Muslim Women’s Activism in the USA: Politics of Diverse Resistance Strategies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for such an enjoyable read! The article is well written, well-structured and arguments are clearly presented. It is a well researched paper that contributes a useful comparison of a diverse group of three Muslim American women and their diverse trajectories in their quests for egalitarian rights. the article is well grounded in relevant sources and contributes some intelligent and useful insights. 

There are , however, some minor editorial corrections that should be addressed, including issues of punctuation. I suggest a quick editing of the paper to eliminate all such errors. Please see attached document.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Hi,

Thank you for your suggestions. They've been incorporated and edits have been done where you suggested. I am attaching the revised version here.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulation on your hard work. I enjoyed reading your paper. Here I leave you some comments to improve some aspects of it:

1.     I would include in the footnote a definition of “feminist geographers” when it appears for the first time in line 32. This will make your argument more comprehensible as the term feminism operates differently according to its focus or perspective.

2.     Line 34-35: you categorize “Muslim women activists in the USA as marginal subjects existing on social and geographical borderlands in a world mapped by and for imperial powers.” I think you need to support your decision with a previous study to make it more scientific rather than personal.

3.     I found that the references are pretty old. Please look for more recent ones and incorporate them with the old ones.

4.     The term “feminist approaches to gendered identities” (line 302)  is used again in a generalized way. I prefer to mention one or two approaches, with a brief definition, in the footnote rather than make that general confusing claim.

5.     The article uses the term “radical Islamist” in a very general and ambiguous way. This term has been misused in the public and political discourse. Hijab-wearing women are stigmatized as radical, young Muslim doing their prayers or visiting mosques regularly are stigmatized as radical, and even families who teach their children Arabic language and Quran recitation are stigmatized as radical in the press discourse. Using the term in such a general way will activate these previous frames and categorizations in the reader’s mind. I think it is important to highlight in the footnote when you first mention the term “radical Islamists,” who do you refer to? Which groups or communities do you categorize as Radical Islamists and why? Otherwise, this usage enforces the stereotypes on practitioner Muslims or anyone who might disagree with one of these activists.  

6.     In your argument on page 9 on the hijab, you included part of the verse that refers to the between-gender codes in the public sphere. You have not included the entire verse that includes Muslim women’s vestment code. Doing this, the message is cut and incomplete. If you want to discuss Muslim men’s and women’s vestments and gender relations codes in the public sphere, you have to be fair enough to put out the arguments in a fair way. It is to say, to include the verses that refer to these codes, and add their interpretations provided by Muslim scholars, professionals, and experts, one whose explanation is based on the Islamic methodological and scientific basis. Remember that you need to acquire specific skills, knowledge, and competencies to “interpret” the Quranic texts, i.e., to argue about a specific physics theory, you must acquire certain titles on physics. So, the original interpretation of the verses needs to be cited by the experts who are qualified to do so. After that, you include Wadud’s perspectives on these verses, her own interpretation, and her personal view. I will recommend you add in the footnote an explanation of the requirements needed in “al-Mufaseer,” the interpreter of the Quranic text, to clear out the doubts about that decision.

Otherwise, the opinion of Wadud in your paper sounds authoritative and authentic even though she lacks the basic requirements of being Mufassera (an interpreter)

 

7.     Try to move the academic citation in the conclusion to a correspondent part of the paper. Limit the conclusion texts to your own conclusions and your academic perspectives on the analyzed data in the paper. It is confusing to add new theoretical information in conclusion. 

Author Response

Hi, 

Thank you for your valuable input and review. I have added your suggestions to the paper. Please look at footnotes no 1, 2, 10, 13. I have added a few recent publications in my references as well, such as:

Kazmi, Zaheer. "Radical Islam in the Western Academy." Review of International Studies 48.4 (2022): 725-747.

Biana, Hazel T. (2020). Extending bell hooks' Feminist Theory. Journal of International Women's Studies, 21(1), 13-29.

Alimahomed-Wilson, Sabrina. "The matrix of gendered Islamophobia: Muslim women’s repression and resistance." Gender & Society 34.4 (2020): 648-678.

 Also, I am attaching the paper here. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx