L Rahbari
Biographic Data
| ID | 57411 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Rahbari |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Rahbari |
| SIGNATURE | RAHBARI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3840-708X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Rethinking Migration through the Digital Lens
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Unruly temporalities: Older queer women and non-binary people narrating later-life sexuality
In this paper, we explore queer temporalities in relation to queer women and non-binary people's sexuality later in life. Drawing on 30 interviews with 32 queer women and non-binary people aged 49-72 about sexuality and intimacy in later life, we highlight the participants' stories about the instability and non-linearity of sexuality across the life course. First, we examine how our participants narrated later-life changes in their sexual subject…
From allochronism to generationality: Ageism in queer communities in Belgium
This paper looks into ageist and generationalist assumptions that penetrate queer spatio-temporal imageries and explore how to resist oppressive temporalities. It draws on fieldwork in a queer advocacy group and qualitative interviews with trans-, lesbian-, and women-identifying participants in Belgium to explore notions of age and ageism in queer communities. The research relates to feminist generationalism and searches for more complex notions …
Reproductive Biopolitics, Demographic Anxieties, and Access to Safe Abortion: National Security and Pronatalism in the ‘Family Protection and Youthful Population’ Law in Iran
This paper examines the historical relationship between Shi’i jurisprudence and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s reproductive biopolitics. Using archival methods, the paper looks into the similarities and differences between religious interpretations and Iranian law. It then analyzes the implications of the recent ‘Family Protection and Youthful Population’ law, enacted in 2021 in response to fears of a looming ‘population crisis,’ and how it furth…
Introduction to ‘Gender, Sexuality, and State Violence: International Perspectives on Institutional and Intersectional Justice’
The term ‘state violence’ has been used to refer to a wide range of actions across many disciplines, from the interrogation of prisoners and torture to institutional discrimination against specific groups and the denial of access to equal rights and resources [...]
Zionism as the Legacy of Cyrus: (Online) Proxy Nationalism of Diasporic Iranians
This paper focuses on examining the online activities of a group of diasporic Iranians who exhibit Israeli proxy nationalism online by openly expressing support for Israel and Zionism. By analysing posts, reposts and comments made on X after the Hamas‐led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 using the hashtag #IraniansStandWithIsrael, the paper aims to uncover the ideological and political motivations driving this group of diasporic Iranians' pro‐I…
Post-)pandemic Somatechnics, Neoliberalism, and the Return to (Academic) Normalcy: Digital Conversations
This essay consists of a set of digital (post-)pandemic email correspondence held between a political sociologist and an interdisciplinary philosopher working at western European universities while the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly unfolded itself. Starting from an unsettling point in time in 2021, during which vaccination strategies and numerous eugenic pandemic containment measures were being discussed, the authors touch upon issues as diverse as t…
Activism and academia: An interdisciplinary dialogue on academic freedom and social engagement
This article focuses on the questions of academic freedom, scholar activism, public science, and social engagement. The five authors represent scholars from different disciplines and scientific paradigms as well as diverse gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnic, and class backgrounds, yet they share a joint passion for academic ‘activism’. The paper, therefore, reflects a multitude of transdisciplinary perspectives and positionalities. T…
(Gender) Politics in the Field: The Precarities of Diasporic (Women) Scholars of Iranian Politics during and after the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Uprising
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Dual nationality, anti-citizenship, and xeno-racism: Online tropes on migrant (in)gratitude, and (in)adequate Britishness of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British dual citizen, was detained by the Iranian state from April 2016 to March 2022 and charged with spying and propaganda activities against the Iranian state without due process. After her release and return to the UK, Zaghari-Ratcliffe criticized the UK government in a press conference, which triggered a Twitter campaign using the hashtags "sendherback" and "ungrateful." This campaign claimed that she di…
Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe
This volume consists of narratives of migrant academics from the Global South within academia in the Global North. The autobiographic and autoethnographic contributions to this collection aim to decolonise the discourse around academic mobility by highlighting experiences of precarity, resilience, care and solidarity in the academic margins.
