The Identity of Muslim Women on a Catholic Campus

• In Event: Women’s Religious Identity Formation in Educational Contexts

Abstract

When it comes to a discussion of cultural differences, religion is of primary importance: “There appears to be no greater influence on cultural customs and practices than religion” (Lacina, 2002, p. 23). Hunter (1998) points out that religion comprises the heart and the defining element of a civilization, and that it surpasses ethnicity, language, and class in importance to a collective identity. Our spirituality/religion shapes our most basic values, our sense of who we are and where we come from, and our feeling of connectedness to other people and the world we live in (Astin, 2004). In fact, current research indicates that religious identity and engagement is more important to today’s college students than it was to their parents and grandparents (Astin, Astin, Lindholm, Bryant, Szelenyi & Calderone, 2005; Chickering, Dalton & Stamm, 2006; Nash, 2001).
While Muslims of both genders are sometimes the object of intolerant views in the United States, men are more able to “fly under the radar” in most cases because they do not often wear signifiers of their religion in their day-to-day public lives. In contrast, Muslim women are particularly vulnerable to any type of prejudice or intolerance because they are often easily identifiable as Muslim by the scarf (hijab) that many wear in observation of the Islamic practice of dressing modestly in public. According to Roald (2001), who is herself a scarf- wearing Muslim scholar:
The ‘veil’ has various connotations in a western context. A Christian nun wearing a veil might be seen as an image of pure religiosity, purity, and peace, whereas a Muslim woman wearing a veil is likely to be seen as a statement. She may evoke anger from non-Muslim westerners because they believe her to be betraying the struggle for women’s rights by submitting to her own oppression in wearing the veil. (p. 254)
Mir’s (2007) study found that American non-Muslim negative perception of Muslim culture “Can obstruct Muslim women’s agency of identity construction, which leads to ambivalence, contradiction, desire, and disavowal” (p. 71) in regards to their identification with their cultural background..
There is an abundance of research on identity development in the general sense (Chickering & Reisser, 1993; Josselson, 1987, 1996) to name a few, as well as versions which address specific facets of identity development, such as racial and ethnic identity (Cross, 1991; Helms, 1995; Daloz Parks, 2000; Torres, 2003), but there is not much in the way of religious identity development. This research aims to shed some much needed light on the religious identity of an often misunderstood population: Muslim women.

Author

• Cynthia Shafer, University of Dayton