Muslim Women in Europe in the Shadow of Islamophobia and Post-Colonial Past

During the past 20 years, gender and sexuality have started to play a crucial role within debates on migration and integration in multicultural societies. Thanks to the feminist thought and, in particular, the intersectionality approach and postcolonial studies, we have made significant steps in understanding how categories such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion play a role in shaping lived experiences. This has contributed to overcome essentialised images of “women”, mostly based on the experience of white, Western, middle-class women, while fostering critical accounts of the variety of women’s experiences, practices, and discourses. Muslim women, with their bodily/symbolic evidence, play a crucial role within debates where the issues of religious signs and gender equality have become emblematic political nodes of the tensions between Islam and European political cultures, the West and the 'Rest'. The legacy of what has been called a deeply rooted “colonial unconscious” produced by a colonial past which, in some European countries, has never been fully elaborated, clearly emerges in some misconceptions, representations and practices addressing Muslim women in Europe who are still among the main targets of Islamophobic practices and assaults. The rhetoric of the “clash of civilizations” is one of the well-known result of this, but we should also consider the strong sexist component of a well-rooted colonial racism that is still widespread in our society and strongly influences the way we think about and represent immigrant women in general, and, in particular, Muslim women living in Europe.