Muslim women in the mirror - the stigma of Muslim women in Poland

Abstract

The main objective of the paper is to recreate a strategy to deal with the stigma in the daily lives of Muslim women who decided to move permanently to Poland, and Polish women who decided to convert to Islam. The subject of the research is Muslim women who live in Poland and participated in biographical interviews. According to the interviews, an image of Muslim women based on what they themselves think was reconstructed. Their methods of dealing with everyday situations, which these women face in the country in which they live, and confl icts with their families of origin, are presented. In Poland, as shown by opinion polls, people originating from Muslim countries are perceived negatively. As a result, immigrants from these regions who stay in our country are stigmatised as the other, diff erent, hostile and dangerous to the society. This is the result of commonly shared negative stereotypes. A very similar fate is experienced by Polish women who have converted to Islam. Living with stigma forces those stigmatised to adopt strategies that allow them to operate in a foreign country. This situation is particularly oppressive for Muslim women, who on the one hand must deal with the stigma they carry due to their otherness in the host country, while on the other hand must follow tradition and constraints imposed by the religion and culture in which they were raised. Muslim clothing allows fast and easy categorization. Women wearing hijabs are easily identifi ed, and because of it possible stereotypes and prejudices are activated.