"Faith, fashion, family and society". Negotiating moralities in the transition towards religious dress.

Abstract

This thesis is built upon ethnographic fieldwork among Muslim women in the Netherlands who wear religious dress. Religious dress is in this thesis conceptualized as a spatial practice, in which women perform their gender (through dress) in two different ways. To my informants, wearing religious dress is as an act of worship, in which they long for the satisfaction of God. I conceptualize this as an embodiment of moral autonomy. In this thesis I focus on the moment of transition towards religious dress. I argue that besides this should be understood as a personal change, it should be understood as a social change as well. I focus on this social change within the family and public sphere. As socially embedded beings, women negotiate various responses (and sometimes resistances) in their transition. I show how the same act of religious dress evokes various (conflicting) responses, and argue that this can be understood through the different moral codes that co-exist (at the hand of the concept of moral assemblage). I illustrate that for some women, this leads to conflicting senses of (non-) belonging.