Authoring a Muslim Feminist “Self” Through Travel Writing: Reclaiming Agency Through Islam

This article aims to analyze nineteenth and twentieth-century travel writing by a Muslim woman writer, Nur Begum, who embarked on a 3-month journey to perform Hajj (pilgrimage). We aim to unravel her deliberate choice of poetic form as travel writing, which we argue consciously manifests her resistance against the prevailing patriarchal norms set by the Muslim culture. The study draws on Bakhtin’s dialogic framework of the human “self” as an agent engaged in constant negotiation of meanings as he emphasizes the link between human struggle for voice and their activity and growth. Within this theoretical framework, we decipher how Nur Begum authors her “feminist self” in a struggle to articulate her voice against patriarchy that denies her individuality. Moreover, we use insights from Muslim feminist scholarship (e.g. post-patriarchal reading of Islam and feminist theology) to explain how selected verses from Nur Begum’s travel writing deconstruct the myths emerging from the patriarchal interpretation of Islam and social practices in Muslim societies.