Self-Rooted Belonging and “Pleasing Dislocations”

Abstract This paper examines the interplay of religion, nationalism, and Muslim womanhood in the work of Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander. Specifically, I examine how Sikander’s work grapples with the problem of home and belonging for South Asian Muslim women in the face of religious, cultural, and nationalist discourses. These discourses characterize women as perpetual outsiders to the nation and as potential threats to the religion, while also objectifying women as symbols of purity whose bodies and sexuality must be strictly policed. For Muslim women in diaspora, the rhetoric and policies of the War on Terror compound this sense of unbelonging by characterizing Muslim women as potential threats to homeland security and as “the enemy within” due to their actual or perceived religious identity.