J Relig Health

DOI 10.1007/s10943-015-0058-x

ORIGINAL PAPER

Experiencing Loss: A Muslim Widow’s Bereavement

Narrative

Maria Kristiansen1,2 • Tarek Younis3 • Amani Hassani4 •

Aziz Sheikh5,6

 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Abstract In this article, we explore how Islam, minority status and refugee experiences
intersect in shaping meaning-making processes following bereavement. We do this through
a phenomenological analysis of a biographical account of personal loss told by Aisha, a
Muslim Palestinian refugee living in Denmark, who narrates her experience of losing her
husband to lung cancer. By drawing on a religious framework, Aisha creates meaning from
her loss, which enables her to incorporate this loss into her life history and sustain agency.
Her narrative invites wider audiences to witness her tale of overcoming loss, thus high-
lighting the complex way in which religious beliefs, minority status and migration history
come together in shaping meaning-making processes, and the importance of reciprocity in
narrative studies.

Keywords Religion
Islam
Grief
Bereavement
Narratives

& Maria Kristiansen

makk@sund.ku.dk
1
Department of Health Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University,
P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar
2
Danish Research Centre for Migration, Ethnicity, and Health, and Center for Healthy Aging,
Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
3
Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada
4
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
5
Centre for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
6
Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard
Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

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Death, the Human Condition and the Meaning of Loss

Death has long been understood as an event with social ramifications. Although be-
reavement studies often highlight differences between cultures, religions and societies, the
death of a loved one will often impact one’s narrative and call for a reappraisal of life’s
meaning (Frank 2004). Meaning-making processes may emerge through storytelling as a
practice that facilitates healing. Subjectivity is sustained through narratives as ‘‘recounting
one’s experiences in the presence of others’’ becomes ‘‘a way of reimagining one’s si-
tuation and regaining mastery over it’’ (Jackson 1998 p. 23). From this perspective, a sense
of meaning and agency must be redeemed when confronting death (Jackson 1998;
Wortmann and Park 2008). Storytelling redraws prospective maps as the bereaved attempt
to reconstruct a sense of order from the discontinuity caused by death (Frank 1995). Stories
are simultaneously empowering and fragile, as they are shaped by inter-subjective en-
counters, situated in particular situations and framed by the master narratives of their time
(Becker 1999; Frank 1995; Kleinman 1988). The bereaved engages in the processes of self-
understanding that reaffirms ‘‘one’s sense of who one is, of one’s social location, and how
(given the first two) one is prepared to act’’ through narratives situated in specific times,
spaces and web of relationships (Brubaker and Cooper 2000 p. 17).
Religious beliefs may shape meaning-making processes following bereavement as in-
dividuals create meaning from their loss by drawing upon cultural resources that enable
them to rebuild their lives (Brison and Leavitt 1995). Religious beliefs and practices may
simultaneously provide ways of making sense of the human condition, a set of rituals and a
vocabulary for engaging with the divine. In addition, these practices are nested in com-
munities which join in the expression of these shared beliefs.
Studies conducted in Muslim majority societies illustrate how religious beliefs often
shape bereavement processes by rationalizing death within a transcendental framework.
There, traditions value acceptance and facilitate ways of continuing bonds with the de-
ceased, e.g., through prayer, charity and graves visitations (Klass and Goss 2003; Suhail
et al. 2011). Although religion often lays the foundation for (re)making meaning and
establishing order among the bereaved, Islamic rituals are enacted differently as a function
of divergent societal contexts. This interaction of religious beliefs and practices with
cultural manifestations of attachment underlines the complex relationships between reli-
gion, culture and wider social forces (Rubin and Yasien-Esmael 2004; Wikan 1988). We
therefore need to appreciate how past experiences, as well as current cultural and social
contexts, influence personal narratives of loss in order to understand the role of religion
among the bereaved (Kleinman et al. 1994; Scheper-Hughes 1993).
With the notable exception of Firth’s (1997) study, which explores beliefs and practices
related to death and bereavement among British Hindus, very little research has been
conducted with religious minorities in Western contexts. Instead, bereavement studies are
often situated in communities characterized by shared circumstances such as poverty and
high mortality (e.g., Scheper-Hughes 1993), or shared religion as shown in studies of
bereavement in Muslim majority societies by Klass and Goss (2003) and Suhail et al.
(2011). Thus, little is known with regard to processes of meaning-making following the
death of a loved one among religious minorities in Western societies. Within this particular
sociocultural context, religious beliefs, migration history and minority status may intersect,
shaping the experience of loss as it materializes in the narrative constructed by the
bereaved.

