Immigrant Women's Faith Commitments Through Lived Religion: Project Summary

With heartfelt thanks to Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Center for the Şirin Tekeli Research Award which initially made my research possible. The first round of interviews were completed in Gaziantep (October 2019) but only time will tell when and where the second round will be taking place due to the new world order by C-19. Even online communications are on hold and proved to be non-sustainable. Following is a summary of the project: 

My main criticism is that Social Sciences and Religious Studies have failed to produce interdisciplinary knowledge on women immigrants in regard to their diverse faith-based needs and practices. My previous work presented an exploratory research of Muslim Syrian women refugees’ life experiences through the prism of their religious practices and expressions during displacement. I used “lived religion” as an analytical tool and framework to delve into the question “What are their self-interpretive engagements, and in what ways do these enhance adaptation and resilience given women’s volatile situation in a new country?” My time during which I recorded Syrian women’s life stories in four countries (Canada, Turkey, Greece, and Germany) led me to the realization that knowledge-making mechanisms in academia and media were misleading and limiting, to say the least. 

With my new project, I will expand on the same theme, but explore beyond the Syrian Muslim women’s narratives. I claim that multiple new dimensions will be revealed by the immigrant women from the Middle East who will share their interpretations and practices of ‘lived religion’ which extends beyond the traditions of Islam and the Quran’s interpretations by the authorities. In the field of refugee and immigrant studies, I reviewed the current literature and interviewed some policy makers and other professionals (in Canada and Greece in particular) who told me that coping with refugee and migrant integration policies were failing while dealing with Muslim immigrants despite the resources and good intentions. I concluded that this was mainly due to the providers’ lack of knowledge on “lived Islam” which is always more complicated than what the media or the intro-courses and trainings disseminate and/or “teach”. 

I will conduct 4-5 hour interviews whose focus will be on the participants’ experiences and impressions of Islam, the Quran’s interpretations, and how women apply and can negotiate these within their society and family. The data will contribute to and open up original insights of the Muslim practitioners in knowledge-making mechanisms and will reflect more realistic and complicated pictures and representations of self-identified Muslim women.