Muslim Women’s Border Subjectivities and Decolonial Feminism and Feminist Futures

Muslim women’s subjectivities emerge at the borders of intersecting social locations and in the binary hierarchical borders constructed between East and West, Muslim and non-Muslim, Australian and un-Australian, Australian and ethnic Australian, Australian and Muslim. This gendered and raced process is informed by current and historical relations of power and shaped by competing versions of hetero-patriarchy—colonial hetero-patriarchy that asserts racial superiority through ‘modern’ liberal gender norms and ethno/Islamist hetero-patriarchy that asserts moral superiority through traditional gender norms. Moving beyond the oppressed Muslim women discourse, the Muslim women in the study expressed plural and diverse understandings of oppression and resistance. They not only negotiated their identities at these intersections and borders, but they reconstructed and moved beyond binary definitions and demonstrated agency. The women negotiated contradictions by fluidly manoeuvring between subject positions and functioning within multiple identity positions simultaneously. In doing so, they demonstrated ways of knowing and being that can disrupt the colonial hierarchical binary logics that have been used to subjugate minorities. Following a discussion of border subjectivities, the chapter presents contributions to and implications for decolonial feminism, and the importance of theorising from the flesh. Finally, the book is brought to a close with a manifesto for decolonial feminism.