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In this article, we contribute to this literature by depicting Aisha’s narrative of losing her
husband to cancer. By taking a phenomenological approach which emphasizes the sub-
jective meaning-making process of Aisha, we explore how bereavement is simultaneously
shaped by religious identification, minority status and refugee experiences. Through her
narrative, Aisha invites both immediate and more distant audiences to witness her journey
of facing and overcoming loss by identifying with and situating her story within a larger
Islamic grand narrative. The narrative thus illuminates how her religious beliefs intersect
with her trajectory of being a Palestinian refugee woman, her personal history of over-
coming loss and her minority status in a Western society. We seek to highlight the im-
portance of contextualizing bereavement narratives in studies of religion, grief and death,
and we point to the need for more insight into these complex processes among ethnic and
religious minorities.
We will focus our attention on Aisha’s story of death and bereavement in the following
section. As discussed in more detail below, Aisha’s bereavement narrative was shaped by
her understanding of death and belief in the after-life, which carries the promise that
separation is temporary. Indeed, Aisha highlights how her Islamic beliefs helped her
ascribe meaning to all of her losses: the loss of her homeland; her marginal position as a
Palestinian refugee in Denmark; her disabled child; and her husband’s death. Aisha’s story
of overcoming the loss of her husband was thus an occasion to reflect on her social and
spiritual relationships, reaffirm her core values and readjust to a new life in the aftermath.
Speaking from a minority, gendered position, her story furthermore negotiates and resists
socially constructed categories—or what others have coined ‘‘deficiency discourses’’ (De
Souza 2004)—often applied to Muslim immigrant women. By inviting immediate and
wider audiences to witness her tale of overcoming loss and by centering this on Islamic
beliefs and practices, she invites us to acknowledge the agency and resources of otherwise
silenced women in Western societies. She does so while still illuminating the complex
process of re-establishing meaning and agency in response to bereavement. This process is
situated in her biography and shaped most prominently by her religious beliefs, her con-
nectedness to collective identities shared by the Palestinian diaspora and her minority
position in her current social context.

Sharing, Listening and Interviewing

This article is based on unplanned, spontaneous fieldwork, building on the researcher’s

shifting positions in the field, and shaped by shared experiences between the first author
(MK) and the interlocutor, Aisha. The relationship between Aisha and MK was established
over 12 years prior to the interview in a very different setting. In many ways, it was
founded on the experience of death, the imperative of overcoming loss and a religious self-
understanding in the construction of meaning. Having met Aisha shortly after the death of
MK’s disabled son 12 years ago, Aisha became a witness to MK’s search for meaning; she
was an invaluable listener to an unfolding bereavement narrative focused on creating
meaning with the illness and subsequent death of a child, and providing guidance as to how
motherhood continues despite the loss.
Incidentally, Aisha is also the mother of a disabled child. The mutual experience of
having (had) a disabled child was central to the relationship between Aisha and MK, as it
gave rise to common experiences and discussions, supposedly poorly understood by out-
siders. We discussed the experiences of stigma attributed to disabled children, the lack of

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understanding concerning the emotional attachment of parents toward these children, and
the role of Islam in dealing with the process. Furthermore, we related to shared under-
standings of disability and illness framed within a Muslim framework. This framework
simultaneously constituted a source of meaning and comfort by articulating illness as
predetermined by God, and it validated emotions by viewing disabled children as trusts
from God to be cherished. Over a decade later, MK and Aisha meet again; this time while
MK was doing a qualitative study on health behavior among ethnic minority women in
Copenhagen, Denmark, during the autumn of 2011. The interview intended to focus on
perceptions of mammography screening among elderly migrant women. Aisha, now in her
late 50 s, agreed to participate in this study, and she was interviewed according to the
interview guide. The interview was conducted in English at Aisha’s request, in her living
room. Although the interview focused on mammography screening, death and bereavement
resurfaced in our discussion once again; this time, however, the roles had been reversed.
Three years prior to the interview, Aisha’s husband died after a short, intensive course of
illness (lung cancer), and the interview thus became an opportunity to reverse the rela-
tionship between storyteller and interlocutor that was established over 10 years previously.
It became an opportunity for two people to once again share a lived experience of loss
constructing meaning within the Islamic grand narrative. The theological framing of
narratives was prominent in both instances, and the narratives arising from these experi-
ences furthermore appeared to reinforce one another. Overall, the losses and grief sparked
by first disability and later bereavement were framed as tests of patience from Allah, thus
beyond the realm of human agency and associated guilt. In this manner, narratives of
disability and narratives of grief intersected and were reinforced through the relationship
framing the interview situation.

