Approaching the New Islamist Women: 1994–2006

Ethnographic studies of women and Islam in Turkey between 1994 and 2006 focus on the rise of political Islam and the identity of the pious urban Muslim women who are active agents and/or objects of the Islamist movement. In Turkish modernization history, the 1990s exhibit growing tension between the increasing visibility and impact of Islamism and the harsh reactions and measures of the secular state against the movement. The ban on headscarves in public offices, schools and universities, and covered women’s victimization by, and activism against the ban were the issues that put pious Muslim women in the spotlight. Consequently, common research themes in this period include the elements of their identity formation, their agency in creating an Islamic way of life, the headscarf and Islamic attire as symbols of women’s identity and their role in the Islamist political movement. The discursive construction and frequent use of Islamist women as a distinct category of analysis are the most distinguishing features of the studies, which increased in number every year. From a theoretical perspective, this chapter demonstrates that the period marks a paradigm shift that corresponds with the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The theoretical and empirical critique of the assumption that women share common experiences of a single oppressive structure, and the repercussions of these debates in Middle Eastern women’s studies, are reflected in the analytical and methodological perspectives of the ethnographic scholarship of the period.