Democratic Resilience of Muslim Women's Organizations in Germany: Meanings and Challenges of Institutionalizing Feminist Critique

In line with secular feminist movements in European countries, Islamic feminism strives for gender equity which secures Muslim women individual rights, freedom of religion and of unconstrained religious practice. Similar to exclusionary state policies, which, for instance, prohibit veiling for civil servants, Muslim women also do encounter male-domination in diaspora Muslim organizations. It is against this background that we ask: Which forms of anti-feminism do Muslim women’s organization encounter in contemporary Germany? More specifically, we ask: How do Muslim women’s organization oppose to these anti-feminisms? To respond to these questions, we compare, first, recently emerging women's organizations to those that formed in established Muslim associations, and, second, we extend this newcomer-established comparison to the Catholic Church so as to sort out how anti-feminism is encountered, realized and opposed to across two religious women’s organizations in Germany. Further, it sheds light on if and how women’s organizations form strategic alliances with and across religious groups and/or between newcomers and established communities. Drawing on intersectional approaches and theories of institutional learning, we argue that more egalitarian institutional structures, embedded in religiously grounded feminism, arise in the interaction between ‘newcomer’ and established religious institutions. We show that it is through the institutionalization of feminist critique that Muslim communities’ resilience vis-à-vis anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian structures is fostered.