Aisha’s Story

Loss is not new to Aisha. As a political refugee from Palestine, she forsook her ‘‘home-
land,’’ family proximity, and a shared community based on history, language and culture in
the process of migration. Aisha shares this story of loss with other refugee women who
frequently meet at a mosque with strong ties to Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora. Her
sense of belonging to the distinctive group of displaced, aging, Palestinian women was
based on a collective identity tied to connectedness to a lost homeland, and a sense of
solidarity strengthened by life in exile. Furthermore, Aisha holds a prominent position in
the mosque. She is well respected in the Muslim community as the wife of the mosque’s
founder and Imam, a long-term resident in Denmark, and as a function of her Islamic
education and her counseling practices within the female community in the mosque. She
teaches weekly Islamic classes and promotes ritual practices such as prayer, charity giving
and religious festivities. As a result, she is a powerful source of psychosocial support and
religious guidance for women in the mosque, many of whom are Palestinian immigrants. In
this small but intimate circle of elderly refugee women, identification and connectedness
are maintained through storytelling situated in time and space. Stories of displacement
span across time and tie together the past, present and future. This is achieved through tales
of maintaining ties—e.g., through remittances and charity work—with Palestine and by
cultivating a sense of ‘‘shared ethnic identification’’ among children growing up in exile.
These stories serve dual purposes: They aid these elderly women in making sense of forced
migration, lost land and lost dignity, and they enable them to identify with a wider

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Palestinian community that builds on a common past and a shared hope for a future return
to their ancestral homeland. The cultural value placed on storytelling among these women
and their shared Muslim faith is reflected in Aisha’s story. Storytelling comes easy to her in
response to loss, which helped her come to terms with her forced migration, the illness of
her disabled daughter and the loss of her husband. For her, Allah is the ultimate cause of all
losses as forced migration, illness and death all occur by His decree which serve to test the
believers. However, He is also a major source of comfort for those who grieve and
maintain hope of His forgiveness and reward in the after-life:
In our country, we had our life, I had the best house, I had good furniture, I had
everything, and I lost everything […] Every time as Muslims, when we lose
something, in some way we [find a] solution for every problem. When you lose
something, you [can say] this dua [supplication]: may Allah give me reward of what
I have lost and give me better. […] SubhanAllah [glory be to God], I ask Allah that
He gives me reward. So Allah, when you just go back to Him, He will always support
you.
This quote illustrates how loss has been a recurrent theme in Aisha’s life; as a migrant,
she faced a dramatic change in lifestyle, going from ‘‘riches to rags.’’ More importantly,
her story is socioculturally situated as she refers to Islam as a grand narrative in which her
loss was situated. Thus, it becomes apparent how her self-understanding builds upon past
experiences of loss and crisis framed within a religious framework, helping her find
meaning and comfort by engaging with God through prayers. Furthermore, religious be-
liefs and practices helped Aisha maintain agency in response to the complex situation that
caused her family to seek refuge in Denmark more than 20 years ago. Faced with her
husband’s illness many years later, the meaning underlying the narrative of ‘‘leaving it up
to Allah’’ enabled her to deal with her loss post-migration and ultimately uphold a sense of
agency amidst these disempowering circumstances. Unemployed, living in a neighborhood
with many migrants, and possessing limited Danish proficiency, Aisha mostly interacts
with the wider society through encounters with healthcare staff, social services and
teachers at her children’s schools. Her narrative focused on relinquishing the uncontrol-
lable and constructing meaning in the loss itself. This underlines how lived experiences are
transformed—and self-understandings are constructed—through the stories we tell (Frank
1995; Jackson 2002; Taylor 2006).

A Different Story About Islam

We understand what is at stake for the bereaved by exploring the ways their narratives
reflect and constitute embodied experience, and how they are shaped by relationships,
situations and local contexts (Lutz 1992). Stories are framed by social and cultural contexts
which constrain and shape the unfolding narrative and our interpretation of it. They emerge
from particular interactions and serve to both order the world and situate the individual in
the larger narratives of self and other. Storytelling may also represent an opportunity to
speak up against prevailing discourses or to present a counter-narrative to the stories most
often told, in particular in situations of categorizations and devaluation by powerful, au-
thoritative institutions (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Hurwitz et al. 2004). For Aisha, prayer
and fasting play a central role in her life and thus, as a Muslim woman wearing the hijab
(headscarf), she strongly identifies with a religious minority group that is increasingly

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spoken of adversely in public discourses in Denmark as in other Western societies. Muslim

