Decolonizing Wellness: Muslim Women’s Faith-Informed Practices of Healing

• In Event: Beyond Extraction: Islamic Community Practices as Liberatory Research

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
This research explores how affinity spaces created by Muslim women college students serve as decolonial sites of resistance. By centering their lived experiences and faith-informed practices, these students challenge dominant norms and reclaim healing as a collective and culturally rooted. Such practices support for a decolonial understanding of care and emphasizes one that honors lived experience, ancestral traditions, and communal ways of knowing often excluded from mainstream academic discourse (Morales et al., 2023). Structures of care such as prayer, storytelling, and sisterhood not only create wellness and agency but also function as a decolonial form of care within academic institutions.
This work aims to center collective, faith-based, and culturally grounded approaches that challenge individualistic models of wellness and reclaim Indigenous and Islamic knowledge as valid sources of care. Within this framework, Muslim Critical Theory (MusCrit) offers as a micro-theoretical lens that brings forward counter-narratives that are often marginalized in academic spaces (Ali, 2021). MusCrit affirms faith traditions of Muslim women, disrupting dominant understanding of what counts as knowledge.


Perspectives or Theoretical Framework
This study is informed by Muslim Critical Theory (MusCrit) and decolonial praxis. MusCrit offers a lens that centers the intersection of faith, race, and gender in the lives of Muslim American women. As a micro-theoretical lens, MusCrit allows for counter-narratives that resist deficit framings and affirms the knowledge of Muslim women.


Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
This study employed qualitative action research to explore the healing practices of Muslim women on college campuses. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants enrolled in diverse higher education institutions in the United States. Additionally, the study also draws on observational fieldnotes from affinity spaces dedicated for and by Muslim women students. Grounded in participatory framework, the research design is rooted to uplift participants as co-constructors of knowledge.

Data Sources, Evidence, Objects, or Materials
The primary data includes interview transcripts each lasting about 60 minutes. Additionally, data gathered through fieldnotes from six affinity group gatherings, including three healing circles, as well as analytic memos gathered throughout the research process.

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions
Participants engaged in culturally and faith rooted ways of knowing that honored traditional ways of healing and care. These were not isolated acts of self-care, but rather communal rituals that supported their spiritual, emotional, and academic well-being. These affinity spaces emerged as decolonial sites of collective healing and agency. Participants emphasized the importance of spaces where faith, culture, and community could be drawn upon to navigate marginalization.


Scientific or Scholarly Significance of the Study or Work
This study contributes to conversations about decolonizing education by centering faith-informed and culturally grounded healing practices as forms of knowledge production. It challenges dominant framings of wellness that often dismiss spiritual and collective methods to care. By highlighting Muslim women’s spiritually rooted affinity spaces, the study urges educators and institutions to acknowledge the powerful role of faith-informed practices in developing a decolonial futures in education.

Author

• Fatima Koura, Northeastern University