Unveiling 'Spiritual Equality': A Case Study of Muslim Women's Veiling

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. 'Religion' and 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 the personal, informal, religious subjectivities of Muslim women. 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.