Modest fashion: styling bodies, mediating faith

Modest dressing, both secular and religious, is a growing trend across the world, yet so far it has been given little serious attention and is rarely seen as fashion. "Modest Fashion" uniquely studies and addresses both the consumers and the producers of modest clothing. It examines the growing number of women who, for reasons of religion, faith or personal preference, decide to cover their bodies and dress in a way that satisfies their spiritual and stylistic requirements. These are women who are making fashionable the art of dressing modestly. Scholars and journalists, fashion designers and bloggers explore the emergence of a niche market for modest fashion and examine how this operates across and between faiths, and in relation to 'secular' dressers

Contextualizing Muslim Religious-Only Marriages

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This special issue focuses on Muslim religious-only marriages, which are marriages not recognized by state authorities but which at least one of the parties involved considers religiously valid. The practice of informal religious marriages has manifested in different parts of the world, and such marriages have become a topic of debate and intervention. In a tripartite dynamic, state authorities are involved in attempts to regulate or criminalize religious-only marriages, religious actors play a variety of roles, and the couples involved are left to navigate an increasingly controversial field. This special issue explores these issues in detail by investigating the interactions among state authorities, religious actors, and the couples themselves, and the motivations of each in their engagement with the others

Informal Muslim Marriages: Regulations and Contestations

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This special issue of the OJLR focuses on informal religious-only marriages occurring within Muslim communities in various jurisdictions with differing traditions of marriage and state regulation. It is widely accepted that religious marriages are entered by Muslims seeking to embark on a religiously lawful intimate relationship.1 In general, a religious-only marriage usually2 results in the parties not benefitting from state legal protections available to legally recognized spouses. This is an issue, to varying degrees, in all five of the jurisdictions considered in this issue, whether Muslim-minority (England and Wales, Italy, Malta, and Finland) or Muslim-majority (Tunisia)