Nynäs Peter - Religion, Gender and Sexuality in Everyday Life

RELIGION, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Edited by

PETER NYNS
bo Akademi University, Finland

ANDREW KAM-TUCK YIP
University of Nottingham, UK

ASHGATE

Peter Nyns and Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Peter Nyns and Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Religion, gender and sexuality in everyday life.

1. Sex--Religious aspects. 2. Sexual minorities--Religious life. 3. Muslim gays--Social conditions. 4. Religious minorities--Attitudes.

I. Nynas, Peter. II. Yip, Andrew K. T., 1963

200.8'66-dc23

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nynas, Peter.

Religion, gender, and sexuality in everyday life / by Peter Nynas and Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-4583-8 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-4584-5 (ebook) 1. Religion and culture--Case studies. 2. Sex role--Case studies. 3. Sex--Case studies. I. Yip, Andrew Kam-Tuck. II. Title.

BL65.C8N96 2013

200.81--dc23

2012022235

ISBN 9781409445838 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409445845 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781409471806 (ebk-ePUB)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.

Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip and Peter Nyns

Vanja Hamzi

Melissa M. Wilcox

Sarah-Jane Page and Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip

Rusi Jaspal

Bernadetta Siara

Wim Peumans and Christiane Stallaert

Sara Zalcberg and Sima Zalcberg

Kenneth Houston

Peter Nyns is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director for the Centre of Excellence in Research which manages the research programme Post-secular Culture and a Changing Religious Landscape in Finland (PCCR, http://web.abo.fi/fak/hf/relvet/pccr ) and project leader for Viewpoints to the World: Prototypes of Worldview and their Relation to Motivational Values in Different Social Movements, funded by the Academy of Finland. His main areas of research have been psychology of religion, emotional geography and intercultural encounters. The edited books Transforming Otherness (2011) and Post-secular Society (2012), were both published by Transaction. Within PCCR he is now undertaking a case-study on LGTB activism in the religious field in Finland focusing on the intersection of themes such as agency, subjectivity, space and imagined bodies.

Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip is Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests include contemporary religious/spiritual identities, sexual identities, youth culture, ageing, and human rights. His writings have appeared in journals such as British Journal of Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Theology & Sexuality, Sexualities, Sociological Research Online and Contemporary Islam. He is also the author of Gay Male Christian Couples: Life Stories (1997); and co-author/co-editor of Lesbian and Gay Lives over 50 (2003), Queer Spiritual Spaces: Sexuality and Sacred Places (2010), Religion, Youth and Sexuality: A Multi-faith Exploration (2011), and The Ashgate Research Companion to Contemporary Religion and Sexuality (2012).

Vanja Hamzi is Lecturer at City University London and Visiting Lecturer at Kings College London. He has researched and worked with gender-variant and/ or sexually diverse Muslim collectives in Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and Southeast Asia. In his native Bosnia and Herzegovina, he has founded Logos, an inter-faith non-patriarchal organisation, and worked as the Editor-in-Chief of Abraham, a magazine for culture of inter-religious dialogue. His main legal anthropological research involves the process of human subjectivity formation along the geographic, political, cultural and religious fault lines, with a focus on normativity, ritual, gender and sexuality. His recent publications include Control and Sexuality: The Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts (Women Living Under Muslim Laws, December 2010), co-authored with Dr Ziba Mir-Hosseini; and The Case of Queer Muslims: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law and Muslim Legal and Social Ethos, Human Rights Law Review 11(2): 23774 (2011).

Kenneth Houston was an associate and research intern with the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. He has now joined the Faculty of Webster University at its Thailand Campus, where he lectures in International Relations. He has published on the subject of religion in politics and society in several journals such as Religion, State and Society, Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies and Religion Compass.

Rusi Jaspal is Research Fellow and Social Psychologist at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, the University of Surrey and Royal Holloway, University of London. His research has addressed issues concerning the construction and management of sexual, ethnic and religious identities particularly among ethnic and religious minority groups in Britain. Currently, he is conducting a study on the lived experiences of non-heterosexual Iranian migrants in Britain and Canada. He has published his work in peer-reviewed journals such as British Journal of Social Psychology, Mental Health, Religion and Culture and Journal of Homosexuality. Rusi Jaspal is coeditor (with Glynis Breakwell) of Identity Process Theory: Identity, Social Action and Social Change (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Sarah-Jane Page completed her doctorate at the University of Nottingham in 2009 and she has held research posts at both the University of Nottingham and Durham University. She is currently a lecturer in the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University. Her research interests focus on the study of religion, gender, sexuality, embodiment, feminism, youth, parenthood, and clergy families. She was the Research Fellow on the Religion, Youth and Sexuality: A Multi-faith Exploration project ( www.nottingham.ac.uk/nottingham/rys ).

Wim Peumans is an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre, University of Leuven, Belgium. As a Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders he studies transgressive sexualities and Muslim subjectivities in Belgium. His masters thesis on sexual migration to Belgium won the biannual Marguerite Lefvre Award for Genderstudies (2010, Academische Stichting Leuven) and was published as a book: Seks en stigma over grenzen heen homoseksuele en lesbische migranten in Vlaanderen en Brussel