The current issue of Feminist Review is dedicated to the theme of religion and spirituality. In their opening editorial, Lyn Thomas and Avtar Brah reflect on the historic absence of religion as a topic of investigation in the journal’s pages:

The fact that in 2011 Feminist Review is publishing its first special issue on religion and spirituality in over 30 years of publishing feminist research is in itself a commentary on, and illustration of Niamh Reilly’s discussion in this issue of the strong historical relationship between many (and especially western) feminisms and secularism, as well as the new visibility of religion in the contemporary world. As she argues, on many grounds, but particularly in relation to the current dominant political construction of ‘a clash of civilizations’, and the role of gender in that construction, it is now vital to interrogate earlier feminist certainties about the alliance between feminism and secularism, without losing the capacity to critique religious practices that oppress women, or to challenge, as Pragna Patel does in this issue, the new emphasis on, and mobilization of faith in public discourse.

This special issue intervenes in these debates, and explores women’s experiences and narratives of religion and spirituality in different locations through new empirical work. Niamh Reilly’s article opens the issue with an overview of how secularization is being re-thought from the perspective of gender, and of feminist critiques of the Enlightenment’s rejection of religion, including Judith Butler’s and Joan Wallach Scott’s deconstruction of the mobilization of ‘feminist’ discourses in the representation of Muslims and Islam as traditional and regressive. Reilly problematizes the secular/religious binary and concurs with Norani Othman in arguing for ‘a dialogic public space that is defined above all by tolerance’, and that is far from anti-religious. Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters, writing from an activist perspective, points to the dangers of government interventions that have the effect of reducing the potential for secular spaces and redefining questions of gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity in terms of faith.

Read more about the special issue here.