Punching Back

Download or read book Punching Back written by Jasmijn Rana and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2022-11-11 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Netherlands, girls and young women are increasingly active in women-only kickboxing. The general assumption, in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly, is that women’s sport is a form of secular, feminist empowerment. Muslim women’s participation would then exemplify the incongruence of Islam with the modern, secular nation-state. Punching Back provides a detailed ethnographic study that contests this view by showing that young Muslim women who kickbox establish agentive selves by playing with gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.