Nina Hoel

Engaging Islamic sexual ethics: Intimacy, pleasure and sacrality

This article explores the topic of Islamic sexual ethics through two distinct but interrelated epistemological modes. First, I briefly engage Islamic sexual ethics through the lens of Islamic feminism, which challenges dominant patriarchal imaginaries in order to facilitate liberatory and egalitarian readings. Second, drawing on qualitative research, this article presents a selection of South African Muslim women’s narratives on sexual intimacy, pleasure and sacrality. The main themes to be explored in this empirical section are the notion of sex as sacred and as deeply connected to both human and divine relationalities, the integration of religious piety with sexual interaction, as well as the ethical ideals of consensual and reciprocal sexual praxis. By highlighting women’s conceptualizations, negotiations and contestations of religious discourses on sexuality, this article illustrates the various ways in which Islamic sexual ethics is an indeterminate field, discursively produced and distinctively embodied in the South African context.

Engaging religious leaders: South African Muslim women’s experiences in matters pertaining to divorce initiatives

This paper focuses on South African Muslim women’s experiences with engaging religious leaders in matters pertaining to divorce initiatives. By presenting a selection of Muslim women’s narratives on divorce initiatives, this paper argues that particular problematic power relationships rooted in outmoded patriarchal legal norms dominate religious leaders’ engagement with Muslim women. Three central themes are analysed in order to exemplify some of these dynamics: (1) the Muslim Judicial Council’s (MJC) reconciliation-at-all-costs approach; (2) the husband’s reputation; and (3) women’s experiences of marginalisation when presenting their case at the MJC. On the basis of these data, this paper argues that it is imperative to change the current modes of engagement so that women’s particular experiences in marriage are taken seriously and dealt with in ways that are concomitant with ideals of gender justice and equality.

Exploring Women's Madrasahs in South Africa: Implications for the Construction of Muslim Personhood and Religious Literacy

Abstract Set against the backdrop of a changing pluralistic South African society, this article traces the shifts concerning religion in public education, followed by an examination of the discernible motivations that undergirded the establishment of womens madrasahs (Islamic educational institutions). Collectively representing an alternative approach to education by acknowledging and preserving Muslim identity, history, and religiosity, madrasah education is also configured through particular understandings of gender and gender relations in Islam. Hence, in this article, I probe the extent to which womens madrasahs in South Africa introduce notions of gendered religious literacy and personhood, and whether these are fashioned along traditional gender scripts and ideals.

Corporeal bodies, religious lives, and ‘women's rights’: Engaging Islamic body politics among Muslim women in South Africa

abstract Feminist activists and theorists’ focus on body politics continues to be vital as we critically try to navigate through the enduring androcentrism and heterosexism, as well as the matrix of new bio-technological opportunities that mark our contemporary realities. The entanglements of these discourses with the classic dichotomies of nature/culture and public/private, so prevalent in a variety of cultural and religious contexts, call for feminist inventiveness and thorough reconceptualisation on the nature of being human. However, in feminist engagements with body politics, seemingly scant attention is paid to the influence of religious discourses on womens sexual and reproductive decision-making. Hence, in this Article, I unpack and foreground the functioning of an Islamic body politics that importantly inform Muslim womens understandings of sex, gender and reproductive bodies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with eight South African Muslim women, this Article explores constructions of biology and gender as expressed through these womens narratives on sexual and reproductive matters. The analysis and discussion of these themes are framed through broader geo-political debates over womens rights in Islam.