As an educator, I hope to foster a learning environment where all students feel heard and valued. Reading Dr. Haifaa Jawad’s article Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women (2022) has prompted me to reflect critically on how my own teaching practice might inadvertently privilege certain identities while overlooking the compounded barriers faced by others. Jawad’s use of real-life examples, such as visibly Muslim women’s experiences of navigating sports participation, underscores the complex interplay of faith, gender, and societal perceptions—an intersectionality that Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory powerfully elucidates.
Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality helps me recognise that no identity marker—be it faith, gender, ethnicity, or class—exists in isolation. In Jawad’s analysis, Muslim women’s experiences in sports are not simply a matter of religious dress codes or modesty requirements. They are also shaped by broader socio-political dynamics, such as Islamophobia, gendered expectations, and racialised stereotypes. For example, Muslim women who wear the hijab are not only navigating practical challenges in sports attire but also facing scrutiny that combines assumptions about gender, faith, and cultural background. Their visibility renders them vulnerable to exclusion and discrimination.
In my own teaching context, I realise I have rarely worked with visibly Muslim women in my classrooms. Instead, I have often been struck by the number of Chinese international students who identify as Christian—a contrast to the Chinese government’s official stance on religion. This has revealed to me the complexity of how faith operates within individual lives, often resisting or negotiating with state and cultural expectations. While I may have unconsciously assumed that students from certain national or cultural backgrounds might not express strong religious affiliations, my experiences have shown otherwise. Faith, in these cases, operates as a quiet but significant presence in the classroom, one that is easy to overlook.
UAL’s own data on student demographics (2021/22) reveal that a significant proportion of students identify with specific faith traditions, including Islam and Christianity. My classroom experience reflects this diversity in unexpected ways. However, despite this, I have often failed to integrate these perspectives into the resources I use in teaching. Much of the art history and theory I draw on reflects a Eurocentric, secular narrative, privileging rupture and provocation over reverence or spirituality. This, I now see, may implicitly marginalise students for whom faith is central to their identity and creative practice.
Jawad’s call for inclusive policies resonates here. Just as she argues for sports to accommodate both faith and gendered needs, I recognise the importance of ensuring that course resources, scheduling, and expectations in the arts classroom acknowledge and respect students’ religious identities. This might involve creating space for students to discuss how faith informs their creative practice, offering flexible deadlines during religious observances, or incorporating resources from artists whose work engages with faith.
Ultimately, developing a deeper understanding of how faith intersects with other identities, as Crenshaw theorises, requires a shift in both perspective and practice. It challenges me to listen more attentively—to what is said and what remains unsaid—and to actively seek out ways to create a classroom where all aspects of students’ identities are not only acknowledged but celebrated.
References:
Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(1) Article 8. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 (accessed 26 March 2025).
Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women [blog] LSE. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/ (accessed 26 March 2025).
UAL (2022) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual report 2021/22. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/?a=389423 (accessed 26 March 2025).
Thanks for sharing such a rich and self-reflective piece Hannah, your honesty in recognising the Eurocentric, secular leanings of much art theory is so interesting. This opens up exciting possibilities, not only to decolonise and diversify the curriculum, but also to reframe what is considered “critical” or “conceptual” in creative practice. How might reverence, ritual, or spirituality be explored as valid and rich modes of making and thinking?
I’d be curious to hear more about how you imagine creating space for faith-informed creative practice, what that might look like in a group crit, for example, or how you’d approach selecting resources that engage with spirituality without reducing it to stereotypes or oversimplifying its meaning.. This feels like an important opportunity for collective exploration, and I wonder how students might respond to being invited into that dialogue?
Your post is a valuable reminder that inclusion is ongoing, relational work and that listening, as you so beautifully put it, includes being attuned to what remains unsaid. Love this!
This is a really considerate reflection, i think its important as you have done to reflect on own experience encountering faith in the classroom and considering how you can account for that when planning. I also have thought about being flexible with deadlines or schedules keeping religious holidays in mind but when put to my wider team it seems a lot of barriers are in place that don’t make it easy to implement changes. I am wondering how not to be discouraged when things like this happen.
Thanks for the interesting discussion that was inspired by Jawad’s reading. Maybe not a relevant observation: but when you discuss the Christian Chinese students, I was thinking about how time is governed by both nation and religion. For example, would these students celebrate Christmas? Would they also celebrate the lunar calendar? Perhaps these questions digress from your post, but I was inspired to ask more questions.