Saving and fearing Muslim women in ‘post-communist’ Poland: troubling Catholic and secular Islamophobia

Article


Narkowicz, K. and Pędziwiatr, K. 2017. Saving and fearing Muslim women in ‘post-communist’ Poland: troubling Catholic and secular Islamophobia. Gender, Place and Culture. 24 (2), pp. 288-299. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2017.1298574
TypeArticle
TitleSaving and fearing Muslim women in ‘post-communist’ Poland: troubling Catholic and secular Islamophobia
AuthorsNarkowicz, K. and Pędziwiatr, K.
Abstract

Sexual politics play a key role in anti-Muslim narratives. This has been observed by scholarship problematising liberal feminist approaches towards ‘non-Western’ subjects focusing on countries such as France, the USA and the Netherlands. Yet interrogations into how these debates play out in European national contexts that are located outside of the European ‘West’ have attracted significantly less scholarly attention. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Poland this article aims to begin to fill this gap by analysing the centrality of feminist discourses within Islamophobic agendas in Poland. The article asks how discourses around women’s rights are mobilised simultaneously, and paradoxically, by both secular and Catholic groups in ‘post-communist’ Poland. By showcasing how feminist sentiments are employed by ideologically opposing groups, we sketch out some of the complexities in the ways Islamophobia operates in a Central and Eastern European context.

KeywordsIslamophobia; Muslim women; feminism; Poland; post-communism; Central and Eastern Europe
PublisherTaylor & Francis (Routledge)
JournalGender, Place and Culture
ISSN0966-369X
Electronic1360-0524
Publication dates
Online20 Mar 2017
Print28 Feb 2017
Publication process dates
Deposited08 Sep 2020
Accepted06 Dec 2016
Submitted28 Apr 2016
Output statusPublished
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2017.1298574
Web of Science identifierWOS:000397993900011
LanguageEnglish
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