This lecture unpacks how the ethical is embodied through an examination of the lived experiences of female Muslim volunteers in Belgium. It sheds light on the ethical turn in the anthropology of Islam, exploring how volunteering enables the space and time for Muslim women to commit to both orthodox religious and civic social values. As volunteering and caring for people requires careful deliberation of their society and their position as Muslims women in that society, this research unpacks how multiple belongings of Muslim women in Belgium are negotiated, balanced, and influenced. This analysis reveals how the everyday is informed by different epistemological traditions; both the liberal and the Islamic, and how these traditions make the life-worlds of the women.

Merve Reyhan Kayikci is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the department of Semitic Studies of the University of Granada (Spain) and collaborator at the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre, KU Leuven (Belgium). She obtained her PhD from the IMMRC, KU Leuven. Her doctoral work investigated the intersections of volunteering and ethical self becoming among Belgian Muslim female volunteers. Kayikci is the author of Islamic Ethics and Female VolunteeringCommitting to Society, Committing to God (2020). She is the co-editor of Muslim Volunteering in the West: Between Islamic Ethos and Citizenship (2020) and European Muslims and New Media (2017).