Punching Back

<p> In the Netherlands girls and young women are increasingly active in women-only kickboxing. The general assumption in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly is that women's sport is a form of secular feminist empowerment. Muslim women's participation would then exemplify the incongruence of Islam with the modern secular nation-state. <em>Punching Back</em> provides a detailed ethnographic study that contests this view by showing that young Muslim women who kickbox establish agentive selves by playing with gender norms challenging expectations and living out their religious subjectivities.</p>