Feminisms in Post-Secular Times: Between Contestations and Transformations in Europe’s Post-Migrant Societies

In European post-migrant societies, religious feminists are either overlooked by secular feminists, or contested by authoritarian fundamentalist religious groups (in all religions). From the perspective of secular European societies, feminist movements and research, religion appeared as a residual category of gender-political struggles. This has changed fundamentally: The post-secular constellation is characterized by fierce attacks on gender rights by authoritarian, far-right and religious fundamentalist forces. The same far-right forces that contest gender and sexual rights as well as principles of plurality and equality, are instrumentalizing the notions of women’s emancipation and freedom against migrant religious groups in European societies. Meanwhile, secular feminists have realized that religion must be reconsidered as a politically and intersectionally relevant category of power inequality. In various publications, the culturalization and racialization of female religious subjects as well as the instrumentalization of feminism against ‘cultural others’ is problematized.

Against this backdrop, I argue that the secular framing of feminist theory does not, however, guarantee a power-free discussion of the relationship between religious and secular feminisms or between religion and feminism. A revision of these relationships must therefore also include the secularist epistemological standpoint of feminist theory and its epistemological consequences.

In my contribution, I will address this and discuss the question of the extent to which the secular epistemology of feminist thought needs to be revised and religion can be considered a feminist resource just like secular feminism. The aim is to show that feminist critique does not necessarily have to be secular and that the resistant, transformative potential of religious feminisms is underestimated. This will be discussed from a phenomenological perspective of knowledge production combined with an intersectional lens; both lead us to the discovery of the “Many Altars of Feminism”. This theoretical question becomes practical wherever there are opportunities for global cooperation for gender rights.