The Art of Resistance in Islam: The Performance of Politics among Shi'i Women in the Middle East and Beyond

Based on first-hand ethnographic insights into Shi‘i religious groups in the Middle East and Europe, this book examines women’s resistance to state as well as communal and gender power structures. It offers a new transnational approach to understanding gender agency within contemporary Islamic movements expressed through language, ritual practices, dramatic performances, posters, and banners. By looking at the aesthetic performance of the political on the female body through Shi‘i ritual practices – an aspect that has previously been ignored in studies on women’s acts of resistance – Yafa Shanneik shows how women play a central role in redefining sectarian and gender power relations in the Middle East and the European diaspora.
Yafa Shanneik is a Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the agency and authority of women in Shi‘i and Sunni Muslim communities in the Middle East and their transnational links to Europe. She was awarded three British Academy grants to examine understandings of gender relations and women’s resistance to patriarchal gender norms among Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the Middle East and Europe.