Qissati. Counterstories of Muslim Women School Administrators in Schools

This composite counter-stories study seeks to understand and illuminate the embodied experiences of Muslim women school leaders in Ontario public schools. Critical analysis of individual and group interviews with seven Muslim women public school administrators (principals and vice principals), autobiographical writing/reflection, and scholarship on racialized women’s school leadership shed light on: a) the systemic erasure of Muslim women leadership through ‘Invisibilizing’ and ‘Hypervisibilizing’ experiences, b) the experiences of Muslim women’s presence and actions as threatening to the cultural and institution reality of public schools and, c) the institutional attempts at containment of these leaders through controlling expectations and tools for reprisal should expectations be transgressed. Theories of Islamophobia and Critical Race/Feminism Theory are shown to arise out of the experiences of women as examined in the data. These theories inform the development of the composite counter-stories depicting the school lives of Muslim woman leaders. The composite characters allow for an embodied expression of the complexities of ‘being’ Muslim and woman in public institutions to resist further re-inscription into dominant narratives of their lives. These stories also disrupt majoritarian narratives about inclusive schools and Muslim women. The composite counter-stories provide a robust portrait of the impact of leading public-school spaces as a Muslim woman. Compiling the data through a composite depiction of individual experience, I provide new counterstories of gendered Islamophobia in school leadership and Islamophobia in schools more widely.