Stories Untold: Revisiting Muslim Women’s Heritage with the Everyday Muslim Heritage Organization
A few years ago the Everyday Muslim Heritage Organization initiative was established with the desire to show that "everyone has a story". These stories are often absent in the national heritage scene and Muslim heritage refers mainly to the Muslims ‘over there’ in the Middle East and South...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2020
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| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 31, Pages: 371-387 |
| Further subjects: | B
Cultural sciences
B Religious sociology B Social sciences B Religionspsycholigie B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft B Gender studies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | A few years ago the Everyday Muslim Heritage Organization initiative was established with the desire to show that "everyone has a story". These stories are often absent in the national heritage scene and Muslim heritage refers mainly to the Muslims ‘over there’ in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The president, Sadiya Ahmed wanted to start a heritage project that worked with communities in the UK to build an archive from their personal collections to purport the idea that we need to be talking about the heritage of European Muslims which is quite a different story from Muslims anywhere else in the world. Ahmed’s initial idea came from a personal frustration: how was she, as a mother, supposed to educate her children about their own identity if there were hardly any sources for reference? Today, the Everyday Muslim initiative is active in tracing Muslim history in the UK and presenting a version of history that is absent from canonical national history. The initiative also works closely on the ‘stories of Muslim women’ and how their everyday practices contribute to identity formation through food practices, marriage, and the social and economic aspects of Muslim women’s lives in the UK. This paper explores British Muslim women’s contribution to the heritage scene through community heritage activities. It interrogates the intersections of piety, gender, motherhood, sisterhood, belonging, and ethical subjecthood in the context of community heritage formation. The research was conducted with anthropological methodologies of interviews and participant observation between 2018 and 2019 and this methodology makes contributions to the critical understanding of European conceptualizations of heritage, civilization, ethics, norms, and common culture. It also aims to reverse the marginalization and alienation of Muslim communities in the UK as a result of their historical absence. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004443969_019 |