Explanation is Not the Point

Domestic Work, IslamicDawaand Becoming Muslim in Kuwait

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2174591
AutoresAttiya Ahmad (0009-0008-3724-4603, Wesleyan University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen11
Número3-4
Páginas293-310
Fecha de publicación2010-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCanberra Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0314-9099 • E-ISSN: 1740-9314
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14442213.2010.516009
OpenAlexW2083042940
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas28

Over the past two decades, tens of thousands of migrant domestic workers in Kuwait have developed new-found 'Islamic piety'.Footnote1 Occurring in a much maligned and understudied region—the Arabian Peninsula—this widespread phenomenon has either been elided, cynically dismissed or the motivations for these conversions and their sociohistorical conditions of possibility assumed. Domestic workers' own articulations focus on 'house talk' and suggest a shift in analytic focus, with an emphasis on everyday relationships and activities within households as generative of their new-found Islamic piety. Domestic workers experience becoming Muslim not as a radical break from their previous relationships and religious practices, but as a gradual reworking of them. The domestic workers' expression of their new-found Islamic faith points to the household as a space of confluence between Islamic ethical practice and the affective and immaterial labour entailed by domestic work, as well as between global Islam and the feminisation of transnational labour migration that marks our contemporary world. Keywords: Domestic WorkHouseholdKuwaitSouth Asian Migrant LabourIslamic MovementsTransnationalismGlobalisationEthicsImmaterial LabourAffective Labour Acknowledgements The author thanks Pnina Werbner, Mark Johnson, Alicia Pignol, Claudia Liebelt, and Deirdre McKay for organising a splendid conference and for making my participation possible. Special thanks to Pnina Werbner for her detailed comments, which greatly strengthened this paper. Katherine Ewing, Diane Nelson and Deborah Thomas' intellectual acuity and generosity of spirit suffuse this paper and the broader project of which it is a part. Most of all shukria and mashkura to my interlocutors in Kuwait, who gave so generously of their time and friendship. The richness of their experiences, utterances and thoughts both animate and surpass my renderings of them. Notes 1. A term I use to denote an ongoing belief and practice of Islam that captures the dynamic and processual understanding my interlocutors have of what it means to be Muslim. 2. Yeh is the Urdu/Hindi word for this, beit is Arabic for house, ki is an Urdu/Hindi feminine possessive suffix and baat is the Urdu/Hindi word for talk or speech. 3. The Arabic word for 'those who call people to Islam'. 4. Their discussions resonate with Talal Asad's observation that religious conversion appears to require explanations in a way that secular conversion into modern ways of being does not (Asad Citation1996, p. 263). Asad argues that this overriding focus on explanations for religious conversion recuperates the modern notion of the rational, agentive subject in contexts that fundamentally challenge this understanding of the subject. He suggests that the focus on 'choice' and explanations for religious conversions both presupposes and re-instantiates a particular understanding of subjectivity (i.e. a modern, agentive subject) that may differ from how subjects are understood in the discursive frames of religious traditions. 5. I also base these numbers on figures given to me by labour recruitment agencies and the embassies of labour-sending countries. 6. This figure is based on estimates compiled by Kuwait's Islamic dawa movement, Ministry of Awqaf and foreign embassies. 7. Dawa means to call or invite, hence dawa movement refers to individuals, groups and organisations in Kuwait that are calling or inviting people to belief and practice Islam. 8. I am often asked whether domestic workers new-found piety can be attributed to how they are treated by their employers; for example, whether abusive employers coerce them to convert, whether these women convert in the hope of being treated better by their employers or, alternatively, whether kindly employers inspire them to convert. These question are based on several assumptions, notably (a) that Kuwaiti employers prefer having domestic workers who are Muslim and/or are positively disposed or encouraging of domestic workers' conversions and (b) that domestic workers' conversions debunk stereotypes about their overall negative treatment in Kuwait. My intensive work with twenty-five domestic workers and their households, as well as interviews with over 100 domestic workers, their employers and daiyat, suggest a more complicated picture. Many of my interlocutors indicated that their employers were wary of their conversions because of their potential implications, including the possibility these women may be disowned by their families and communities at home, thereby necessitating employers' ongoing support of these women or because employers were concerned they may be perceived as having pressured their domestic workers to convert. Many employers I spoke with further indicated that they treated their Muslim domestic workers no different from non-Muslim workers, an issue largely corroborated by the domestic workers I interviewed. In addition, many employers' criteria or preferences in hiring domestic workers were not based on the religious background of these women (e.g. they indicated that they wanted domestic workers who were well trained, who were trustworthy with their children etc.) and those employers who would prefer to have a Muslim domestic worker employed one who was already a practising Muslim. 9. As for whether domestic workers' new-found practice of Islam debunks stereotypes about their treatment in Kuwait, this too is not necessarily clear. Among those who are knowledgeable or who work in Kuwait's domestic work sector, it is generally acknowledged that 8–10 per cent of domestic workers experience problems while working in Kuwait. Of this, most problems, approximately 7–8 per cent, relate to salary disputes (e.g. withholding of pay) and 2–3 per cent relate to physical and sexual abuse. How this compares or contrasts with the situation of migrant domestic workers in other regions, such as east Asia, North America and Europe, where, with the exception of the UK, domestic workers are also not covered by labour laws and where domestic workers' sociopolitical situations are often precarious, is unclear owing to the paucity of data available about this issue. Domestic workers indicated to me that the development of their new-found piety did relate to the relationships they developed with their employers, but in ways that defy easy formulations. For example, some of my interlocutors indicated that they developed new-found Islamic piety despite working with problematic employers and/or despite working with employers who they characterised as being Muslim in name only (i.e. who they felt did not practice Islam properly). It is also worth noting—something that is often not mentioned in news media or human rights reports—that although domestic workers may be treated well by their employers, their experiences of migration and living and working within Kuwaiti households may still be difficult owing to their social, linguistic and cultural dislocation, as well as to the generally difficult nature of the work they undertake (i.e. the difficulty of domestic work is not reducible to ill-treatment by employers). Their experiences point to the need for more detailed and nuanced discussions of domestic workers' relationships and experiences of working and residing within Kuwaiti households—and how these, in turn, relate to religious practices and beliefs—something I am attempting to do to a certain extent in this paper and more extensively in my broader project. 10. According to Kuwaiti law, foreign residents who are granted the right to sponsor and employ a migrant domestic worker can only do so with women who are not fellow nationals (i.e. an Indian national cannot employ a domestic worker from India)

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