Young Moroccan-Dutch women on hajj:claiming female space

This contribution discusses contestations of Saudi regulations concerning gender-segregation in certain places in Mecca by a group of young female hajj pilgrims from the Netherlands. It is demonstrated how a seemingly mundane matter as sanitary arrangements during the hajj can come to stand for the much larger issue of religious underpinning of gender equality; the women object to Saudi spatial arrangements not only as hindrances to their spiritual journey but also because they contradict the women’s views on gender equality. The authors demonstrate that feelings of being denied equal access to spiritual reward compared to male pilgrims played a crucial role in women’s responses to the restrictions they faced. They point out that the significance of women’s objections to restrictions on their freedom of movement reaches beyond religious interests. Linking the meanings of the hajj to the specific quotidian life-worlds of the women, the authors show that mobility is both an integral part of religious self-formation and informs how religious experiences are interpreted in relation to changing notions and assessments of places that people currently dwell in, inhabited in the past or long to be in the futur