Religion, Ethnicity and the Female Voice

By Tania Saeed

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: October 17, 2016

– Provides an interdisciplinary study which combines gender studies and security discourses

– Moves beyond analysis of Muslims as a single category

– Analyses the grassroots female Muslim experience in the UK

This book explores everyday realities of young Muslim women in Britain, who are portrayed as antithetical to the British way of life in media and political discourse. The book captures how geo-political events, and national tragedies continue to implicate individuals and communities at the domestic and local level, communities that have no connection to such tragedies and events, other than being associated with a religio-ethnic identity. The author shows how Muslim women are caught within the spectrum of the vulnerable-fanatic, always perceived to be ‘at risk’ of being ‘radicalized’. Focusing on educated Muslim females, the book explores experiences of Islamophobia and securitization inside and outside educational institutions, and highlights individual and group acts of resistance through dialogue, with Muslim women challenging the metanarrative of insecurity and suspicion that plagues their everyday existence in Britain. Islamophobia and Securitization will be of interest to scholars and students researching Muslims in the West, in particular sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. It will also appeal to analysts and academics researching security and terrorism, race and racialization, as well as gender, immigration, and diaspora.

About the Author

Tania Saeed is Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. Her area of specialization is democratization and social exclusion with a focus on religious minorities, gender, and security in the context of the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

Reviews

“As the incessant rise of Islamophobia … highlights the worse, otherwise hidden, blind spots of liberal democracies, the crisis has in turn generated a pathbreaking body of scholarship by critical thinkers across social sciences and humanities. This book is one exquisite example of such scholarship, where you will read a critical encounter between the convergent concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity’ in a provocative conjunction with the female voice. This is a piece of magnificent scholarship and superb critical thinking.” (Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, USA)

“It is hard to over-emphasize how important this book is … . The author has produced a sharp and incisive volume, which engages the reader throughout … . It really is a book for our times.” (Stuart Croft, University of Warwick, UK)

Source: Palgrave Macmillan’s Website