Saba Mahmood en de nieuwe sociologische canon: Secularisme, politieke ethiek en macht
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
‘Who Deserves a Chair?’: Performative Kinships and Microaggressions in the European Academy
In this chapter, the author reflects on the performative work that academics do in conference rooms and other spaces of academic performance. The chapter investigates the stark and sometimes harsh differences between research and (self)presentation performances and what happens in more private spaces by using an autobiographic approach. The chapter recounts a narrative based on the author’s experience with microaggressions as a visibly non-white …
Legitimating Misogyny and Femicide: Legal Himpathy and (State) Violence against Women in Iran
On the fifth of February 2022, a man gruesomely murdered his seventeen-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, in a city in a southern province of Iran. The man then shocked bystanders by strolling in public spaces while carrying his wife’s severed head. This paper focuses on the case of Mona’s killing and investigates the state, media, and online user-created reactions to the incident. The paper aims to (i) offer an in-depth exploration of himpathy with th…
Roundtable: Affordances, Diversity, and Inclusion on Dating Apps - A Dialogue between Sociologists and Media Studies Researchers about ‘Hinge
This roundtable paper is part of the project ‘Digitized Love and Intimacy on Hinge.’ It aims to investigate how digital dating apps reconfigure cultural attitudes to love and intimacy and, conversely, how said attitudes influence digital dating practices. The conversation is informed by (n)ethnographic usage of the app. As algorithms and affordances of dating applications can implicitly or explicitly privilege certain groups of users and exclude …
Covid-19 Pandemic and the Crisis of Care: Wellness Discourses, Neoliberal Self-Care, and (Dis)Infodemic
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an influx of misinformation surrounding the virus and its origins. This paper examines the negative consequences of neoliberal self-care discourses related to COVID-19 that contributed to the disinfodemic, focusing on the wellness industry. Some health gurus and wellness instructors promoted lifestyle adjustments and self-care to prevent contracting the virus and sometimes blamed COVID-19 patients for contracting…
Down the (digital) rabbit hole: Mapping and decolonizing Safavid women's imagery in digital museums
In this article, I trace Safavid paintings depicting women's imagery online and explore the possibility of digitally mapping Safavid (1501-1736) paintings featuring women on publicly accessible platforms. Along with the practice of online mapping that led me to digital museums, I investigated the descriptions presented on three digitized paintings on different platforms to address the questions, "Where and how can Safavid paintings be digitally e…
Queering Iran, digitally: Implicit activism and LGBTQI+ dating on Telegram
The Iranian state is notorious for its heteronormativity and policing regime in online and offline spaces. The question of how queer Iranians ‘survive’ this inquisitive and intrusive regime of surveillance and control has attracted scholarly interest across disciplines. The existing studies complicate the picture and show that queer spaces, practices, and performances survive despite the extensive control. Digital spaces have presented an opportu…
Women’s (non) participation in sports: Gendered attitudes, biopolitics, and women’s perceptions of body and sports in Iran
Women’s lower participation in sports in Iran is perceived to be caused by broadly held patriarchal-cultural norms as well as the Iranian State’s regulation of women’s sports and visibility. This exploratory research uses feminist scholarship and qualitative methods to investigate the central factors forming women’s perceptions of sports participation and gender. Based on interviews with twenty-six women participants, the study revealed that esse…
Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality
Gender, sexuality and embodiment in digital spheres have been increasingly studied from various critical perspectives: From research highlighting the articulation of intimacies, desires, and sexualities in and through digital spaces to theoretical explorations of materiality in the digital realm. With such a high level of (inter)disciplinarity, theories, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in relation to digital spheres hav…
Pushing Intersectionality, Hybridity, and (Inter)Disciplinary Research on Digitality to Its Limits: A Conversation Among Scholars of Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment
