Reluctant Belonging: Tudung (Headscarf), Communalism, and Muslim Politics in Urban Malaysia

Abstract

Abstract: The politics of modesty—clothing, behavior, interactions, and headscarf—remain contested within and outside Muslim communities. Headscarf practices are multivalent, with ties to national and local contexts and shaped by the transnational circulation of Islam. A nuanced approach to these variously situated practices—across narratives of choice, religiosity, nationalism, and consumerism—requires a reappraisal of patriarchal nationalism beyond the circumscribed Euro/American post-9/11 experience of Islamophobia. I analyze Malay Muslim women's tudung (headscarf) dilemmas in this article, arguing for a capacious feminist epistemology that critiques localized patriarchy within anti-imperialist and transnational perspectives. Based on intimate patchwork ethnography in urban Malaysia, I offer a feminist reading of gendered piety, communal belonging, and Islamization debates. I draw on intergenerational narrations of subjectivity to reveal how the state and community regulate tudung practices through the cultural construction of Muslim difference. I conclude by suggesting that feminist analyses attentive to the deep imbrication of patriarchal nationalism, anti-imperialist, and transnational configurations can support the reimagining of ethical possibilities in the study of gender in Muslim cultures.