ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nexus of religious knowledge, power, and cultural practices that shapes masculinity and femininity and its impact on the making of material self. I argue that the way the self is represented in the cultural intelligibility, religious narratives, religious opinions (fatwm), and authoritative legitimacy fosters the masculine and feminine constituent of the material self. The masculine and feminine construction gradually accumulates and creates a pattern of material self that is loaded with the fixity of the masculine and feminine physical appearance and morality. This popular construction of masculinity and femininity is channeled through multiple powers of social institutions, legal system, norms, and local cultures, which, successively, foster the perpetuation of the patriarchal system in Muslim societies.