During the past two decades or so, the emergence and ever-accelerating development of digital media have sparked scholarly interest, debates, and complex challenges across many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Within this diverse scholarship, the research on digitality, gender, sexuality, and embodiment has contributed substantially to many academic fields, such as media studies, sociology, religion, philosophy, and educatio…
Faking Orgasms: Exploring Iranian Women’s Religious and Sexual Moralities
The phenomenon of faking orgasms has been the subject of extensive feminist inquiry, but in contemporary Iran, where sex and sexuality remain sensitive and controversial topics, the topic has not received much scholarly attention. This exploratory pilot study uses qualitative methods to explore the prevalence and the reasons for faking orgasms among a group of women living in urban Iran. The study addresses the possible consequences and implicati…
Marriage, Parentage and Child Registration in Iran: Legal Status of Children of Unmarried Parents
In the contemporary legal system in Iran, child registration is closely tied to Islamic marriage. The Civil Registration Law foresees a process for registering a child born to Islamically married parents. This raises the question of what happens to children whose parents are not married. This paper uses literature review and content analysis methods and focuses on the Iranian law, press and media pieces, Shi'i rulings, and academic literature on …
Gendered and Ethnic Captivity and Slavery in Safavid Persia: A Literature Review
The Safavid society’s approach to sexuality and gender has made it a reference for the “pre-modern” discourse, in which gender and sexuality manifest—in contemporary terminology—queerness and fluidity. While it is important not to romanticize the image of the Orient as a queer heaven, it is possible to consider Safavid society as an important site of inquiry that offers valuable insights on pre-colonial gender and sexuality. A less discussed topi…
The potential role of network-oriented interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence among asylum seekers in Belgium
Interventions involving asylum seekers and members of their network (especially peers), have the potential for improving physical and mental health outcomes of asylum seekers who are SGBV survivors
Posição periférica em teoria social: Limitações para fazer pesquisa social e escrever teses no Irã
Two groups of factors have contributed to the formation of Iranian associations and academic individuals’ status as peripheral in the international social science academic arena. First group consists of external factors such as prevailing euro centrism, English language hegemony and inevitable political-economic problems. Second group of factors are internal factors. Iranian academics’ and academic organizations’ attitudes towards researchers’ ch…
When gender turns right: Racializing Islam and femonationalism in online political discourses in Belgium
In Flanders-Belgium, a Belgo-Iranian politician has gained nation-wide attention for her critique of Islam. Safai's political discourses are built around her opposition to the violation of women's rights in Iran, and to the hijab as a political-patriarchal symbol. Through this latter opposition, she has gained prominence among Flemish nationalists. The emphasis in Safai's discourses has been on using Iranian gender politics to frame her antagonis…
The female body as the bearer of national identity in Iran: A critical discourse analysis of the representation of women's bodies in official online outlets
The female body has been in the foreground of nation-building in Iran especially since the 1930s projects of modernization, when unveiling women and adaptation to Western clothing became a crucial factor of bolstering modern Iranian national identity as opposed to a religion-based national identity. After the 1979 Revolution, the Islamic dress code became compulsory and female imagery depicting modesty and piety became a source of national identi…
Transnational Solidarity with Which Muslim Women? The Case of the My Stealthy Freedom and World Hijab Day Campaigns
The hijab has been the subject of public and academic debates that have polarized scholars, politicians, and activists. Opinions on veiling range widely: while some view veiling as an oppressive practice, others regard veiling as an expression of women's agency and empowerment. Solidarity practices, such as movements against compulsory veiling or actions encouraging non-Muslim women to temporarily wear the hijab, are some of the ways in which act…
Pushing gender to its limits: Iranian women bodybuilders on instagram
Bodybuilding is a hyper-masculinized sport and widely perceived unfit for women. In Iran where women face struggles and spatial limitations to participate in sports, women bodybuilders are breaking the boundaries and becoming increasingly visible using digital media. This research studies two Instagram pages dedicated to Iranian women’s bodybuilding. Content analysis is carried out on the posts and the users’ comments to investigate the visual an…
