Digital Majlis: Fostering Conversations on Intimate Health among Arab Muslim Women

Paper Title

Digital Majlis: Fostering Conversations on Intimate Health among Arab Muslim Women

Publication Info

• Topic area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and culturally resonant digital health platforms.
• Keywords: Intimate health, Arab Muslim women, Islamic feminism, digital health, avatar-based platforms, Gather.town, cultural design, stigma, safe spaces, collective sensemaking.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Intimate health remains a taboo topic for Arab Muslim women, limiting access to information and supportive discussions. Existing digital health platforms rarely integrate cultural and religious values into their design.
• Significance: Addressing these gaps can improve health outcomes and empower Arab Muslim women to engage in conversations about intimate health in culturally and religiously resonant ways.
• Motivation and related work: Prior HCI research has explored digital health interventions but often from secular perspectives, neglecting the intersection of faith, culture, and sensitive health topics. Islamic feminist frameworks offer a lens to reinterpret patriarchal narratives and empower women’s agency, but their explicit integration into digital health design remains limited.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The "Digital Majlis," an avatar-based virtual environment modeled on the traditional Arab gathering space, designed to foster anonymous and culturally familiar discussions about intimate health.
• Novelty:
  1. Application of Islamic Feminist principles to digital health design.
  2. Use of culturally resonant metaphors (majlis) to create safe spaces for taboo health topics.
  3. Integration of avatar-based platforms (Gather.town) for anonymity and interaction.
  4. Empirical insights into Arab Muslim women’s experiences with intimate health and digital platforms.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted 19 semi-structured interviews and 4 focus groups with Arab Muslim women in the US and Canada.
  • Designed a virtual majlis on Gather.town with culturally relevant features (e.g., Persian rugs, tea sets, private areas).
  • Used prompts (religious texts, media clips, articles) to facilitate discussions.
  • Analyzed data using thematic analysis and Islamic Feminist frameworks.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • 65% of participants received sex education in school, but only 9% in religious settings.
  • Participants expressed hesitations about discussing intimate health due to cultural taboos and conflation of shame (3eib) with religious prohibition (haram).
  • Online resources were widely used for private information-seeking, with emerging interest in tools like ChatGPT.
  • Gather.town fostered anonymity, comfort, and community-building, with participants describing the space as fun and interactive.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • The Digital Majlis provided a culturally familiar and anonymous environment, overcoming barriers seen in traditional healthcare and educational settings.
  • Enabled collective sensemaking and dialogue on taboo topics, which participants rarely experienced in other contexts.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Participants engaged in structured activities (e.g., agree/disagree icebreakers, exploration of prompts) within the virtual majlis.
  • Focus groups revealed positive reception to the platform’s design and facilitation, though technical challenges (e.g., spatial audio limits) were noted.
  • Mixed reactions to prompts highlighted the diversity of perspectives within Arab Muslim communities.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Participants were cisgender straight Arab Muslim women, limiting generalizability to other gender identities or Muslim communities.
  • Gather.town’s subscription model may restrict future access to similar spaces.
  • Future work could explore mixed-gender discussions, larger-scale implementations, and adaptations for other cultural or faith-based groups.

Summary

This study introduces the Digital Majlis, an avatar-based virtual environment designed to foster intimate health discussions among Arab Muslim women using culturally and religiously resonant design principles. By integrating Islamic Feminist frameworks and leveraging Gather.town’s anonymity features, the platform enabled participants to engage in taboo topics comfortably and collaboratively. Findings highlight the importance of culturally grounded digital health spaces, collective sensemaking, and infrastructural justice in HCI. The research provides actionable insights for designing safe, inclusive, and scalable digital environments for sensitive health topics across diverse communities.