public universities in New York City. As a group member, she joined in over 150 activities including yet not limited to Jumu’ah prayer (worship services every Friday), Quran recitation, Arabic classes, anti-war protests, ice cream socials, volleyball games, and Muslim Student Association (MSA) annual conferences. In addition, she analyzed data from group email messages, newsletters, and members’ virtual chat rooms.
Chapter one introduces us to the study. Using snowball and purposive sampling, Marouka-Donnelly conducted 40 in-depth interviews with 20 women from each group as well as 10 additional interviews at each site with MSA men. Each sister group consisted of full-time undergraduate students, aged 18 to 23 years old, most of whom were daughters of post-1964 South Asian Muslim immigrants, predominantly from Pakistan, with a smaller percentage from India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.
In chapter two, Marouka-Donnelly discusses headscarf practices in the milieu of family relationships, illustrating how socioeconomic status and socio-geographic location shape parental responses to the hijab. For example, women at Metropolitan University used headscarves “as a bridge to unite their families, filling the cultural gap between immigrant parents and Americanized children” (p. 18). They received overwhelming support from parents who were predominantly working class, living in ethnic enclaves, and half of whose mothers veiled. By contrast, women at Eastern University, whose parents were professionals living in upper-class, predominantly white neighborhoods whose mothers generally did not veil, faced opposition in wearing a hijab as parents believed that so doing constrained their economic success and professional opportunities.
In chapters three and four, the author explores how within the constraints of a complicated, patriarchal, ethnic, and religious system of South Asian transnational marriage markets, some sisters used veiling as a tactic to increase their autonomy in mate selection. Within the context of this small sample, most American-born/raised MSA men’s parents preferred that they marry women from their families’ home country. Yet, given the context of arranged marriage, many of the American-born/raised sisters preferred marrying American-born/raised Muslim men, whom they believed would maximize their opportunities for some measure of independence to pursue professional careers and middle-class status (p. 59). In the absence of face-to-face dating practices, some women strategically wore certain hijabs at MSA meetings to signal to MSA men (and their families) that they were “a good Muslim woman”—religious and of high moral character. As testament, one-half of the women interviewed whose husbands were American born/raised said their husbands were MSA members (p. 75).
Chapter five suggests that one mechanism by which the sisterhood groups navigated a theology of veiling and “self-presentation influenced by secular youth female culture” in a global fashion capital such as New York City was to display the hijab as both a religious practice and a fashion statement (p. 85). For instance, when asked why they started wearing a hijab, women frequently mentioned their devotion to disciplines in Islam such as “The Quran says so” or “It is a symbol of my religious faith” (p. 87). Yet when interviewed about daily routines of veiling, a pattern of matching the hijab with an outfit emerged. For example, Mona states, “sometimes I feel like wearing a particular hijab and I match the rest of my clothes with it” (p. 87). Thus, many women owned hijabs in multiple colors as well as fabric textures, wearing them in numerous styles, some of which are illustrated on page 94.
Chapter six focuses on veiling as a political strategy. After 9/11, hate crimes toward Muslims included a rise in attacks specifically targeting Muslim women in the form of public taunts, ethnic slurs, physical and verbal violence, and psychological intimidation. The two sisterhood groups responded to anti-Islamophobia by emphasizing the visibility of their dress code to organize workshops and forums to educate non-Muslims about the positive aspects of Islam, veiling alike at anti-war demonstrations to emphasize a shared Muslim identity, and deepening group solidarity.
One of the strengths of this book is that it adds to a growing body of empirical research about an array of women who practice Islam (Abu-Lughod 2002; Jafar 2017), historically underrepresented in the social science canon. Second, by showing that the meanings of the hijab are nuanced, shaped and reshaped by socio-historical and cultural context, Marouka-Donnelly demonstrates the subtleties employed by many of the sisters to exercise agency within larger structural constraints. Thus, she studies the sisters’ cultures and identities in a “manner that allows for their complexity and multidimensionality to come through” (Jafar 2017:381). Third, the precision and rigor with which the author conducts qualitative research makes this work a model ethnography, though as is the case with small-scale ethnographies, the results are not intended to be generalizable (Harris 2019).
One limitation is that at times, the theoretical argument is a bit fuzzy, clouding its coherence. Theory is at its strongest in this work when focused on the intersectional social construction of identities. Continuing to develop and deepen links to global intersectional theories, especially pan-ethnic identity concepts, would really help elucidate the author’s thesis. Second, occasionally the reading is quite dense, and as such, I would not recommend assigning the entire book to first- or second-year undergraduate students.
Despite these minor shortcomings, I recommend Islamic Sisterhood for teaching a range of upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses such as Sociology of Gender, Race and Ethnic Relations, Globalization, Intersectionality, Feminist Theories, Family Sociology, Political Sociology, Research Methodology, and Sociology of Religion. Given the density of reading, I suggest a chapter or two for sophomore- and junior-level classes and the book for seniors or graduate students. For example, Maruoka-Donnelly’s discussion in chapter two of an array of parental responses to the hijab or chapters three and four on transnational marriage market practices would work well in a sociology of family or gender course. A great resource to pair with these chapters would be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2009) TED Talk, “The Danger of the Single Story.” The talk illustrates that many lives and cultures consist of multiple narratives. If we only hear one story of a person or country, we risk perilous misapprehension. These chapters, reinforced by Adichie’s talk, would problematize the often stated illusion of a uniform Muslim woman’s story.
Another teaching suggestion is to pair the book with insights from Jafar’s (2017) Teaching Sociology article, “Asking the Right Questions: Teaching about Islam and Globalization.” One of Jafar’s (2017) pedagogical exercises asks students to fill in the rest of the sentence starting with “Muslim women are . . . ” (p. 382). Instructors could implement this exercise before (time 1) and after reading the book (time 2) in an effort to gauge any shifts in student responses. I recommend combining this exercise with implementing the survey designed by Jafar. Maruoka-Donnelly’s Islamic Sisterhood offers an enlightening perspective that refocuses a multiplicity of women’s experiences within Islam in a particular socio-historical context of post-9/11 New York City.