Covid-19 Pandemic and the Crisis of Care: Wellness Discourses, Neoliberal Self-Care, and (Dis)Infodemic
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an influx of misinformation surrounding the virus and its origins. This paper examines the negative consequences of neoliberal self-care discourses related to COVID-19 that contributed to the disinfodemic, focusing on the wellness industry. Some health gurus and wellness instructors promoted lifestyle adjustments and self-care to prevent contracting the virus and sometimes blamed COVID-19 patients for contracting…
In Her Shoes: Transnational Digital Solidarity With Muslim Women, or the Hijab
Transnational solidarity has been taken up by feminist scholars, social scientists and activists who discuss or practice solidarity with the plights of different individuals, groups, and communities. This paper addresses transnational solidarity by investigating World Hijab Day, a campaign that shows solidarity with Muslim women by encouraging non‐Muslim women to temporarily wear the hijab. By analysing online activities and social media of the c…
(Gender) Politics in the Field: The Precarities of Diasporic (Women) Scholars of Iranian Politics during and after the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Uprising
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Kill Me but Make Me Beautiful’: Harm and Agency in Female Beauty Practices in Contemporary Iran
In this paper, drawing on notions, such as harmful cultural practices and beauty, and based on semi-structured interviews with young female university students in Iran, perceptions and experiences on beauty practices and cosmetic surgery are studied. We show how despite existing criticism of the gendered aspects of beauty practices among Iranian women who practice them, they are still practiced on a large scale. In contemporary Iran, the female b…
Gender and Realisation of Women’s Right to the City in Tehran
The right to the city consists of the right to appropriate spaces and participate in processes therein. Appropriation is referred to having share of the space, using it, owning it and valuing it because it has use value. Participation in the city includes decision making, constructing and living in the urban space. Components of right to the city can be approached from three dimensions, namely the politico-economic, physical and socio-anthropolog…
Legitimating Misogyny and Femicide: Legal Himpathy and (State) Violence against Women in Iran
On the fifth of February 2022, a man gruesomely murdered his seventeen-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, in a city in a southern province of Iran. The man then shocked bystanders by strolling in public spaces while carrying his wife’s severed head. This paper focuses on the case of Mona’s killing and investigates the state, media, and online user-created reactions to the incident. The paper aims to (i) offer an in-depth exploration of himpathy with th…
Marriage, Parentage and Child Registration in Iran: Legal Status of Children of Unmarried Parents
In the contemporary legal system in Iran, child registration is closely tied to Islamic marriage. The Civil Registration Law foresees a process for registering a child born to Islamically married parents. This raises the question of what happens to children whose parents are not married. This paper uses literature review and content analysis methods and focuses on the Iranian law, press and media pieces, Shi'i rulings, and academic literature on …
Serial Acid Attacks and Women’s Online and Offline Resistance and Activism in Iran
In the autumn of 2014 in the city of Isfahan, a series of acid attacks targeted women who were driving in urban public spaces. The violence raised public fear among inhabitants of Isfahan. The Isfahan serial attacks were widely perceived as systematically organized and politically motivated. As a result of the attacks, Isfahan’s female inhabitants’ everyday life was disrupted, and the public spaces, once perceived as partially safe, turned into s…
Temporary Marriages, Mahramiyat, and the Rights of the Child in Shiʿi Adoption: The Legal and Juristic Dilemmas
Iran accepts temporary marriage to facilitate and sanctify sexual relationships. The concession of temporary marriage has, however, been the subject of controversy in the past four decades. One significant refutation of temporary marriage is related to its attempted usage in the case of child-adoption, sanctioned by both the state and some Shiʿi mujtahid s. The explicated rationale is that an adopted child does not benefit from mahramiyat and is,…
Activism and academia: An interdisciplinary dialogue on academic freedom and social engagement
