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"While issues surrounding Muslim women are common in the international media, the voices of Muslim women themselves are largely absent from media coverage and despite the rapidly increasing presence of Muslim women in online groups and discussions, it is still a relatively unexplored topic. This book examines Muslim women in transnational online groups, and their views on education, culture, marriage, sexuality, work, dress-code, race, class and sisterhood. Looking at both egalitarian and traditionalist Muslim women's views, the author considers their interpretations of Islam and identifies a new category of holists who focus on developing the Islamic sisterhood. Drawing on detailed analysis of online transcripts, she highlights women's rhetorical techniques and the thorough knowledge of Islamic sources which they use to justify their points in online discussions. She details how in the online context, as opposed to offline interactions, Muslim women are much more willing to cross boundaries between traditionalist and egalitarian interpretations of Islam and women's Islamic rights and responsibilities and to develop collaborative interpretations with supporters of different views. Shedding light on a candid and forthright global community, this book is an important contribution to the debate on women in Islam, and as such will be of interest to scholars and students of Islamic studies, gender studies, media studies and the Middle East"--Provided by publisher.

This article identifies a gap in extant literature on women who wear the niqab and their representations in 'traditional' media: there are few academic sources that draw from these women's own narratives. In order to address this gap, this article highlights niqabis' self-representations in the form of photographic self-portraits published in new media and demonstrates a variety of positive ways in which these self-portraits are received by the audiences. The article is based on a case study of a profile of a prolific author who posts and discusses her work on a popular photo-sharing website. It throws light on contextualised and relational interpretations of the niqab and its meaning and at the same time challenges a common perception that non-Muslim audiences are uniformly critical of women who wear the niqab. Data analysis of the data so far indicates that women who wear the niqab exercise their agency by making visual references to the everyday and successfully establish dialogue and intimacy with their audiences. It is suggested that new media settings are particularly important in researching 'niqab experiences', as they foster a variety of relevant data types and narratives driven by participants, rather than researchers.

This article focuses on online narratives of female converts to Islam who wear or plan to wear the niqab. There is little discussion in research literature about motivations leading to adoption of the niqab or experiences of women who wear it. Instead, the discourse on niqab has been sensationalised by tabloid media which construct it as a symbol of otherness and separation from the host culture and, recently, one of radicalisation. This begs the question: why are some converts drawn to it despite negative reactions to the niqab by some Muslims and non-Muslims. Here, I examine online discussions in which converted women argue why they wish to wear the niqab, often in contradiction to other Muslims' views. I draw from Rambo's conversion model (1993) and Lave and Wenger's concept of communities of practice to illuminate the process whereby participants learn about Islam and the niqab through social interaction.

AbstractThis article addresses the question of how the racial habitus of Polish White female converts (PWFCs) to Islam is performed in different social settings. We draw from in-depth interviews with 35 PWFCs living in Poland and the United Kingdom. While the notion of habitus has been used to analyze socialization into Islam, racial habitus has not been analyzed in relation to White converts to Islam. We argue that White habitus is an important concept that elucidates racial positioning among White converts in multiracial Muslim settings. Whiteness, often indexed in the data as "Europeanness," is foundational for the PWFC identity. Furthermore, we extend the understanding of how Whiteness operates in Eastern Europe through the analysis of the White habitus among those who occupy non-normative places in racial and religious hierarchies. Thus, this article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on decentering Whiteness in Eastern Europe.

This study investigates self-harm among young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) people. Using qualitative virtual methods, we examined online forums to explore young LGBT people's cybertalk about emotional distress and self-harming. We investigated how youth explained the relationship between self-harm and sexuality and gender. We found that LGBT youth may articulate contradictory, ambiguous, and multiple accounts of the relationship but there were three strong explanations: (a) self-harm was because of homophobia and transphobia; (b) self-harm was due to self-hatred, fear, and shame; (c) self-harm was emphatically not related to sexuality or gender. There was evidence of youth negotiating LGBT identities, managing homophobia, resisting pathologization, and explaining self-harm as a way of coping.

This is the first systematic study of Polish women's conversion to Islam in English. Through interviews with Polish female converts to Islam and ethnographic observation, we learn about their journey to Islam in a country where Muslims constitute less than 0,5% of the population and experience daily struggles related to maintaining their national and religious identities sometimes considered to be spoiled. The analysis presented in the book illuminates different factors that shape the converts' religious lives: attempts to establish "Polish Islam" with its unique cultural flavor; a new hybrid language that includes Polish, English and Arabic elements; intersectional identities as women, Muslims, Poles, and Eastern European immigrants among those who live outside of Poland. This study offers a fascinating window into the lives of Muslims in a sociopolitical context that is considered to be on the margins of the "Muslim world."

Abstract
This article explores the conversion processes of Polish women of Catholic background to Islam. Data from participant observation of mosque-based, women-only weekend gatherings for converts and in-depth interviews with 29 Polish female converts to Islam are presented to illustrate the dialectic between the persistence and transformation of religious habitus. Our analysis demonstrates that in the conversion process, Catholic habitus remains pervasive, and shapes converts' engagement with the new religion; however, some elements of it become reflexive and change. We make a case for extending the discussion on habitus transformation by drawing attention to what we term a "translation" of religious beliefs and practices. Women in our study translate the system of Islamic practices and beliefs into a specific Catholic logic that is more intelligible to them and, in the process, recognize some of the power dynamics inherent in the religious field.