migrant women are often portrayed as oppressed by patriarchal cultures, lacking in agency
and the resources considered important according to prevailing societal discourses such as
formal education, language capabilities and workability (De Souza 2004; Dossa 2002). It is
rare for these women to find opportunities to relate their experiences; however, Aisha used
the interview to engage with the wider social and political landscapes encapsulating her
minority experience (Dossa 1999). Shifting the content of the interview, and drawing upon
the religious identification she shares with the interviewer, Aisha effectively establishes a
position from where to speak thereby reimagining and negotiating her past and current life
circumstances and emphasizing the role of her faith to a wider non-Muslim audience (De
Souza 2004). As such, a wider audience of non-Muslim listeners was present right from the
beginning of Aisha’s story, as she through her story attempted to counteract the prevailing
negative discourse on Islam in the West. Being a teacher in the mosque and an adviser to
many Muslims, she is recognized as a resourceful woman within her immediate social
world. However, in relation to the ‘‘mainstream society’’ and according to many markers of
social integration, her resources are less appreciated as she is unable to speak and write
Danish and thus engage directly with the more powerful voices on Islam in Denmark, often
represented by politicians and amplified via the media. Thus, via the interview, she
transformed the death of her husband and her process of healing into a counter-narrative,
inviting us to witness another story about Islam that draws upon her experiences as a
woman, a minority and a refugee. She explicitly mentioned her wish to portray a Muslim’s
perspective on the role of her faith in dealing with loss. Evidently, Aisha and her husband
found it important to share another perspective of Islam with the wider society, e.g., when
Aisha narrates how her husband insisted on cleaning his room at the hospital ward despite
objections from hospital staff or how he helped a fellow patient who had fallen and could
not get up. The need for constructing a counter-narrative is also reflected in her behavior
following his death:
After one week I made a card for the nurses. We received many flowers from non-
Muslims for him […] so I took some of these and we wrote in Danish that ‘I cannot
thank you more than to invite you to think about Islam, because this is the way to
make people happy in this life and the next’. My son made it and I let my daughter
give it to them. I was waiting for her in the car.
The nurses and doctors, exposed primarily to societal discourses of the veiled Muslim
‘‘other,’’ were in this way included as audiences to a different story of Islam in general and
Muslim men in particular. In particular, this story invoked a more humane understanding
and, in her words, made them ‘‘find out that this man is so easy and nice and could never do
anything to cause [harm].’’ In this manner, Aisha’s bereavement narrative is agentive. It
highlights the negotiated, situated and interpretive quality of social identities as the story is
told in the unfolding course of life. Thus, Aisha demands the audience to appraise the
transformative role of faith that she construes as central to her self-understanding. In a way,
she insisted on having her story told, words came easily and her narrative seemed to be part
of a therapeutic process of creating meaning with her loss (Frank 1995; Jackson 2002). The
storyteller speaks through interruptions caused by death, narrating a story of how ‘‘one
rises to the occasion’’ and reclaims meaning, agency and a sense of self (Frank 1995;
Jackson 1998). Cultural resources among migrant Muslim women in Western societies are
often unnoticed or devaluated by society (De Souza 2004; Dossa 2002). By narrating her
story and engaging with the hospital staff, Aisha establishes her presence and challenges
the social construction of veiled Muslim women as inferior, silenced others. Reclaiming

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agency by sharing life stories and foregrounding roles and values tied to motherhood, faith
and ethnicity, for example, may serve as an attempt to change the life conditions of
minority women by calling others to witness both her suffering and her cultural resources
and resiliency (Dossa 2002; 2006). Situating these narratives of self-representation within
the particular societal and political circumstances in contemporary Western societies thus
enables identification of shared aspirations across migrant women’s individual storytelling.
In essence, ‘‘women tap into cultural resources and social relationships to integrate, ne-
gotiate and resist systems of domination’’ (Dossa 1999 p. 246).

The Process of Creating Meaning in Bereavement

Turning the loss of a loved one into a verbal story is not a universal way of structuring and
managing experiences. Aisha’s story takes place at a distance in an affirming environment
which enables her to reflect on her lived experiences and construct a coherent story of
remaking life in the face of adversity (Frank 1995). Essentially, she narrates a version of
reality as a meaningful world, a space of possibilities for transformation, recovery and
hope for reunion with the person she loves in the Hereafter.
Through Aisha’s storytelling, we learn how this process of creating meaning is de-
veloped and we see moments of her story which has special importance. The juncture in
the envisioned life caused by her husbands’ diagnosis of lung cancer is especially
significant:
When they told [my husband]: you have cancer. It was a shock for me. […] Then
when the doctor left, I cried, [and] I told my husband ‘Please don’t leave this life
before me, pray for me that Allah will be with me, send me to Allah, send me to
Allah, don’t go without sending me to Allah’. This is what happened, and I’m sure
that he made dua for me because I feel, Alhamdulillah [praise be to God], Allah is
really taking care of me every day.
Aisha, overcome by the reality that her husband will soon pass away, instantly sought
meaning and subsequently asked her husband to pray for her well-being and safety. At this
point of time, she highlights the immense need for creating meaning from her loss. Aisha’s
request to her husband, and its subsequent resolution, illuminates the complex process of
making meaning from illness, suffering and ultimately death itself. Here, ritual prayers
invoking the mercy and grace of God, and rekindled human emotions came together. It
emerged in her description of how the period prior to and during the moment of death was
simultaneously intense, filled with moments of closeness and expressions of emotions, and
disempowering, calling for intensified prayers for divine intervention in the face of rapidly
deteriorating health.
For Aisha, as for many Muslim women, kinship and social relationships are important to
their sense of self and their social worlds. These self-understandings are reaffirmed through
cultural and religious values and practices. Supporting families inflicted with illness,
whether emotionally or practically, is strongly encouraged by Islamic texts, and extended
families often constitute valuable sources of reassurance materializing through rituals such
as prayer and visits to the patient and their relatives. However, displacement caused by
forced migration had disrupted Aisha’s access to these sources of support based on kinship.
Although support was increased from members of the religious community during her
husband’s illness, she struggled to uphold her identity as a wife and a mother throughout

