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Unveiling Women's Resistance Movements: Intersections of Nonviolent Resistance, Religion, and Gender Justice

Submitted to Program Units
1: Women and Religion Unit

Hadia Mubarak, Queens University, Charlotte, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

This session delves into the complex intersections of gender, violence, and nonviolence within the sphere of religious and political conflicts across various cultural contexts. Exploring case studies from Nigeria, Myanmar, Africa broadly, and Java, the session explores how women and women-identifying people confront and navigate the challenges posed by religious extremism, military regimes, cultural norms, and historical narratives. It examines the roles that gender plays in both experiencing and resisting violence, highlighting efforts ranging from public discourse participation and the creative protest movements to philosophical reflections on relational autonomy and revisionist mythmaking. Through nuanced understandings of how women's agency and resilience in the face of violence are intricately tied to their religious and cultural environments, the session offers innovative perspectives on fostering peace, justice, and gender equity.

Papers

  • Ruth Amwe, Princeton Theological Seminary

    Engendering Religious Extremism and Violence: Nigerian Women and the Pursuit of Non-Violence

    Abstract

    Nigeria has endured the explosion of such religious extremism and violence, eliciting mass civil unrest particularly in the last two decades. Women are often especially at the risk of victimization, enduring diverse forms of human rights violations though their participation and instrumentalization in orchestrating such acts of violence complexifies the relationship between gender and religiously motivated violence in Nigeria. In addition, the exploration of their efforts to form part of the nexus of public discourse critiquing religious extremism and violence in the public sphere within scholarly discourse leaves room for more to be said especially with respect to Nigerian and African women. Through the juxtaposition of two of such women-led efforts, this paper, therefore, seeks to engage contemporary scholarship on the intersection of religion, violence, and gender by examining the resources Nigerian and African women utilize in their mobilizing quest towards demanding accountability and justice for the oppressed. This paper will argue that Nigerian and African women’s pursuit for social justice are often constructed in spaces of duality where their agency is firmly asserted and remains uncontested and the margin between violence and non-violence at blurred.

  • Sau Nam, University of Denver

    Sarong Revolution: Myanmar Women’s Courageous and Creative Nonviolence Movement in Resisting the Violence of Military Regime

    Abstract

    Myanmar women are aware of the inseparable connection between their struggle for gender justice and political liberty, and they express their concerns in the “Sarong Revolution.” By waving a sarong as a flag, Myanmar women fight against taboo, sexism, and an unjust political system. I posit that a new interpretation of the male-biased gender norm, phon, helps women realize their true liberated womanhood and leads them to resist gender-based violence, and regime. First, I briefly introduce the political background of Myanmar, and then, the “Sarong Revolution” will be presented. Lastly, I present a new interpretation of phon and its application in protest. To support my argument, I use Martin Luther King Jr’s view on protest, Kwok Pui-Lan’s view on demystifying religious myths, Aye Nwe’s view on reinterpreting gender-biased cultural norms, and monk Nandamala Bhivamsa’s view on a new understanding of phon. It is a timely, intersectional, and inspirational proposal.  

     

     

  • Telesia Musili, University of Nairobi

    Violence and Nonviolence: The Double-edged Sword Effect of Relational Autonomy

    Abstract

    African social ordering is centered around the philosophy of Ubuntu. The maxim I am because we are, propagates a communalism organization of societies. Ubuntu postulates a relational form of personhood, which means you are because of others, not only in being but also in moral action. The communal ordering is contrasted with subjective autonomy that governs most of the developed world. As such, in Africa, autonomy is founded primarily on relationships. A central aspect of relational autonomy is protecting people from violence and abusive relationships. However, though venerated in Africa, relational autonomy has the potential to propagate violent behavioral tenets among relations. This is because social structures and relationships abound them and can be oppressive and destructive to autonomy. This proposal calls for interrogating relational autonomy as an enabler of violence, nonviolence, and peace among all earth communities.

  • Verena Meyer, Leiden University

    The Woman at the Margins: Violence, Gendered Erasures, and Recoveries in Memories of Java’s Islamization

    Abstract

    This paper approaches the intersection of gender and violence in Javanese Islam by using as a heuristic the historical narrative of a violent murder in early modern Java where a woman, despite her central role, is erased from the story. It examines attempts in contemporary Javanese theater to recover the woman in the story as a strategy of revisionist mythmaking and an avenue for women’s agency and resistance. Specifically, it focuses on a play produced by self-identified Muslim women with a feminist project in which a woman’s courageous intervention prevents the murder, presenting a non-violent historical vision as a normative model of Islamic ethics. Because the play conceptualizes this re-vision as a recovery of a truth that became distorted by colonial scholarship, the feminist and decolonial project are intimately linked in the play’s recovery of early Javanese Islam as a normative vision of Islamic orthodoxy for today.

Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer
Podium microphone

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

90 Minutes
Schedule Info

Tuesday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Tags

Copts
Understandings of women in the church
Women in Religion
Middle Eastern Christianity
Orthodox Christianity
#islam
#performance
#erasure
#revisionistmythology

Session Identifier

A26-111