Muslim Women Negotiating Collective Stigmatization: ‘We’re Just Normal People’

In the post 9/11 and 7/7 era how does collective stigmatization impact on Muslim women in Britain? Drawing on interviews with women from diverse Muslim backgrounds, this article explores how they experience and seek to resist anti-Islamic stigma. Using a Goffmanian framework, I examine how women resist stigmatization by asserting their moral integrity and laying claim to ‘the normal’. Particular attention is paid to how normality is constructed through the presentation and dressing of the self in everyday encounters. While on the surface the women embrace a shared sense of being ‘just normal’, further analysis reveals very different interpretations of what that might mean. Thus, the article additionally questions what is meant by being a ‘normal’ Muslim woman in multicultural Britain and examines the extent to which this can ever be attained.