Encountering the transnational: Women, Islam, and the politics of interpretation

How is transnational social space affecting the way contemporary Muslim women perceive their identities and engage in activism? Despite a rapid expansion of research on Muslim women and the development of multiple research projects analyzing traditional, economic, neocolonial, and revivalist barriers to their advancement, little has been written about how dialogue among Muslim women from different contexts shapes their activist visions. While there are a number of studies about individual women's organizations and their efforts to achieve change in local contexts, there has been an absence of studies examining how these efforts are increasingly linked together via the transnational and how they influence the definition of Muslim public spheres and Muslim agency.; To provide insight into the significance of transnationalism for identity formation and activism among Muslim women, this dissertation utilizes qualitative methods of active interviewing, participant observation, and action research to investigate the impact of transnational social interactions on Muslim women residing in diverse national and cultural contexts. Based on encounters with dozens of prominent activists and intellectuals from diverse Muslim societies, it advances four principal findings. First, dialogue is providing those Muslim women who practice it with a constructive means for opening lines of communication among competing normative paradigms which have in the past dichotomized and fragmented Muslim identity. Second, transnational social networks addressing "status of Muslim women" issues are becoming increasingly transnational in character, resulting in an increase in "connectivity" among practitioners as well as in greater ideational and practical dynamism. Third, identities are being transformed by the experiences of transnational dialogue, prompting a reimagination of national "public spheres" and the role of the self within them. Finally, Muslim women are perceiving that they can claim status of "selfhood"---that is, as reflective social agents---without becoming "other" to their religio-cultural communities or to "the West."...