This article focuses on the questions of academic freedom, scholar activism, public science, and social engagement. The five authors represent scholars from different disciplines and scientific paradigms as well as diverse gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnic, and class backgrounds, yet they share a joint passion for academic ‘activism’. The paper, therefore, reflects a multitude of transdisciplinary perspectives and positionalities. T…
Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality
Gender, sexuality and embodiment in digital spheres have been increasingly studied from various critical perspectives: From research highlighting the articulation of intimacies, desires, and sexualities in and through digital spaces to theoretical explorations of materiality in the digital realm. With such a high level of (inter)disciplinarity, theories, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in relation to digital spheres hav…
Duffs and Puffs: Queer Fashion in Iranian Cyberspace
In Iran, the politically sanctioned discourses of embodiment and body management are based on binary notions of gender and sexuality. These discourses are contested by social trends that reflect political dissent. This article uses a combination of content and visual analysis of three Instagram profiles dedicated to fashion to answer the question: ‘Is queer fashion present in Iranian cyberspace’ and if so, ‘How does it persist against the existin…
What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? An Exploratory Study of Femininities among Mazandarani, Azeri and Kurdish Female University Students in Iran
This exploratory study investigated women's perceptions of femininity among Mazandarani, Azeri and Kurdish female university students in Iran. The study was conducted using interviews with sixteen female university students. Analysis of interviews revealed that three main components predicted general understandings of the concept of femininity: personality traits such as emotionality and dependency, engaging in domestic and caregiving activities …
Women in Higher Education and Academia in Iran
This article addresses women's contemporary position in academia in Iran. By systematically reviewing available academic and official databases on women's positions in academia published online or in print, the question is raised if women's current position and role in academia is the result of personal choice making or an existent systematic discriminatory social structure. To address this issue, available Iranian research and data on female rec…
Gender and Realisation of Women’s Right to the City in Tehran
The right to the city consists of the right to appropriate spaces and participate in processes therein. Appropriation is referred to having share of the space, using it, owning it and valuing it because it has use value. Participation in the city includes decision making, constructing and living in the urban space. Components of right to the city can be approached from three dimensions, namely the politico-economic, physical and socio-anthropolog…
Posição periférica em teoria social: Limitações para fazer pesquisa social e escrever teses no Irã
Two groups of factors have contributed to the formation of Iranian associations and academic individuals’ status as peripheral in the international social science academic arena. First group consists of external factors such as prevailing euro centrism, English language hegemony and inevitable political-economic problems. Second group of factors are internal factors. Iranian academics’ and academic organizations’ attitudes towards researchers’ ch…
Women in Higher Education and Academia in Iran
This article addresses women's contemporary position in academia in Iran. By systematically reviewing available academic and official databases on women's positions in academia published online or in print, the question is raised if women's current position and role in academia is the result of personal choice making or an existent systematic discriminatory social structure. To address this issue, available Iranian research and data on female rec…
What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? An Exploratory Study of Femininities among Mazandarani, Azeri and Kurdish Female University Students in Iran
This exploratory study investigated women's perceptions of femininity among Mazandarani, Azeri and Kurdish female university students in Iran. The study was conducted using interviews with sixteen female university students. Analysis of interviews revealed that three main components predicted general understandings of the concept of femininity: personality traits such as emotionality and dependency, engaging in domestic and caregiving activities …
What Are You Reading
Their Beastly Manner”: Discourses of Non-Binary Gender and Sexuality in Shi’ite Safavid Persia
