The Hands of God at Work: Islamic Gender Justice Through Translingual Praxis

Drawing from ethnographic data collected in Indonesia from 2009 to 2022, this book explores how an English-medium Indonesian PhD program in interreligious studies and three Muslim scholar-activists activate knowledge where languages intersect, a process mediated by material circumstances within Indonesia and voices past, present, and future that are both audience to and transcend the traditional geographic and discursive borders associated with them. As they negotiate translingually to make meaning at the borderlands where seemingly discrete discourses intersect, they challenge false divides between rationality and spirituality; between the mind and body; between female agency and Islam; and between language and nation-state. By exploring how these scholar-activists engage in translingual praxis to move knowledge from the discursive plane to the material plane and back again to effect social justice across multiple and intersecting languages, audiences and contexts, this book opens up new ways of understanding translingual negotiation where feminist scholarly-activism and Islamic belief intersect.