“Are You God? Damn Your Family!”: The Islam–Gender Nexus in Right-Wing Populism and the New Generation of Muslim Feminist Activism in Turkey

• Main Author: Unal, D. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: counter-discourse; familialism; Muslim feminist activism; right-wing populism; Turkey
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 This article examines young Muslim women’s dissident mentalities, practices, and sub-jectivities that confront the epistemological conditions whereby right-wing populist (RWP) gender politics operates in Turkey. Relying on frame theory in social movement research and the Foucauldian approach to resistance, dissent, and protest, it explores Muslim feminist critique of RWP gender discourse mainly with a focus on the following issues: (i.) Instrumentalization of the headscarf, (ii.) familialist policies, and (iii.) violence against women and the Istanbul Convention (the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence). As a result, it demonstrates that young Muslim women’s dissident mentalities and subjectivities generate a new “political project”, i.e., a set of new meanings and social goals directed at bringing about social change, which comes into being through the act of resistance against RWP gender grammar and carves out new forms of knowledge reclaiming the Islam–gender nexus for a progressive feminist agenda. © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.