Feminist Muslim activists in postdigital spaces: Dismantling binary constructions of female Muslimness in postmigrant contexts

Abstract

This article explores the activism practices of three German-speaking Muslim women living and working in postmigrant contexts in which they negotiate hybrid identities as Muslims, feminists and activists. Their online and face-to-face work spans educational, artistic and entrepreneurial initiatives. Working with different audiences, they strategically adapt their approach and terminology accordingly, e.g. emphasizing or underplaying ‘feminism’. Taking a postdigital ethnographic approach – including participant observation in mosque spaces, team ethnography on Instagram and curatorial ethnographic strategies – this article examines how three actors contest dominant feminist and racialized discourses. Their strategies of (re)appropriation, selective engagement and silence disrupt binary assumptions made about Muslim women and challenge Eurocentric and ethnocentric feminist perspectives. By asserting agency and visibility while choosing to withdraw from one-sided public discourses, they do not merely express themselves or ‘talk back’. Instead, they create alternative spaces of belonging and resistance, drawing on feminist ethics of care and solidarity to reshape contemporary feminist discourse in postdigital spheres.