The Everyday Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Islamic Dress. The Case of Women Converts to Islam in Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article explores the sensitivities, discursivities and materialities deployed by women converts through their reappropriation of Islam as a gender repertoire, taking the Islamic headscarf, body care and physical appearance as examples. The ethnographic work (2013–2020), carried out in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area in dialogue with the testimonies collected charts the different ways in which Islam is locally reconfigured. It reveals that, while Islamic dress does not constitute an all-pervasive set of social issues, it nevertheless emerges as a political, ethical or aesthetic resource that speaks to the performances and rhetorics of women embracing Islam. On one hand, the text takes a comparative approach to the uses and meanings given to Islamic dress by the subjects, while taking into consideration whether they are converts adhering to Shi’ite and Sunnī Islam or follow Sufism, and the convergences and tensions arising with Muslims by birth. On the other hand, it reflects on female agency beyond religious normativity and the misleading dichotomy of the acceptance or rejection of the Islamic headscarf.