Islamic Ethics and Female Volunteering

This book unpacks how the ethical is embodied through an examination of the lived experiences of female Muslim volunteers in Belgium.

Kayikci draws on a wealth of interview material that sheds light on the ethical turn in the anthropology of Islam, exploring how volunteering enables the space and time for Muslim women to commit to both orthodox religious and civic social values. As volunteering and interacting (caring) with the society requires careful deliberation of their society and their position as Muslims, and as women in that society, this research unpacks how multiple belongings of Muslim women in Belgium are negotiated, balanced, and influenced. This analysis reveals how the everyday is informed by different epistemological traditions; both the liberal and the Islamic, and how these traditions make the life-worlds of the women.

Islamic Ethics and Female Volunteering will be of interest to academics across religious studies, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and community studies, especially scholars working in the areas of ethics, migration, Muslims in Europe, volunteering and activism.

Merve Reyhan Kayikci is Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Semitic Studies, University of Granada, Spain. She is also an affiliated staff member in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium.