Religion is very complex. In his TED talk “Is Religion Good or Bad? (This is a Trick Question),” Appiah explains how religion can’t be generalised for everyone. He says:
“Religion is not one thing; it’s a complex set of traditions, practices, and beliefs that vary across cultures and time.”
And to make things even more complicated, religion doesn’t exist in isolation. It intersects with gender, race, disability, socioeconomic status; you name it. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality is key here.
Reading Jawad’s article Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women makes it painfully clear how much harder it is for Muslim women to participate in sports compared to Muslim men, especially when they wear hijab or burka. The common sports events and dress styles do not accommodate Sharia Law requirements. Jawad explains: “To improve access to sport-related activities for Muslim girls and women would require sex-segregated spaces and accommodations for modest dress.”
This idea of visible Muslim women and how they’re perceived is also central in Jaclyn Rekis’s article Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Rekis highlights how women who practice veiling are often judged not for what they say or know, but for what they wear. Their dress becomes the thing people “read,” instead of listening to their actual voices or understanding their beliefs.
A couple of days ago, I attended the Fashion Show at Central Saint Martins, where forty students from the BA Fashion Programme presented their collections. The work was incredibly diverse; students from different cultural, religious, and social backgrounds showed pieces that celebrated their positionality, and the garments or wearable sculptures were shown on the bodies that were of a different race, gender, age, ability, and body size. It really reflected the student cohort at CSM Fashion today—a change from the old days when fashion was mostly white, skinny, and when European designers mined “exotic” cultures for inspiration with zero accountability. Note: there is still a lot of room for improvement.
The show was a success and got loads of good press, likes, and comments.
But… if you were there in person or looked closely, you’d have seen that the whole catwalk and audience were surrounded by a tall fence, covered in black foil. The barrier was completely shut during the show. It looked like we were sitting in a cage.
The cage wasn’t fashion or stage. It was security. It was meant to protect the show from the UAL SJP (UAL Students for Justice in Palestine) protest happening just outside. Last year, a similar protest took place during the same show and because it was happening on the bridges directly above the catwalk, it got a lot of media attention, pulling focus from the students’ work. So, this year, UAL put the show in a space where they could build a cage and “minimise disruption.”
But here’s the thing: we can celebrate diversity on the catwalk and studios all we want, but what does it mean when we literally cage the space to avoid protest? Who gets to be visible, and who gets blocked out? Who is caged in? Who’s allowed to speak, and who is silenced?
References:
Crenshaw, K. Intersectionality, 1990. Accessed on 27 of April 2025 at https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=1386601
Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (2014) YouTube video, added by TED [Online] available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY
Trinity University, (2016), Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. YouTube video, [Online] available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAOKTo_DOk
Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women, LSE.
Rekis, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account [online]. Hypatia, Cambridge University Press.
Dear Maja
I hope that you are well and appreciate your engagement with the formative submission and feedback. The format for this formative feedback is a 300-word maximum summary with 3 questions and or provocations supported by a resource for each item.
Please find below my feedback, which I hope that you find useful:
LO1: Critically evaluate institutional, national and global perspectives of equality and diversity in relation to your academic practice context. [Enquiry] – You have made an excellent start with evaluating institutional, national and global perspectives surrounding the issue of teaching fashion garment making and how teaching traditions can negatively affect equality and diversity in relation to contemporary pedagogical practices.
LO2: Manifest your understanding of practices of inequity, their impact, and the implications for your professional context. [Knowledge] – It is very clear that you are aware of the kind of knowledges that need to be manifested in order to make the changes that you want to make – see my feedback below on strengthening this.
LO3: Articulate the development of your positionality and identity through the lens of inclusive practices. [Communication] – Your positionality is clearly articulated but currently seems to focus only on the limitations / possible perceived negatives of this. This is understandable given that you are effectively describing a situation in which your own learning in this area was informed by and delimited by the same traditions that you are now trying to critique and change, but a more balanced and dare I say more positive articulation of your own identity and the values that are important to you would help to strengthen this aspect of the submission.
LO4: Enact a sustainable transformation that applies intersectional social justice within your practice. [Realisation] – The transformation that you describe so far sounds very potent, important and potentially very dynamic. A clearer action plan seems like the next stage in developing this. See feedback below for developing this.
Finally, please find some further questions as provocations to support the development of your intervention:
• In our tutorial we discussed the possibility of pursuing one of the changes you describe – for example, investigating garment making practices from one culture – in more detail, as an example of how you intend to manifest further knowledges. We also mentioned the possibility of you collaborating with other members of staff who have different knowledges. Could you begin this process of collaboration, for example by contacting staff members to see who would be willing to contribute?
• You have asked some engaging questions which show a desire to be productive with this task. The next stage seems to be to start responding to your own questions in order to develop an objective and actionable plan. For example, how exactly will you gain feedback on your intervention? What is your aim with this?
• We have discussed in tutorial what your position would be if you do decide to collaborate with other members of staff; for example, would you be project leader, or see yourself as co-producer? I do wonder if more certainty around this might be made possible by thinking through the feedback about how your own positionality only seems to be currently described in terms of its perceived limitations. Would a more positive self-appraisal of your identity and positionality help you to know what kind of role you would like to take in a collaborative situation and how much of the work you would like to outsource to others?
Regards and take care,
Linda
Thank you Linda!
Hey Maja
I left this comment and recommendation for Andrea’s post on race but I think it is very relevant here as well.
Do you know this graphic novel:
The Roles We Play – by Sabba Khan?
https://ethicalshop.org/the-roles-we-play-by-sabba-khan.html
I highly recommend it!
Sabba Khan is a British Pakistani woman, wearing a hijab, who studied BA Architecture at Central Saint Martins. The book is beautifully illustrated, and presents a recollection of her UAL experience, from from recruitment, through to Art Foundation and BA Architecture. She talks about what her head-scarf means and how much it is a barrier to integration and belonging … how and why she decides to stop wearing it.
Its a light, enjoyable but very insightful read for the summer. let me know what you think.
Thank you so much for the recommendation! I hadn’t heard of The Roles We Play, but it sounds incredibly powerful and timely. I’ll definitely check it out; in fact, I’ve found it in the library and made a reservation. I appreciate you sharing it here!
I’m so glad you mentioned Palestine, Maja! It feels a bit bonkers to talk about Race and Religion in terms of inclusivity while ignoring the larger social and political context that surround these issues. It feels very uncomfortable to bring it into the room but it also feels incredibly necessary.