Browsing by Author "Cheema, Hina Tabassum"

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    Becoming a ‘good’ Muslim woman : comparing habitus and everyday lived religiosity : an ethnographic study of Aotearoa New Zealand Muslim women : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023-11-10) Cheema, Hina Tabassum
    For women like us Every day isn’t about a sunrise Every night isn’t about a sunset Between our sunrise and sunset There are puzzles to solve Of the pictures never seen before Missing and broken pieces And bits mixed up from other puzzles But surprisingly Sometimes we make them And other times, they break us And occasionally They are left unsolved Lingering in on our minds Becoming part of us This thesis is an ethnographic study of everyday lived experiences of Muslim women immigrants in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a focus on everyday lived religiosity, I explore the lives of Muslim women, who are extremely diverse and in the state of becoming as depicted in the poem. I extend Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus by introducing Comparing Habitus as an analytical tool which allows us to comprehend and analyse the diversity, multiplicity, complexity, intersubjectivity, heterogeneity, fluidity and unfinishedness of Muslim women’s lived experiences in Aotearoa NZ. I also use Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming and Das’s theory of everyday to understand the complex and intersubjective ways of becoming ‘good’ Muslim women and their negotiations of everyday challenges in a non-Muslim context. I use the framework of lived religion to capture my participants' experiences to understand these experiences as ordinary Muslims; e.g., what Muslims do rather than what Islam says. The use of poetry and autoethnographic commentaries throughout the thesis adds another layer to the analysis to confer insights and to help understand my participants’ experiences in more depth. The study concludes that being a Muslim woman immigrant in Aotearoa NZ is an ongoing agentive and complex process that is continuously defined and redefined, not always in a linear direction. Muslim women make sense of their lives through engagement with other Muslim women and use comparison as one of the key strategies to make everyday decisions. My research participants are on journeys to understand Islam more logically, using their agency to actively negotiate situations, and are constantly engaged in finding meaning in their lives. The study suggests the need to understand Muslim women as cultural and social beings who actively negotiate their everyday challenges.