Jamal - Headstrong daughters: inspiring stories from the new generation ofAustralian Muslim women

Jamals neutral, yet gently perceptive style allows the stories of her women to shine through, illuminating the myriad points of intersection with Islam in ordinary life. An absolutely fascinating and illuminating read; a book that teaches without lecturing.

Annabel Crabb, ABC writer and broadcaster

Headstrong Daughters is a thoughtful, honest and compelling window into a community so often talked over or assumed about, but rarely engaged with. Insightful without sugar-coating, this book is a welcome, nuanced portrayal of Australian Muslim women and their varied lives that is desperately needed today. I finished it in a single sitting.

Susan Carland, author of Fighting Hislam

Also by Nadia Jamal

The Glory Garage: Growing up Lebanese Muslim in Australia

by Nadia Jamal and Taghred Chandab (2005)

First published in 2018

Copyright Nadia Jamal 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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To my beloved mum,

Hanan Jamal.

5 February 1958 15 February 2018

The stories in this book are based on my interviews with Muslim women in the community around Australia. They reflect the issues and concerns these women experience in their daily lives, and their understanding of religious principles and traditions. Some of the practices and attitudes draw on cultural traditions and interpretations rather than actual religious teachings. I have included brief explanations where I felt it would be helpful for non-Muslim readers, and I encourage readers to seek further information on Islam from authoritative sources. Any other opinions or interpretations are my own.

The first word revealed in the Muslim holy book, the Quran, is Iqra. And if you are into revelations, it is the Arabic word for read, a command for Muslims that was written over 1400 years ago.

This expression of the importance of learning is directed at all Muslims equallyyes, women included. Judging by the frequent negative stories about the treatment of some Muslim women, I can understand why some people would be surprised to learn that when it comes to womens rights, Islam cemented this sentiment about reading by giving women the right to an education all those hundreds of years ago. Until quite recently, women in Western societies have largely been excluded from formal education.

But those 1400 or so years ago, Islam did not stop there: it gave women other rights that were ahead of the times. Women could own property, seek a divorce and vote. While it is fair to reference these long-held female rights as part of how Islam improved the status of women, I have never found it safe to assume that these rights are actually part of the modern reality of many Muslim women.

Indeed, today, women in Muslim (or Muslim-majority) countries have traditionally been more disadvantaged than their counterparts in the West, who are able to rely on convention, legislation and institutions for what are now mostly regarded as basic human rights.

Twelve years ago, I co-wrote The Glory Garage, about the challenges of straddling two different cultures faced by teenaged Australian Muslim girls with Lebanese backgrounds in western Sydney. This is the world in which I was raised. The girls who appeared in this book have since grown up. In Headstrong Daughters, most of the women are second generation Australians who are working, married, mothers, and from wider cultural backgrounds including Iraq, Bangladesh and Somalia. Yet they are still Australian women who continue to deal with the challenges of being active members of a broader community while staying true to their faith.

Islams call to knowledge is one of the defining features of the women portrayed in this book, as theywith the support of their familieshave embraced higher learning. Most are university graduates, and some are the first in their family to be so. It is through this education that they have been able to lift their lives as the children of migrants, sometimes overcoming many religious and cultural challenges as part of their journey.

Take 30-year-old Mehal, who completed a PhD at 28, a significant achievement by anyones measure. She also happens to wear the hijab, the Muslim head covering, and was spat upon by a stranger on her way to the train station from university. I was angry for her as she recounted this story, but as much as I tried to get a reaction out of her, Mehal was able to rise above the attack, determined that she was not going to let this strangeror my outrage on her behalfdistract her from her goals.

Then theres Amna, who founded an all-female, and mostly Muslim, AFL team in her twenties, recruiting members so as to encourage Muslim womens participation in sport. She had to overcome resistance from her father to go to university, and had to deal with the same kind of negativity about working in the community to get Muslim women to take part in a public sport.

For Nasreen, going to university to improve her life, and that of her child, came out of necessity after she became a young widow and spent several months at home observing a religiously-prescribed mourning period for Muslim women.

These stories highlight that Islam is not practised in a vacuumMuslims need to go about their daily lives in much the same way as everyone else. However, a lack of understanding about the complexities of Islam and its ethnic, cultural and geographic diversity prevails. Indeed, the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, on Australias doorstep. And just as not all Muslims are Middle Eastern, not everyone follows the dogmas of their faith.

Unlike a lot of books written about Islam, this book offers the perspective of insiders. I hope these chapters about Australian Muslim female life will both challenge Muslims and inform non-Muslims. I was attracted to the stories because I was forced to ask myself: as a professional woman, could I stay home to mourn a husband for four months and ten days? What would I do if told I couldnt attend a burial for a loved one because Im a woman? How would I feel as a guest about sitting in a suburban living room deemed a female-only zone?

These narratives were written against the backdrop of recent controversial topics in the headlines about Muslims in Australia: young male high-school students not shaking hands with women; the wearing of the face-covering niqab in public; and gender segregation at public events. I first wrote about these issues many years ago, when I was a senior journalist with the