Gendered Islam under State Surveillance

Prof. Dr. Schirin Amir-Moazami

Schirin Amir-Moazami is Professor of Islam in Europe at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She studied in Frankfurt/Main, Marseille, Berlin and Paris sociology and political science. In 2004 she received her Ph.D. from the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. After that she has taught at the Europe University Viadrina and the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research focuses on the ways in which Islam is governed in European public spheres with a particular gender perspective.

Selected Publications

Politisierte Religion: Der Kopftuchstreit in Deutschland und Frankreich (2007), Bielefeld.

Dialogue as a governmental practice. Managing gendered Islam in Germany (2009), in: Feminist Review, Sondernummer “Feminism and Islam“.

L’islam en mal de reconnaissance (2008), in : Alternatives Internationales, März, No. 38.

Production discursive et fabrication juridique: Le foulard de l’enseignante en Allemagne (2008), in: Droit & Société, 68, 109-126.

Reaffirming and Shifting Boundaries: Muslim Perspectives on Gender and

Citizenship (2006), in: Yearbook of Sociology of Islam, 6, New Brunswick und London: Transaction Publishers, Bielefeld.

Gendered Islam under State Surveillance

Current developments in state approaches towards Muslims in Germany reveal significant shifts from a “laissez-faire” attitude towards an active involvement in regulating the institutionalization of Islam and Muslim’s religious practice. Parallel to enhanced security measures increasing efforts have been taken to “integrate” Muslims into society – both socially and culturally. In this latter domain the enactment and regulation of norms generally, and of liberal gender norms have gained a crucial role.

Engaging Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I will look at the technologies of power at stake in these current interventions, and analyze how the goal to “integrate” Muslims is articulated, framed and circulated, and what kinds of Muslim (female and male) subjectivities are required and produced in this process. I will discuss examples like co-educative sports and swimming classes in state schools, headscarf bans or measures against forced and arranged marriages, and look in particular at ways in which freedom functions as a normative ideal, which not only generates coercive techniques, but which is also and foremost concerned with the production of liberal subjects.