Maternal Identity and Muslim Ethics: South African Women’s Experiences

Abstract

Muslim women are often caught between idealized images of motherhood within Islamic traditions and the challenges of their lived experiences, as they navigate their subjective identities as Muslim mothers in contemporary South African society. We discuss mothering experiences as an epistemological site for the construction of complex Muslim maternal subjectivities. In part, these subjectivities demonstrate innovative responsiveness to the complexity of mothering amid changing social norms, through the crafting of maternal value frameworks that reflect both the particularities of contemporary social life as well as the quest for a more universal Islamic moral perspective. We argue that Muslim women’s dynamic constructions of their maternal subjectivities represent a form of lived, contemporary Islamic ethics.