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This book analyzes the implication of secular/liberal values in Western and human rights law and its impact on Muslim women. It offers an innovative reading of the tension between the religious and secular spheres. The author does not view the two as binary opposites. Rather, she believes they are twin categories that define specific forms of lives as well as a specific notion of womanhood. This divergence from the usual dichotomy opens the doors for a reinterpretation of secularism in contemporary Europe.
This method also helps readers to view the study of religion vs. secularism in a new light. It allows for a better understanding of the challenges that contemporary Europe now faces regarding the accommodation of different religious identities. For instance, one entire section of the book concerns the practice of veiling and explores the contentious headscarf debate. It features case studies from Germany, France, and the UK.
In addition, the analysis combines a widerange of disciplines and employs an integrated, comparative, and inter-disciplinary approach. The author successfully brings together arguments from different fields with a comparative legal and political analysis of Western and Islamic law and politics. This innovative study appeals to students and researchers while offering an important contribution to the debate over the role of religion in contemporary secular Europe and its impact on women's rights and gender equality.
List of contents
Introduction.- Part1. Law, power, and the Muslim female dressed body.- Chapter1. Islamic law and legal sources.- Chapter2. The veil and Islamic law.- Chapter3. The Veil and Muslim cultures.- Chapter4. Imagining nations, imagining women: the regulation of female clothes in the era of nations.- Chapter5. Regulating clothes, regulating subjectivities.- Chapter6. From multiplicity to a monolithic homogeneity: the veil as symbol of a 'clash of civilizations'.- Part2. The headscarf regulation: reconfiguring religious practices in the secular Europe.- Chapter7. (Un)masking the legal subject.- Chapter8. The secular/Christian/'humane' subject of law.- Chapter9. Reading the European Court of Human Rights legal decisions over the practice of veiling.- Chapter10. Switzerland and state neutrality.- Chapter11. Burkinis, face veils and hijab: laicite in France.- Chapter12. 'Is Multiculturalism bad for women?: the Begum case in the UK.- Chapter13. Reconfiguring religion and religious practices in the secular space through law.- Part 3. Revealing paradoxes: Muslim women in secular contemporary Europe.- Chapter14. On Freedom and Agency: an East/West Perspective.- Chapter15. Habit, Habitus, and habits.- Chapter16. Representing the un-representable: on symbology, secularism and the law.- Chapter17. 'Is secularism bad for women?.- Conclusions.
About the author
Dr Giorgia Baldi is Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex, UK. Between 2013-17 she worked at Birkbeck, University of London, School of Law, as Associate Lecturer, teaching a variety of law related modules. Previously, she has worked for several years in the field of International Cooperation and Development, playing leading roles in women's rights related programmes in the Middle East (2004-2011). Her research interests are state-religion relations, Gender and Religion, Women's Rights and Human Rights, political theory, feminist theory etc.