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the process. The importance of motherhood features strongly in Aisha’s narrative, as her
distress revolved around the management of conflicting responsibilities toward her hus-
band and her children, thus illuminating the importance of social roles tied to marriage and
motherhood. Her narrative recognized the profound struggle she went through prior to her
husband’s death; however, contentment was the overall message of her story 3 years later.
Aisha makes this contentment clear by emphasizing the experience of the hours preceding
the actual moment of death. She explains how a friend of the family spoke to the staff on
the day her husband died and was informed that death was likely within the foreseeable
future. She was thus made aware of the severity of the situation, and family and friends
were therefore invited to say their parting words.
At this point in her narrative, Aisha creates an idealized scenario of her husband being
surrounded by people emotionally attached to him within the Muslim community, thereby
highlighting the positive aspects within these last few hours of her husband’s life, and the
special relationship they shared:
It [the last moments] was prepared in the best way. […] After people said [their
goodbyes], he told them ‘Stop now. I want my wife to come’.
The reality of her husband’s death forced them to express their emotions to each other in
a short amount of time. She relates how the last 2 weeks of his life, which they spent
together at the hospital, became a rekindling of their affection for one another:
When people they ask me [about this last time with him], I say, I felt it was like
honeymoon for me because before [his illness] we didn’t see each other so much.
And, SubhanAllah, three days or two days [before he died] he had a mask [for
oxygen], he took it off and he said: ‘I love you’ and then he put it back, ‘I love you,
do you hear. I am satisfied, may Allah be pleased with you’, he made du’a for me.
So, until the last moment he was caring about me and [spoke] nice words to me.
The importance she attached to her last moments with her husband surfaced in her story.
These were moments filled with expressions of love and intimacy, enabling her to find
solace in the tragedy. There is a sense of closure in this description that is based on a deep
emotional connection as well as a transcendental appreciation. Her husband being pleased
with her not only connotes the emotional satisfaction of being her spouse, but the following
supplication demonstrates how that very satisfaction is significant within the Islamic
framework—thus, worthy of receiving ‘‘God’s pleasure.’’ His words seemed to provide her
with great relief weaving together both emotional and religious dimensions, and their last
interactions supported her in continuing their bonds after death. Her belief therefore
supported her by the bedside, both in understanding the loss and in giving her words and
rituals—most importantly prayers—to hold on to and engage with her religious beliefs.
The creation of meaning within an Islamic framework through beliefs and practices is
emphasized throughout her narrative and is underscored by what is articulated and what is
absent in her story. In her description of the last moments of his life, physical suffering, the
sterile hospital surroundings and the medical staff are all absent. Instead, she shares an
emotional account of closeness, underlining the significance of religion as a source of
meaning and guidance in this very intense period of gradual loss.
Aisha’s Muslim identity is reaffirmed by her experience of the moment he died:
He said ‘Everybody go out’, only I [was left] and his soul, SubhanAllah, I did not
want my children to be [there] in this moment, and then I closed [my eyes]. I didn’t
know that he died, I only heard something like ‘puhh’ [a final breath] very easily.

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I always hear people, they suffer but [he just said] ‘puhh’ and then I looked at his
eyes and I found that [he was] like this [closing her eyes, relaxing her face]. [It was]
the first time I saw a dead person. I went out to signal the nurses and I said ‘Thank
you’ and I was, Alhamdulillah…
Her husband’s final moments were given particular importance in her narrative and
were described using Islamic terminology, especially referring to the glory and praise of
God; furthermore, she exchanged the word ‘‘husband’’ with ‘‘soul’’ as well, showing how
she perceived the moment of death through an Islamic lens. Indeed, this quote succinctly
demonstrates how meaning making can be so intricate in its details, shaping one’s narrative
according to the outline of a religious framework.
Through storytelling, Aisha framed her life within a temporal framework alternating
between her past life in the Middle East, her migration to Denmark, the period around her
husband’s diagnosis and death, and her present life. Aisha then openly addresses the
envisioned future by emphasizing the importance of her belief in an after-life, explaining
how it helped her deal with the loss of her husband. Throughout her story, her feelings of
affection for her husband and the sense of loss that his death caused are evident. However,
her belief in an after-life carries with it the promise that separation is temporary. Ongoing
relationships, in particular tied to wifehood and motherhood, were highlighted throughout
her narrative in the absence of notions of widowhood. Although death had transformed
their relationship, it had not severed their bonds. For her, death initiated only a temporary
separation and this allowed her to continue showing affection for her husband through
prayers and through sharing their story with others:
Don’t cry for me, I know that we will meet again. […]InshAllah [God willing], he is
in a good place and we hope to be together in [the after-life]. This life is nothing.
Although she emphasized how the future was scarcely conceivable without him, she
found comfort in her continuous relationship to Allah that she sustained through prayers
and supplication. The loss of a husband was, for her, tempered by the ever-presence of
Allah:
He [husband] loves me and we love each other and, SubhanAllah, I couldn’t believe
my life without him, I couldn’t. That’s why I [supplicated] ‘Please, please Allah
don’t leave me alone, You are the One, You are the One’, and really Allah supported
[me].
Aisha here underlines the gravity of the situation, and the tremendous difficulty she was
experiencing. Nevertheless, the impact of the moment is immediately followed by a
supplication to God, in which she calls out for support in a future she never could have
imagined. Meaning is constructed as a life-altering event is understood within a religious
frame of reference, thereby enabling agency and order to be restored. The unexpected
diagnosis, the rapid course of illness and the subsequent death of her husband led to a loss
of temporality in her life story. As death interrupted their relationship—and their envi-
sioned future—she reaffirmed the importance attached to her faith in her self-under-
standing and reconciled her belief in Allah with the lived experience of loss:
So without really relying on Allah, it is too hard [to go through] these things. For me,
I love my husband a lot, a lot, a lot. Before when he got [really] sick, I said to Allah
‘Please’ […] I cried, [and] I said ‘Don’t leave me, You gave me my husband and
You are the one that gives me happiness with my husband, You can give me the

