How Progressive Muslims Create Inclusive Prayer Through Shared Bodily Experience

What is it about?

This ethnographic study examines how progressive Muslim congregations in North America create gender-inclusive prayer spaces through bodily practices. Based on four years of participant observation and interviews in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and other cities, the article explores congregations that welcome women, LGBTQIA+ Muslims, and people of diverse sectarian backgrounds in ways that differ markedly from most mosques. The central finding focuses on intercorporeality—how bodies learn from and with other bodies in shared space. Rather than simply performing pre-existing beliefs, congregants develop new religious understandings through physical experiences: standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people of all genders during prayer, hearing women's voices recite Qur'an aloud, sitting in circles instead of segregated rows, and praying behind female or nonbinary prayer leaders (imams). The article shows how proximity to bodies different from one's own—in gender expression, disability, sectarian practice, or dress—gradually transforms participants' interpretations of Islamic tradition. The study bridges anthropological theories of embodiment with feminist and queer scholarship, demonstrating that religious solidarity across difference emerges not from individual conviction but through repeated communal practice. It contributes detailed ethnographic specificity to conversations about gender justice in contemporary Islam while offering broader insights into how bodily practice shapes religious meaning-making.

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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article makes a crucial methodological intervention in how we understand religious change. Most studies of progressive or feminist Islam focus on individual scholars, activists, or textual reinterpretations. By centering ethnographic observation of communal ritual, this work demonstrates that alternative religious understandings develop through intercorporeal practice—the physical experience of praying alongside diverse bodies—rather than through individual belief alone. The research contributes important empirical grounding to theoretical conversations about performativity in religious contexts, showing how repeated bodily practices don't just express existing commitments but actively create new religious subjectivities and solidarities. It extends anthropological studies of embodiment and religious learning by examining not just individual bodies but the intercorporeal relationships through which people unlearn and relearn religious practice. For contemporary conversations about religious inclusion, the article offers evidence that meaningful transformation requires more than doctrinal arguments for equality—it demands creating physical spaces where diverse bodies can experience solidarity through shared ritual. This finding has relevance beyond Muslim contexts for any religious community grappling with questions of gender justice, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and embodied difference. The work also challenges simplistic narratives that position progressive Muslims as individualistic or as rejecting tradition wholesale, instead revealing how they carefully rework recognizably Islamic practices to create queer/ed gatherings that remain oriented toward shared sacred reference points like Mecca while generating new interpretive possibilities.

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