Whilst gender segregation in Saudi Arabia is a much researched topic, the existing literature usually focusses exclusively on women. It is hence little surprising that gender segregation tends to be regarded primarily as a limitation of women’s mobility and freedom of movement. The question of how gender segregation and other gender-related practices in Saudi Arabia affect the lives of men is hardly ever addressed. The proposed paper deals with the much debated topic of gender segregation in Saudi Arabia, considering both men’s and women’s perspectives. It traces changing concepts of gender segregation and relations in the city of Jeddah from around 1900 to the early twenty-first century through the history of shopping. Drawing on historic photographs, autobiographies and travel accounts, the paper will show that, until the mid-twentieth century, shopping in Jeddah was primarily done by men because women were ideally not to be seen in the streets. The numerous shopping centres that proliferated in the city form the 1980s on used to be gender-divided until recently, offering women of diverse social backgrounds spaces to socialise outside the home. Arguing that gender segregation constrains the movements of men and women alike, my paper challenges the widespread notion that men in Saudi Arabia benefit from the strict segregation regime while women suffer from it. The case of gender segregated shopping centres illustrates this point because, until recently, men’s access to them was as much regulated as women’s, if not more. Based on anthropological observations conducted between 2008 and 2019, I argue that shopping malls in Jeddah are indeed more than just places of commerce. They provide opportunities for men and women to meet and interact with each other. The paper also shows how those whose personal attitude deviates from the official gender policy deploy different strategies to circumvent it, thus re-negotiating the official politics of gender. Under the reign of crown prince Muhammad bin Salman, gender segregation was lifted in Saudi shopping malls and restaurants. Even in newly mixed public spaces, a constant awareness of gendered rules of conduct and mutual caution is required of both women and men, because the notion that visual contact should be avoided prevails.

Over the past 20 years, many Muslim countries have witnessed a remarkable growth of yoga and various meditation techniques. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar have recognized yoga and currently celebrate the International Day of Yoga. Some countries such as Saudi Arabia went even further and officially recognized yoga as a sports activity. Attitudes towards yoga in Muslim countries are represented by two types of discourses. On the one hand, Islamic legal debates regarding the permissibility of yoga. For instance, in 2004, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa forbade the practice of yoga. The same decision was taken in 2008 when yoga was banned by Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council and in 2011 by Saudi based scholar Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid. The most problematic and controversial issue in yoga is its links to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. However, contemporary Islamic scholars are divided on this issue and their fatwas vary from a total ban to permissibility. On the other hand, yoga practitioners’ conceptualizations of yoga. These include discussions on the role of yoga in the physical improvement and spiritual harmony of a particular individual as well as its attitude towards religion and transformation of modern society.  Thus there is a wide range of perspectives on yoga. In my paper, I analyzed similarities and differences between the approaches of two groups of actors, namely Islamic scholars and yoga practitioners in the Arabian Peninsula, in order to understand how yoga is conceptualized in the contemporary societies of the Gulf. For the purposes of my research, I analyzed ten fatwas on yoga issued by official and non - official muftis. In addition to that, I did a systematic review of Media including major Qatari newspapers and conducted interviews with yoga practitioners and yoga adepts. In order to study their experiences, I draw on a set of 20 qualitative interviews: 15 interviews with yoga adepts and 5 interviews with yoga instructors.  I suggest that differences between muftis, and between muftis and yoga practitioners, stem from different understandings of the weight of history, the relation of ritual to intentionality, and the performativity of yoga practices. The aim of the paper is to examine how cultural norms and traditions in contemporary Qatari society are being transformed under globalization.

Women’s sartorial style is a perpetual global preoccupation. Recently, Islamic women’s clothing is predominantly framed as a symbol of women’s oppression, however, historically, women in the US and Western Europe looked to “Turkish pantaloons” for freedom. Renamed “bloomers” by American media after Amelia Bloomer’s advocacy, the baggy Turkish pants were championed by feminist activists in the US, UK, Austrialia and New Zealand. However, due to widespread harassment for this gender transgression, women quickly reverted to former restrictive and hazardous fashions. Bifurcated clothing was reserved for men, according to the rigid gender divide in sartorial style that had become fashionable in Europe in the fifteenth century. Thus, women in the progressive, civilized, enlightened West fought for the right to wear Turkish baggy pants and lost. Meanwhile, Turkish men and women in Turkey and Bulgaria moved freely in their shalvar until modern nation-building projects dictated Western dress; restrictive clothing that rigidly delineated the boundaries of masculinity and femininity. About ten years after French haute couture designer Paul Poiret flaunted his “harem pants,” Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s reforms discouraged women from wearing them and imposed western clothing. The shalvar was banned in some parts of Turkey, and movies about the shalvar had a consistent message: peasant women wear shalvar and Western fashion brings protagonists happy endings. Movies with shalvar were also viewed in Bulgaria: historical movies with shalvar-clad terrible Turks that relegated shalvar to history and the Other. As part of Bulgaria’s forced assimilation campaign that sought to homogenize Bulgarian citizenry, the shalvar was banned from 1984 until the fall of Communism in 1989, coinciding with the popularity of M.C. Hammer’s shalvar-inspired “hammer pants” in the US. In Bulgaria and in Turkey shalvar remains a strictly rural phenomenon, and retains its historic associations with backwardness and Islam when worn daily by village residents. Ironically, though a signifier of backwardness, shalvar’s semiotic potential extends as a global fashion trend, including in fashion headlines in Turkey and Bulgaria. Considering shalvar’s recent elevated status as a trendy global fashion item, what is the public discourse of shalvar in Bulgaria and in Turkey? Can clothing shunned as backward be embraced as modern following global trends? More generally, what can clothing teach us about gender, modernity, and geopolitics? To answer these questions, I thematically analyze (Van Manen, 1990) over 200 hundred Turkish and Bulgarian articles through critical transculturalism (Kraidy, 2005) and critical race theory (Jackson, 2006; Snorton, 2017).