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happiness without him, You are the source of everything good, You are the source of
all happiness, You are the source of everything, please don’t leave me alone, please’.
Through Aisha’s narrative, we see how categories of practice centered in religious
identification impregnate human experiences, the contexts they occur in and the ways
experiences are embodied and narrated (Frank 1995; Jackson 2002). Participating in re-
ligious ‘‘communities of practice’’ and drawing on her connectedness to the displaced,
Palestinian diaspora enabled her to enter the situation armed with narrative resources that
prepared her to navigate through chaos. Her identification with Islamic beliefs and prac-
tices shaped her narrative as it gave her resources to construct a story of meaning with her
loss. Furthermore, it provided her with religious practices, such as prayers performed both
individually and with other women in the mosque that enabled her to engage with the
Divine as she reconstructed her identity and everyday life following the death of her
husband.
Aisha was able to frame her narrative according to the memories she chose to cherish.
This process was affirmed by her community, consisting mostly of Palestinian refugee
women, who visited her after the death of her husband. She narrated a story that focuses on
a serene image of her husband’s deathbed, highlighting the positive and tranquil elements
of this loss and pointing to the way narratives are shaped by time:
I was lucky, SubhanAllah. Alhamdulillah, I always see the goodness of everything.
But after my husband died I made dua to thank Allah about many things that
happened in this period. I recognized [these things] after, I had no time [during that
period] to recognize it, but I recognized it as soon as he died. First of all, when he
died, he was happy with me and I was happy with him. He didn’t die [at a time when]
we were not happy with each other, [if that had happened] I would [have been] so
sad. Before he died, he was so happy with me, I was so happy with him. Also [we]
had time to be together, even [if] we didn’t talk, it was like [our] souls are together
always. […]I felt like Allah was really merciful to me.
Aisha’s narrative exposes a focus on finding the small elements of ease in the face of
loss. The passage also underscores the intensity of the period prior to and immediately after
the moment of death. She adds that her duties toward her husband, her children, the
numerous visitors at the hospital, as well as the interactions with healthcare staff took up
most of her time and caused her to ‘‘neglect herself.’’ At the time of the interview, she had
time to reflect more deeply on her experiences and create a narrative of meaning, and she
was able to invite us to witness a story of overcoming loss and the role of Islam in this. Her
narrative testifies to the need for upholding agency and self-understanding by actively
creating meaning in her faith identity:
SubhanAllah, really when you rely on Allah, He is really the best. But when you feel
‘I lost everything, now [there’s] no happiness, nothing’ […], I don’t want to feel [this
way]. I want to feel that Allah is still there. […] if you think good about Allah, trust
Allah, then He will support you. If you don’t trust Him, He will not, He will leave
you on your own, and our power is nothing.
In the face of death and bereavement, habitual expectations and modes of understanding
self and others are challenged (Jackson 1998). In such circumstances, narratives serve
important purposes as they mediate a recovery of a sense of self. The glimmer of despair,
lack of meaning and lost hope was articulated in Aisha’s story. Her confrontation with her
husband’s death made her reflect upon a potentially opposing narrative—that God does not

