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

This project interrogates overlooked relationships between law and Muslim women's spiritual empowerment. Spiritual empowerment refers to the pursuit of taqwa; the Islamic principle of piety or God consciousness. This thesis interrogates barriers that prevent women from gaining taqwa through two forms of worship: modest dress and daily prayers in congregation. Firstly, states have enacted bans on modes of Islamic dress including the hijab (head covering) and niqab (face veil). Secondly, in the UK mosques often deny prayer space to women. Modern understandings of the right to non-discrimination in religious freedom do not engage adequately with the role of these forms of worship as women's conduits to spiritual empowerment. In addition they do not recognise that no equivalent barriers arise for men.

Therefore law uncritically reproduces gender inequality in public and private spaces. Simultaneously, law often frames both questions in terms of women's existence in space, obscuring the deeper harm done to their personal relationship with God; a crucial part of many Muslim women's identity (Rahmath et al
2016).

This project will advance an original concept of spiritual equality, which seeks to redress the gender imbalances perpetuated by existing law. It will make the case for attention to spirituality as a crucial par of Muslim women's holistic empowerment. It will draw on intersectionality, critical race feminism, and
equality law theory to offer new insights into law's engagement with Muslim women, and legal equalities projects more broadly.