British Muslim men and clothes: the role of stigma and the political (re)configurations around sartorial choices

Abstract

This article examines the changing perceptions of dress, focusing on the lungi, funjabi and the thobe, amongst the British Bangladeshi Muslim male diaspora in the East End of London. Through various historical trajectories, I argue that the research participants in this article dress their bodies according to the current meanings attributed to the garments. These meanings are (re)-configured using a meta-constructed stigma guideline they interpret using their faith, Islam, and the wider dominant discourse around acceptability and respectability. Drawing on in-depth interviews with British Bangladeshi Muslims in East London, I demonstrate how the ubiquitous presence of the Islamophobia arc is invisible yet dictates everyday behaviours and responses. In addition, framing masculinity via the Muslim gaze has intensified clear demarcations of what constitutes religious and/or ethnic dress. To extrapolate the continuous interplay in constructing a British Bangladeshi Muslim male identity via clothing, I explore this as paradigmatic of how stigma is located, consequently determining men’s sartorial choices. The article ends by considering how the socio-positioning qua the political landscape facilitates a structural restriction that trickles down to individual’s choices in what the appropriate Muslim male body can look like in the public sphere.