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exist and there’s no purpose in her loss—and she entertains the possibility of what her
meaning-construction process would be if that were the case. In this particular instance, she
describes a sort of nihilism in which, after losing everything, there is absolutely nothing
left—not even God. However, she quickly disputes this, drawing on the Islamic narrative
to nurture her hope that everything will be all right (‘‘I want to feel that Allah is still
there’’) and to retain a possibility of finding happiness again.
Healing the wounds caused by bereavement may be seen as a restorative journey for
Aisha, as shaped by her religious beliefs (Frank 1995). While Aisha was powerless in the
sense that she could not change the inevitable outcome of aggressive lung cancer, she was
actively creating meaning in her religious beliefs, which was reaffirmed in the process. In
this manner, Aisha’s narrative underscores how significant life events may lead to a search
for a deeper meaning of the human condition and our relationships to others (be it human
beings, God or other external forces) that for some is a spiritual journey (Padela et al. 2012;
Wortmann and Park 2008).
Through Aisha’s narrative, the continuous, active search for meaning was expressed by
supplicating, grieving and articulating her decision of finding meaning in her Muslim
beliefs and practices. Thus, her bereavement narrative is part of an emergent, changing
experience of coming to terms with her loss.
Despite disrupted social networks caused by displacement, Aisha’s connectedness to the
community of Palestinian refugees in Denmark enabled the performance of ritual practices
prior to and following the death of her husband. These practices included visitors reciting
key verses of the Quran, washing and shrouding the body, funeral prayers and supplica-
tions and condolences after the funeral. Although the shared aspects of these practices were
confined within a smaller community than would be the case in Palestine, Aisha did not
articulate any missing ritual elements. Her story is located in time and space as she narrates
her story based on a changed reality forced upon her by the loss of Palestinian citizenship.
At the moment of storytelling, her everyday life has been restored and she has come to
terms with the new responsibilities embedded in everyday life; significantly, mothering a
disabled child without her husband. In turn, the support Aisha receives from her grown-up
children becomes imperative, as they assist her in her day-to-day activities, such as
shopping and providing translation during encounters with Danish institutions. In addition,
religious practices and activities in the mosque continue to feature strongly in her social
identity. She re-established herself by upholding her agency and nurturing her bonds to her
deceased husband, rather than succumbing to disempowerment, isolation and the severed
bonds one might associate with the social identity of widowhood. Her story is clearly
situated both in her individual biography and in the wider, shared communities tied to
religious beliefs and practices, minority status and refugee experiences. Instead of creating
an ‘‘illusion of a finality,’’ her story is situated in an ongoing flow of lived experiences
grounded in a concrete inter-subjective engagement that started long before the interview
and was reaffirmed in the co-constructed narrative of experiencing and overcoming loss
(Kleinman 1994). As such, Aisha’s narrative illustrates the importance of appreciating
suffering as part of an individual life trajectory and as a process shaped by understandings
and identifications with both immediate and distant cultural and social worlds (Kleinman
1994). Her meaning-making process—with its emphasis on religious beliefs and prac-
tices—was shaped by her history of loss which, again, was embedded within an overall
shared legacy of finding meaning therein with others. This included, in particular, other
Palestinian refugee women sharing the experience of displacement, minority status and
devaluation by wider, more powerful societal actors.

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Our analysis of Aisha’s bereavement narrative illustrates the value of contextualizing

bereavement processes, in particular in studies among ethnic and religious minority groups.
Due to their story of displacement and minority status, these groups represent valuable
sources of insight into the complex way in which religious beliefs, ethnic minority status
and migration history intersect in shaping meaning-making processes following bereave-
ment. Aisha’s story confirms that bereavement calls for individuals to construct stories
which either integrate the memory of the dead into the lives of the living or detach from the
departed (Walter 1996). However, her story adds important nuances to this process by
highlighting how such stories are situated within the life story of the narrator—including
their past experiences of overcoming loss—and shaped by the wider sociocultural context
and audiences of the story. Religious minorities in Western societies represent diverse,
expanding and under-studied groups in the field of religion, grief and loss. The interactions
of cultural and religious phenomena, current and prior living circumstances, and migration
history point to the significant potential insight we may gain from listening carefully to
bereavement narratives. As such, their stories represent an undiscovered wealth of infor-
mation regarding the dynamic and contextualized nature of human sense making, and the
role of agency among women who are often rendered structurally vulnerable and invisible
by powerful discourses on gender, religion and cultural diversity (Dossa 2002, 2006).

