CADAR, STIGMA, DAN TRANSFORMASI DIRI: NARASI AUTOETNOGRAFI PEREMPUAN MUSLIM DALAM UPAYA DERADIKALISASINIM.: 23200011068Syarifah Ainun JamilahauthorThis study draws on the researcher’s experience as a Muslim woman who has worn the niqab from 2015 to 2026, amid social discourses that often associate the niqab with conservatism, exclusivism, and radicalism. It aims to analyze the transformation of the meaning of the niqab and the formation of agency through religious experiences and interactions with family, community, and academic environments. The study employs an autoethnographic approach, using personal experience as the starting point of analysis. Data were collected through self-reflection, dialogues with people who have been part of the researcher’s journey, and engagement with public discourse and academic literature. Reflexivity and triangulation were employed to broaden perspectives and maintain critical distance from personal experience. The findings show that the decision to wear the niqab did not initially arise from radical ideology, but from an experience of sexual harassment that prompted a search for safety and bodily control. In the subsequent course of her religious journey, this process developed into self-radicalisation, characterized by increasingly rigid religious understandings and bodily discipline. Various experiences then created ruptures that prompted selfderadicalisation, not as a rejection of the niqab or religious identity, but as a transformation in how the researcher understood norms, beliefs, the body, and religious practice. This process unfolded reflexively and relationally through encounters with diverse experiences, forms of knowledge, and spaces for dialogue. Within this process, agency is understood as the capacity to reflect on, negotiate, and reconstruct the meanings of the norms one inhabits. The study demonstrates that the primary transformation did not lie in the religious symbol itself, which the researcher continues to wear, but in how its meaning was understood. The niqab, initially understood as a means of selfprotection and a practice of pious discipline, came to be understood as a consciously chosen expression of religious commitment and part of an ongoing spiritual, intellectual, and human journey. This transformation also shifted the researcher’s understanding of women’s bodies, particularly the recognition that the niqab cannot guarantee safety or serve as a measure of piety. These findings affirm that the niqab cannot be understood solely as a marker of radicalism. Women who wear the niqab should instead be understood as subjects of knowledge who possess the agency to shape and interpret the meaning of their own religious experiences.305.3 Gender2026-08-06UIN SUNAN KALIJAGA YOGYAKARTA;PASCASARJANAThesis