M4C Logo AHRC Logo

Sumaiyah Kholwadia

Law and Legal Studies, University of Birmingham

Thesis title:

Legal and Policy Barriers Impeding Muslim Women's Right to Spiritual Equality

This project advances an emerging conception of ‘spiritual equality’ as a new perspective on the relationship between law and religion. In particular, I use the case study of prohibitions on Muslim women’s veiling to expose harm and disadvantage inflicted in the realm of spirituality; a dimension of life that has yet to be recognised as a site where inequalities can occur. The current legal human rights framework of freedom of religion has failed to adequately protect Muslim women’s right to veil thus far. Current human rights protections on religious freedom are embedded within the history of European Christianity, which presupposes that religious life is predominantly internal, private and a matter of assenting to formal, religious obligations. Spirituality on the other hand, speaks to how religion is an instructive force and tool in women’s lives. It captures the personal, informal, religious subjectivities of Muslim women that are constantly in flux and not constrained by the institutional, doctrinal and communal connotations embedded in the language of ‘religion.’ This offers fertile ground for capturing how Muslim women understand, relate to and negotiate their understanding of formal, religious obligations (such as veiling) with everyday demands and desires. I place particular attention on how regulatory barriers to veiling perpetuate gendered and racialised inequality in the realm of spirituality. I position ‘spiritual equality’ as the starting point of Muslim women’s articulation of equality that is centred around piety, situating themselves within an Islamic moral framework that is multi-faceted and entangled with the everyday. To express how the law can adequately protect Muslim women’s spiritual equality, I adopt Fredman’s multi-dimensional model of susbtantive equality as a useful framework for translating spiritual equality into legal discourses. Whilst I use the case study of Muslim women’s veiling to illustrate how spiritual equality works, this concept has the potential to be adapted to local contexts to address spiritual discrimination faced by other minority groups.

Research Area

  • Law and Legal Studies

Publications

Conferences

University of British Columbia, Association of Law, Culture and Humanities Annual Conference, 'Veiled Entanglements: The Interplay Between Muslim Women’s Spirituality and Resistance' (2024)

University of Greenwich, A Decolonial and Anti-Racist Approach to Legal Education and Pedagogy (SLS-funded), 'Decolonial and Anti-Racist Approaches to Legal Pedagogy: Moving Beyond Adversarial Assessments' with Dr Rehana Parveen and Dr Shaimaa Abdelkarim (2023)

Durham University, Critical Legal Conference, 'Veiled Muslim Women's Spiritual Entanglement with Resistance and Criminal Law' (2023)

University of Exeter, Apocalyptic Times: Spirituality in Global Revolt, 'Legal Regulation of Spirituality in the International Human Rights Domain: Muslim Women and the Veil' (2023)

Ulster University, Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference, 'The Limitations of Autonomy in Understanding Muslim Women's Veiling and Religious Subjecthood: The Case of the Karnataka Hijab Row' (2023)

Melbourne Law School, 15th Annual Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory, '(Re)representations of Veiled Muslim Women in the French Legal Imaginary: The Case of S.A.S. v France' (2022)

Leicester Law School, Postgraduate Research Conference, 'How can intersectionality be used to protect Muslim women's spirituality in the workplace?' (2021)

Teaching Experience

I have experience teaching seminars and marking formative/summative assignments on the following modules:

Criminal Law: An overview of substantive criminal offences in England and Wales and the theory of Criminal Law. 

Decolonising Legal Concepts: A module which critically examines the role of empire and colonialism in the development of key legal concepts learnt across the LLB programme. Examples include: exploring decolonial approaches to international human rights law, deconstructing the reasonable person in Tort and Criminal Law, situating colonial notions of statehood within its historical contexts and examining the role of power in the rule of law.

Legal Solutions: A practice-focused module where students are offered a selection of real-life legal problems and are tasked with working in groups to develop and present a legal solution to the problem. 

I am keen to collaborate with other researchers working more broadly in the field of human rights, critical legal studies, law and religion, and equality and non-discrimination. Please get in touch if there are synergies between our research interests!