Like many writers, Nadia Jamal’s curiosity was sparked by an encounter – a conversation with a young Iraqi-Australian woman on the heated topic of segregation.
In her family, the young woman explained, male and female visitors would visit their home through separate doors. Men would walk through a side entrance and use a back door and women would enter through the front.
Ms Jamal was astounded by the admission. As a daughter of Muslim Lebanese migrants, the practice was unfamiliar to her outside of a mosque. Ms Jamal had also written a passionate opinion piece on Muslim groups promoting segregated social events and had strong views on the practice.
This book was really about me trying to understand where these women were coming from, because sometimes, I was also trying to make sense of the issues myself, in terms of what it meant for my life.
“It's something that's quite foreign to me in terms of how I've grown up as a Muslim,” Ms Jamal said.
“I was just fascinated by it...because she was Muslim too and had grown up in Australia like me and they had a completely different set up to how men and women are treated in the home from a religious perspective.”
It was a conversation that led to a book and a desire to explore a community close to home – the world of Muslim women. In ‘Headstrong daughters’ the former Sydney Morning Herald journalist who now works as a financial analyst, explores the lives of young Muslim women in Australia of various religious hues, navigating tradition and modernity in the west – from dealing with racism and relationships to religious rules on adoption, inheritance and divorce within the messy reality of modern life.
The result is a complex and nuanced mosaic of a community often treated with screeching headlines and sound-bites. Ms Jamal was conscious of her own positioning as a daughter of Lebanese-Muslim migrants and the need to be both sensitive, but also probing.
“I think the women were more open to someone like me telling their stories because I had already written about some of the issues in the past and of course, I share their religious background so I could already relate to what they were saying on many levels,” she said.
“This book was really about me trying to understand where these women were coming from, because sometimes, I was also trying to make sense of the issues myself, in terms of what it meant for my life."
Some of this nuance lay in the way women subvert and evolve patriarchal modes within communities, in ways that make sense for their hybrid lives.
For the Iraqi-Australian woman, Ms Jamal was surprised to learn how much the young woman deeply valued the solidarity and deep connections forged with other women in the female-only living rooms of her childhood.
While the young woman no longer practices segregation in her own home, she hosts her mother in her mixed lounge. Her way of life is novel for her traditional Iraqi first-generation migrant mother unused to being exposed to men outside her family network.
But I did want to hear the truth - the good, bad and ugly - and I hope readers will see that the portrayal is very real and nuanced.
Much of her reporting required Ms Jamal to suspend the snap judgments of a reporter and tune into the long-distance endurance mode of a patient researcher.
The stakes were heightened with the sensitive topics Ms Jamal tackles.
One of these is inheritance. Ms Jamal interviews Ayesha- a single, childless woman who feels conflicted in questioning the orthodox Islamic ruling that stipulates she will receive half the inheritance as her brother, but ultimately chooses to respect the religious wishes of her family.
The book explores how relevant the law is today in modern Australia in an era of skyrocketing property prices and financially independent professional Muslim women who stand to lose out in inheriting the property-based wealth of their migrant parents.
“I wanted to explore the issue in a deeper way, especially since in a country like Australia; women go to university and become professionals who are financially independent. What does it mean for these women? Women like me?” Ms Jamal says.
The book also explores discrimination outside the community. Mehal who wears a headscarf, describes being spat at in Sydney’s central tunnel and chillingly accosted at a bank. “How would you like it if I chopped your head off?” an elder Anglo-Australian woman murmurs behind her at the ATM.
Mehal now moves through public places vigilantly, assessing her security and potential threats constantly, including scanning the safest wall to lean against at train stations. She talks of the added fatigue of explaining and filtering her life through the eyes of white Australia.
Ms Jamal notes ‘Muslim fatigue’ is echoed in communities who are wary of media saturation coverage of their communities.
“Some topics are quite sensitive and most of the women in my book wanted to maintain anonymity. I think there is a general concern for these women that whenever anyone talks about Muslim issues in the mainstream, controversy tends to follow. I just assured them that I would handle their stories with respect and honesty and not beat anything up. But I did want to hear the truth - the good, bad and ugly - and I hope readers will see that the portrayal is very real and nuanced,” she said.
Nadia Jamal is a former senior journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and co-author of the award- winning Glory Garage: Growing up Lebanese Muslim in Australia. She has become a lawyer and works as a financial crime analyst.
Her book 'Headstrong Daughters' is published by Allen and Unwin RRP: $29.99.
