‘The Hanim’: Identity, Community Making and the Gendered Borders of Australian Muslim Communities

In this chapter, attention is afforded to the gendered dimensions of being a Muslim woman within the context of ethnic Muslim communities in Australia. The central argument is that Muslim women negotiate their identities around the parameters of the hanim (woman, lady) subject position. This subject position emerges at the intersections of gender, ethnicity and Islam and is constructed in diverse ways. It is constructed relative to homogenised white women, informed by gendered norms associated with Muslim/ethnic men and by processes of identity and community making following migration, which are all factors shaped by current and historical global relations of power. The hanim symbolises the gendered sexual ideals of the community, whereby women’s gendered bodies have become a platform for ethnic Muslim communities to maintain, reproduce and construct borders around cultural and religious identity, and to resist assimilation by constructing difference and symbolic borders between ‘us’ (morally superior, ethnic and/or Muslims) and ‘them’ (non-Muslim, secular and/or Australians). These borders further function to resist uncontested colonial discourses on gender and domination by asserting moral superiority. While the women in the study variously resisted the hanim subject position, they also demonstrated agency without compromising their sense of belonging to community.