The Safavid dynasty ruled Persia between sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as a turning period in the political, social and religious trajectories of Persian history. The ethnographic literature about the Safavid Persian culture written by Western travelers is an indication of the forming relations between the West and the Orient. The travelogues indicate that Safavid discourses of sexuality were different from their counterparts in…
Kill Me but Make Me Beautiful’: Harm and Agency in Female Beauty Practices in Contemporary Iran
In this paper, drawing on notions, such as harmful cultural practices and beauty, and based on semi-structured interviews with young female university students in Iran, perceptions and experiences on beauty practices and cosmetic surgery are studied. We show how despite existing criticism of the gendered aspects of beauty practices among Iranian women who practice them, they are still practiced on a large scale. In contemporary Iran, the female b…
Vaginal hygiene practices and the formation of sexuality
Although different forms of vaginal cleansing practices are common throughout the world, studies relating to Iranian women's experiences are scarce. This study uses the life-story method to give a thick description of one Iranian woman's experience of vaginal practices, and the role nurturing plays in shaping attitudes towards the female genitalia and sexual formation. The study addresses how gendered ideas about femininity, hygiene and the moral…
Duffs and Puffs: Queer Fashion in Iranian Cyberspace
In Iran, the politically sanctioned discourses of embodiment and body management are based on binary notions of gender and sexuality. These discourses are contested by social trends that reflect political dissent. This article uses a combination of content and visual analysis of three Instagram profiles dedicated to fashion to answer the question: ‘Is queer fashion present in Iranian cyberspace’ and if so, ‘How does it persist against the existin…
The female body as the bearer of national identity in Iran: A critical discourse analysis of the representation of women's bodies in official online outlets
The female body has been in the foreground of nation-building in Iran especially since the 1930s projects of modernization, when unveiling women and adaptation to Western clothing became a crucial factor of bolstering modern Iranian national identity as opposed to a religion-based national identity. After the 1979 Revolution, the Islamic dress code became compulsory and female imagery depicting modesty and piety became a source of national identi…
Pushing gender to its limits: Iranian women bodybuilders on instagram
Bodybuilding is a hyper-masculinized sport and widely perceived unfit for women. In Iran where women face struggles and spatial limitations to participate in sports, women bodybuilders are breaking the boundaries and becoming increasingly visible using digital media. This research studies two Instagram pages dedicated to Iranian women’s bodybuilding. Content analysis is carried out on the posts and the users’ comments to investigate the visual an…
Iranian migrant women’s beauty practices and (un)veiling in Belgium
The hijab has been considered a notable factor in increasing women’s tendency to practise beauty in Iran. Experiences of beauty practices by Iranian women in diaspora can shed light on the extent of the influence that the practice of (un)veiling might have on beauty regimes. This study uses semi-structured interviews amongst a group of Iranian women in Belgium to investigate the development of beauty practices after migration. The study draws on …
DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (Vol. 7, No. 1)
Regular Issue
Milk Kinship and the Maternal Body in Shi’a Islam
In Islamic law, kinship is defined by consanguineal and affinal relationships. Birth and Islamic marriage are important events that define religious responsibilities of family members towards each other. Some responsibilities are connected to Mahramiyat, a framework of interpersonal relations that regulates marriages and interactions with the opposite sex. Besides consanguineal and affinal bonds, mahramiyat and kinship can also be established thr…
Serial Acid Attacks and Women’s Online and Offline Resistance and Activism in Iran
In the autumn of 2014 in the city of Isfahan, a series of acid attacks targeted women who were driving in urban public spaces. The violence raised public fear among inhabitants of Isfahan. The Isfahan serial attacks were widely perceived as systematically organized and politically motivated. As a result of the attacks, Isfahan’s female inhabitants’ everyday life was disrupted, and the public spaces, once perceived as partially safe, turned into s…
Older Women’s Beauty and Bodily Practices in Two Flemish Retirement Homes
There is a general silence in research when it comes to embodied experiences of older women (Hillyer 48; Krekula 158). Older women are specifically excluded from studies on beauty and embodiment be
