Rebuilding Somalia through Islam and trading in Dubai. Muslim women's strategies and identities in the diaspora.

As a consequence of the ongoing civil war in Somalia, there seems to be an increasing number of women travelling to the Gulf. Through trading in places like Dubai they provide for their relatives at home, and many seem to have taken the place of men as th e breadwinners of the family. Studies of Somali women in the west suggests that the civil war has made women emphasize their identity based on Islam, rather than on clan or ethnicity, and that the language of Islam is used by the women in order to redefin e their social roles. These researchers have been impressed by the strength of Somali women in diasporic circumstances. Studies of women in Somalia, however, often portray women as passive victims, which has also been common in portrayals of Muslim women generally. My guess is that they have strength not in spite of their tradition and community bonds and bounds, but rather as a result of their specific history and struggles to cross and stretch the bounds of their tradition. My suggestion for this study is to try to understand the role of Islam and of Somali culture in the lives of female traders. I am faced with a great challenge as the way history of Somali women has been written demands that before leaping to new answers we need to ask many new questi ons of the existing evidence. Yet another challenge is presented in the fact that the history of Africans' trade in, and migration to, the Arab world has only begun to be explored systematically. I hope that my study can help to "open the field" for furth er studies in the area, and that this study can add to debates on gender, religion and negotiation of identities in diasporic circumstances. Knowledge of Muslim women and their cultures is today, more than ever, urgently needed, as misconceptions are so common. Additionally, I hope that knowledge of the situation in the Horn of Africa will help aid-workers in the area and encourage further involvement.