The Mutual Construction of Narratives

To invoke a religious, in this case Muslim, narrative is to shape experiences into a par-
ticular framework which attributes certain meanings to life and make certain events so-
cially recognizable within a shared cultural community (Frank 2004). All stories are based
upon ‘‘voices-in-relation’’ as experiences are narrated with—rather than to—the inter-
locutor at a particular time and place (Frank 2004). Stories are thus based on reciprocity;
they are co-authored in immediate and wider relationships and unfold differently de-
pending on the relationship of the storyteller and interlocutor. This underscores the im-
portance of recognizing the ways ethnography is shaped by personal encounters with loss,
blurring the lines between researcher and informant, and the prominent role of reciprocity
in ethnography (Okely 1992). Shifting between an insider role based on shared identifi-
cation with faith in dealing with loss and an outsider role arising both from being part of
the ethnic majority and being situated in academia underscored the tensions in conveying
lived experiences by drawing upon deeply personal, existential and embodied knowledge
to outsider audiences (De Souza 2004).
Thus, it is important to recognize the influence of the interactional goals of the inter-
viewer and interviewee and to focus more explicitly on the details of researcher posi-
tionality and the reflexivity this necessitates. In our case, sharing of meaning, support and
validation took center stage. Religion was actively invoked by both parties, and the words
used shifted accordingly as Arabic terms entered their conversation. Codes, models and
content invoked during the interview, as well as hidden assumptions and expectations
about what should and should not be voiced were part of both the concrete situation and the
ongoing relationship prior to the interview (Lutz 1992). Our study thereby adds to the
importance of recognizing the situatedness of interviews, and the ways in which experi-
ences are performed within particular situations and for particular intended audiences
(Bhattacharya 2010). Expressions of empathy during the interview, such as tears and touch,
as well as shared experiences afterward, added to the narrative synthesis. Such interactions

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embraced articulations of the difficulties in coming to terms with bereavement, e.g., when,
after the interview, we discussed how time would sometimes accentuate the feeling of
grief. This discussion only came to light as a function of an empathetic scenario that would
embrace non-coherent and difficult parts of the bereavement story which would otherwise
be withheld. Discussions highlighted how the gradual loss of physical sensations as re-
minders of the deceased (via smell and touch); the removal of items belonging to the
deceased (e.g., clothes, toys); and the gradual process of constructing an everyday life
without the deceased at times made the irrevocable nature of the loss difficult to cope with.
This sense of a rare mutual understanding enabled a storytelling that not only reflected the
search for meaning with reference to Islamic beliefs, but also the difficulty and the sorrow
in doing so. Furthermore, the shared experience created an unprecedented opportunity for
empathetic listening, which paved the way for a more introspective discussion.
Storytelling that builds upon—at least, perceived—common ground, shared under-
standings and vocabulary may in this way become a reaffirmation of both the self and one’s
relationships with others (Frank 1995). However, the content and form of stories are also
shaped by the relationship of the storyteller and the interlocutor; the relationship dictates
which stories are silenced and which are promoted. Chaos stories, with their lack of order,
their loss of meaning and their vulnerabilities, are not easily told (Frank 1995). Actively
invoking supposedly shared identifications related to, e.g., gender, age, ethnicity or reli-
gious belief, can facilitate an important rapport; nevertheless, it may as well lead to
concepts being taken for granted or to silencing stories for not fitting into the expected
storyline of overcoming loss by turning to God. Afterward, the critical analytic distance
and grasp needed for analysis and dissemination required a distance both in time and in
space, aided with the inclusion of a multidisciplinary group of co-authors who contributed
with differing perspectives on Aisha’s meaning-making process of bereavement.

Implications for Practice

We have shown how religious beliefs can provide the means to make sense of and narrate
the personal experience of loss to others, but also how it must be appreciated within a
particular biography and a particular sociocultural context. There is therefore a need for a
more nuanced appreciation of the potential role of religious beliefs among Muslims and
other religious minority groups, as well as more attention to their individual migration
history and minority experiences, in Western societies. Allowing the bereaved to narrate
his or her understanding of life and death—implicating the potential role of religious grand
narratives and minority status for making sense of and overcoming loss—will bring about a
more comprehensive understanding of the needs and resources of the individual. This
ethnographic, individualized and narrative approach will help professionals in their effort
to provide humane care to all citizens, irrespective of background, particularly at times of
immense personal loss. This will likely improve the support provided, as well as the
professionals’ sense of satisfaction and meaning in caring for the bereaved (Kristiansen and
Sheikh 2012).

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Conclusions

There exists a substantial body of work investigating the culturally specific and socially
contextual ways of bereavement. In this paper, we have attempted to contribute to this
literature by taking a person- and experience-centered approach to the story of Aisha, a
Palestinian Muslim refugee woman living in a Western context and narrating the loss of
her husband. Aisha brings us along a narrative journey that depicts the emotional process
of coming to terms with her husband’s death. Her story acknowledges the difficulties she
went through that began when she was first told that her husband was dying and how it was
subsequently eased by turning to her faith. This perspective thus allowed her to appreciate
a spiritual reflection that highlights a reunion after death, thus enabling her to make sense
of her loss and maintain agency. Her story illustrates the importance of focusing on the
moral experience and self-understanding of the sufferer, including the possible role of the
sacred in this. It further highlights how stories of bereavement create, express and negotiate
meaning as a function of cultural and social forces—shaped simultaneously by the biog-
raphy of the narrator.
There is a need for a deeper appreciation of how religious beliefs and practices intersect
with minority status and refugee experiences in shaping stories of loss and death, especially
among ethnic minorities. In addition, there is a need for more careful and explicit attention
to the situatedness of any interview encounter and the importance of researcher posi-
tionality for the data constructed.

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