Beitish Muslim Women : Islamic ideneiey and straregies for acquiring Rights in the UK

As recent antheropological and sociologocal research conducted under the rubric of multiculturalusm and reace relations confirms, communities are not pre-given but imagined constructed by forging acrass differences (and not subsuming them ) through extroverted webs of global and local connections. In the United Kingdom, since the Salman Rushdie Affair there has been a notable development of an emerging Islamic political identity, one that challenges constructions of identity and community based on race and ethnicity. This new Islamic identity is at once residual self-conscious; it is newly articulated in the public space with new symbols and narratives impating on wider policy decisions. Furthermore, it is contingent, negotiated within the private spheres of sacial/local spaces as well as global contexts of everyday lives. As a result at times this Islamic identity is in conflict and tension with other positions held by groups and individuals. This tension is perhaps most visible in the determination of Muslim women (and others) to separate culture from religion in order to acquire rights. In other words, a conseequence of this politicisation of Islamic and Muslim identities is the assertion of women s rights from within an Islamic context.