Temporary Marriages, Mahramiyat, and the Rights of the Child in Shiʿi Adoption: The Legal and Juristic Dilemmas
Iran accepts temporary marriage to facilitate and sanctify sexual relationships. The concession of temporary marriage has, however, been the subject of controversy in the past four decades. One significant refutation of temporary marriage is related to its attempted usage in the case of child-adoption, sanctioned by both the state and some Shiʿi mujtahid s. The explicated rationale is that an adopted child does not benefit from mahramiyat and is,…
Women's Ijtihad and Lady Amin's Islamic Ethics on Womanhood and Motherhood
Women's position, identity, and value in Islam have been affected by androcentric interpretations of the Qur'an and hadith throughout Islamic history. Women's roles in society, as well as their position vis-à-vis Islamic sources and authority, have been shaped by these interpretations. In Shi'a Islam, due to the majority male clergy's resistance, women have rarely reached the highest loci of Shi'i authority and jurisprudence. However, there have …
Gendered and Ethnic Captivity and Slavery in Safavid Persia: A Literature Review
The Safavid society’s approach to sexuality and gender has made it a reference for the “pre-modern” discourse, in which gender and sexuality manifest—in contemporary terminology—queerness and fluidity. While it is important not to romanticize the image of the Orient as a queer heaven, it is possible to consider Safavid society as an important site of inquiry that offers valuable insights on pre-colonial gender and sexuality. A less discussed topi…
The potential role of network-oriented interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence among asylum seekers in Belgium
Interventions involving asylum seekers and members of their network (especially peers), have the potential for improving physical and mental health outcomes of asylum seekers who are SGBV survivors
In Her Shoes: Transnational Digital Solidarity With Muslim Women, or the Hijab
Transnational solidarity has been taken up by feminist scholars, social scientists and activists who discuss or practice solidarity with the plights of different individuals, groups, and communities. This paper addresses transnational solidarity by investigating World Hijab Day, a campaign that shows solidarity with Muslim women by encouraging non‐Muslim women to temporarily wear the hijab. By analysing online activities and social media of the c…
Transnational Solidarity with Which Muslim Women? The Case of the My Stealthy Freedom and World Hijab Day Campaigns
The hijab has been the subject of public and academic debates that have polarized scholars, politicians, and activists. Opinions on veiling range widely: while some view veiling as an oppressive practice, others regard veiling as an expression of women's agency and empowerment. Solidarity practices, such as movements against compulsory veiling or actions encouraging non-Muslim women to temporarily wear the hijab, are some of the ways in which act…
When gender turns right: Racializing Islam and femonationalism in online political discourses in Belgium
In Flanders-Belgium, a Belgo-Iranian politician has gained nation-wide attention for her critique of Islam. Safai's political discourses are built around her opposition to the violation of women's rights in Iran, and to the hijab as a political-patriarchal symbol. Through this latter opposition, she has gained prominence among Flemish nationalists. The emphasis in Safai's discourses has been on using Iranian gender politics to frame her antagonis…
Queering Iran, digitally: Implicit activism and LGBTQI+ dating on Telegram
The Iranian state is notorious for its heteronormativity and policing regime in online and offline spaces. The question of how queer Iranians ‘survive’ this inquisitive and intrusive regime of surveillance and control has attracted scholarly interest across disciplines. The existing studies complicate the picture and show that queer spaces, practices, and performances survive despite the extensive control. Digital spaces have presented an opportu…
Women’s (non) participation in sports: Gendered attitudes, biopolitics, and women’s perceptions of body and sports in Iran
Women’s lower participation in sports in Iran is perceived to be caused by broadly held patriarchal-cultural norms as well as the Iranian State’s regulation of women’s sports and visibility. This exploratory research uses feminist scholarship and qualitative methods to investigate the central factors forming women’s perceptions of sports participation and gender. Based on interviews with twenty-six women participants, the study revealed that esse…
Sociology (43 works) · Political science (33 works) · Gender Studies (31 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Gender Studies (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Islamic Studies and History (13 works) · Social science (13 works)