Young Dutch Muslim women often lead complex existences: on the one hand, they may be considered “other” to European culture and expected to conform to so-called Western values; on the other hand, they can be subject to scrutiny within their cultural and religious communities.
Dr. Giulia Evolvi and former MCS student Lale Mahmudova explore young Dutch Muslim women’s online practices by focusing on Instagram in “Likes, Comments, and Follow Requests: The Instagram User Experiences of Young Muslim Women in the Netherlands.” The article can be seen as an adaptation of Lale Mahmudova’s MA thesis and it explores how Dutch Muslim women encounter both opportunities and constraints in using the Internet, and Instagram in particular.
By discussing the theories of third spaces (Bhabha, 1994; Pennington, 2018b) and composite habitus (Bourdieu, 1990; Waltorp, 2015), Evolvi and Mahmudova investigate the following questions: How do young Dutch Muslim women use Instagram? What are the opportunities and constraints that they face when using Instagram?
Through qualitative interviews, Evolvi and Mahmudova discovered that Instagram helps young Dutch Muslim women express their identity in their own terms, but it presents negative aspects connected with privacy and surveillance. The article discusses the need not to generalize Muslim women’s experiences and instead to consider their selective use of Instagram and heterogeneity within Islam.
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The article was published by the Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture (Brill) and is available open access: https://brill.com/
It is part of a special issue called “Islam, Space, and the Internet”, which was co-edited with Dr. Maria Chiara Giorda, from the University of Turin.