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The Sharia Debate in Ontario

Gender, Islam, and Representations of Muslim Women's Agency

University of Toronto

In late 2003, the Canadian media reported that the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice would start offering arbitration in family disputes in accordance with both Islamic legal principles and Ontario's Arbitration Act of 1991. A vociferous two-year debate ensued on the introduction of "Sharia law" in Ontario. This article analyzes representations of Muslim women's agency that came to the fore in this debate by examining reports in three Canadian newspapers. The debate demonstrated two notions of agency. The predominant perspective conceptualized Muslim women's agency as their ability to resist domination, tying secularization to agency. A second strain of the debate portrayed agency as embedded in intersecting social forces of domination and subordination. The first perspective homogenized diverse Muslim communities, fostering the gendered racialization of these communities. Understanding agency as embedded, by contrast, enabled conceptualizations of Muslim women as agentic religious subjects.

Key Words: gender • Islam • agency • media • immigration • ethnicity

Gender & Society, Vol. 22, No. 4, 434-454 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243208319768


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