Undermining the “Matrix of Domination”: Religion, Race and Gender and the Intersectionality Politics of Aliaa Sharrief’s “Hijabi” Hip-hop and Modest Fashion

Kimberle Crenshaw, a Black legal scholar, upon introducing the term “intersectionality” (1989) sought to undermine the lack of productivity of “monistic definitions of discrimination” which are based upon “mutually exclusive categories” (Carastathis 3). She used the term intersectionality as an analytical tool to prove how Black women were in a disadvantaged position in the court system in the US as a result of the lack of attention to the intersecting oppressive factors of race, gender and class. In her essay “Mapping the Margins,” Crenshaw designates three major aspects of intersectionality: structural, representational, and political (1245). Moreover, she clarifies that, as a paradigm, intersectionality uncovers how power works pervasively to discriminate against women. In 1986, Patricia Collins also plays a role in developing the discourse of intersectionality (though not directly using the term yet) by foregrounding the need to explore how systems of oppression are interlinked (Learning from the outsider 21). Moreover, Collins goes on in (2000) to refer to this interlinked system of oppression as a “matrix of domination” showing how intersecting oppressions are organized “(both particular and structural, disciplinary, hegemonic)” (“Intersectionality” 699). Recently she attempted to distinguish between the term “interlocking oppressions” so popular in the eighties and intersectionality in that while “interlocking oppressions” works at the macro-level of policy, intersectionality functions at the micro-level of individuals and communities; however, both together formulate oppression (Symposium 495). Despite all the research work that has been done from the eighties till now “intersectionality” has yet to develop as a critical social theory and is hence still a discourse of social change which brings together the individual and the state, the intellect and practice (“Intersectionality” 723). One of the components of domination which has not received due attention in research on intersectionality is religion (“Intersectionality” 706).  My research positions itself as an attempt at studying this gap through tracing the intersectionality of religion, race and gender in the lived artistic religious practices of Black, Muslim American women’s lives. Aliaa Sharrief, hijabi Hip- hopper and Modest Muslim fashionista represents an interesting example of how these components intersect and are resisted.