Abstract
This paper focuses on online discussions of women’s rights and Islam by female, Muslim bridge bloggers from the MENA region. Bridge blogs are blogs that are followed in two or more nations and employ languages other than the dominant ones in the bloggers’ country of origin (Zuckerman 2008). The women I will be studying primarily blog in English. While I could analyze any of a number of topics discussed on these blogs, I am primarily interested in the bloggers’ perspectives on women’s right and Islam and the intersections of these two topics. Preliminary research of these issues denotes complex perspectives, neither fully embracing nor rejecting feminism and often expressing the compatibility between justice for women and Islam.
The paper will be informed by transnational feminist, Islamic feminist, postcolonial, and diasporic theories. The methodological approach is most aptly informed by various forms of feminist theory because one of the goals of the research is to privilege the voices of the research subjects and to highlight their experiences and concerns. Postcolonial and diasporic theoretical frameworks speak to the contexts in which Muslim women navigate their existences. Being that some of these women are expatriates in Western countries, they are discredited due to their attachment to Islam; therefore, based on context, the online engagement of the expatriates varies somewhat from that of women still based in the MENA region. Women blogging from the societies of their origins are often rejected due to their perceived affiliation with the West due to their use of the English language and their purportedly individualistic propensities. Advancing from this dialectic, I have conceptualized a few forms of diaspora which may elucidate some of their experiences.
These salient theoretical underpinnings also speak to the significance of the proposed research. These female, Muslim bridge bloggers were selected based on their prestige in social media networks, without which their voices might remain largely silenced. Studies that capture the voices of Muslim women and their concerns are crucial to greater understanding of the MENA region and to undermining stereotypes of Muslims, which at times are used as one of the justifications for armed intervention in the Muslim world (Puar 2007). This paper highlights the complex, non-binary perspectives of female, Muslim bridge bloggers that will serve to undercut the Orientalist stereotypes of Muslim women.
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