Beyond the Mosque: Turkish Immigrants and the Practice and Politics of Islam in Duisburg-Marxloh, Germany

This chapter focuses on the processes through which Muslim women in Northern Ireland, and in particular its capital, Belfast, construct their identity. It provides the concept of identity as well as a brief description of the Muslim community in Northern Ireland. However the formation of Muslim women’s circles and organizations challenged the schismogenetic processes at hand. Organisations, such as the Al-Nisa Women’s Group, helped Muslim migrant women reconceptualize their religion into an innovative act of identity rather than a conservative element in their lives. These women’s organizations became, to use Mafessolian terminology, communities of emotion, in which the Muslim migrant women share feelings about their past as well as their challenging present. Muslim migrant women have actively tried to fight the isolation they were subjected to as a result of the particular Northern Irish political environment and the strong patriarchal structure of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities.