Making Space: Muslim-Americans and “Progressive” Gender Activism in Mosques after 9/11

Abstract

This thesis analyzes Muslim-American post-9/11 activism on women’s mosque spaces by examining progressive and mainstream Muslim activists’ and organizations’ efforts to achieve gender justice. The thesis presents the influence of the Global War on Terror and expands on Mahmood Mamdani’s “good Muslim/bad Muslim” binary by including the activism of the Progressive Muslim Union, Muslims for Progressive Values, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It argues that progressive Muslims internalized the American government’s War on Terror rhetoric, by seeing themselves as “good Muslims” with an obligation to use their activism to reform “bad Muslims,” domestically, in the United States, and globally, in Muslim-majority countries. This thesis further argues that the activists’ attempts to reform Muslim gender practices also served to challenge power structures between the religious “centers,” the Muslim world and the domestic mainstream Muslim community, and the religious “peripheries,” the United States and the domestic progressive Muslim community.