Download or read book Revisiting Muslim Women s Activism written by Esita Sur and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the evolution of organisational activism among Muslim women in India. It deconstructs the 'Muslim woman' as the monolith based on tropes like purdah, polygamy, and tin talaq and compels the reader to revisit the question of Muslim women’s individual and collective agency. The book argues that the political field, along with religion, moulds the nature and scope of Muslim women’s activism in India. It looks at the objectives of four Muslim women’s organisations: the Bazm-e-Niswan, the Awaaz-e-Niswaan, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan and the India International Women’s Alliance (IIWA), in close interaction with the political landscape of Mumbai. The book explores the emergence of gender-inclusive interpretation of Muslim women’s rights by Muslim women activists and challenges the dominant and reductionist stereotypes on Muslim women, community, and absolutist ideas of Islam. It argues that Muslim women are not passive victims of their culture and religion, rather they can develop a critique of their marginality and subjugation from within the community. Revisiting Muslim Women’s Activism traces the evolution of a community-centric approach in women’s activism and records a fragmented view on women’s rights from within the community and religious leadership. It also delineates the distinctiveness of this activism that considers religion and culture as resources for empowerment and as sites of contestations. Moreover, the book documents the narratives of Muslim women’s struggle and resistance from their location and lived experiences. It will be of interest to students and researchers of women’s studies, gender studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, and Islamic studies.

Download or read book Books In Brief Rethinking Muslim Women The Veil written by Katherine Bullock and published by International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until now the bulk of the literature about the veil has been written by outsiders who do not themselves veil. This literature often assumes a condescending tone about veiled women, assuming that they are making uninformed decisions choices about veiling makes them subservient to a patriarchal culture and religion. “Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil” offers an alternative viewpoint, based on the thoughts and experiences of Muslim women themselves. This is the first time a clear and concise book-length argument has been made for the compatibility between veiling and modernity. Katherine Bullock uncovers positive aspects of the veil that are frequently not perceived by outsiders. “Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil” looks at the colonial roots of the negative Western stereotype of the veil. It presents interviews with Muslim women to discover their thoughts and experiences with the veil in Canada. The book also offers a positive theory of veiling. The author argues that in consumer capitalist cultures, women can find wearing the veil a liberation from the stifling beauty game that promotes unsafe and unhealthy ideal body images for women. This book also includes an extensive bibliography on topics related to Muslim women and the veil.

Download or read book An Islam of Her Own written by Sherine Hafez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world grapples with issues of religious fanaticism, extremist politics, and rampant violence that seek justification in either “religious” or “secular” discourses, women who claim Islam as a vehicle for individual and social change are often either regarded as pious subjects who subscribe to an ideology that denies them many modern freedoms, or as feminist subjects who seek empowerment only through rejecting religion and adopting secularist discourses. Such assumptions emerge from a common trend in the literature to categorize the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ as polarizing categories, which in turn mitigates the identities, experiences and actions of women in Islamic societies. Yet in actuality Muslim women whose activism is grounded in Islam draw equally on principles associated with secularism. In An Islam of Her Own, Sherine Hafez focuses on women’s Islamic activism in Egypt to challenge these binary representations of religious versus secular subjectivities. Drawing on six non-consecutive years of ethnographic fieldwork within a women's Islamic movement in Cairo, Hafez analyzes the ways in which women who participate in Islamic activism narrate their selfhood, articulate their desires, and embody discourses in which the boundaries are blurred between the religious and the secular.

Download or read book An Islam of Her Own written by Sherine Hafez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world grapples with issues of religious fanaticism, extremist politics, and rampant violence that seek justification in either OC religiousOCO or OC secularOCO discourses, women who claim Islam as a vehicle for individual and social change are often either regarded as pious subjects who subscribe to an ideology that denies them many modern freedoms, or as feminist subjects who seek empowerment only through rejecting religion and adopting secularist discourses. Such assumptions emerge from a common trend in the literature to categorize the OCysecularOCO and the OCyreligiousOCO as polarizing categories, which in turn mitigates the identities, experiences and actions of women in Islamic societies. Yet in actuality Muslim women whose activism is grounded in Islam draw equally on principles associated with secularism. In An Islam of Her Own, Sherine Hafez focuses on womenOCOs Islamic activism in Egypt to challenge these binary representations of religious versus secular subjectivities. Drawing on six non-consecutive years of ethnographic fieldwork within a women's Islamic movement in Cairo, Hafez analyzes the ways in which women who participate in Islamic activism narrate their selfhood, articulate their desires, and embody discourses in which the boundaries are blurred between the religious and the secular.

Download or read book Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance written by Professor Maha El Said and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-05-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the uprisings that swept the Arab world, the role of Arab women in political transformations received unprecedented media attention. The copious commentary, however, has yet to result in any serious study of the gender dynamics of political upheaval. Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance is the first book to analyse the interplay between moments of sociopolitical transformation, emerging subjectivities and the different modes of women’s agency in forging new gender norms in the Arab world. Written by scholars and activists from the countries affected, including Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, this is an important addition to Middle Eastern gender studies.

Download or read book Men in Charge written by Ziba Mir-Hosseini and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both Muslims and non-Muslims see women in most Muslim countries as suffering from social, economic, and political discrimination, treated by law and society as second-class citizens subject to male authority. This discrimination is attributed to Islam and Islamic law, and since the late 19th century there has been a mass of literature tackling this issue. Recently, exciting new feminist research has been challenging gender discrimination and male authority from within Islamic legal tradition: this book presents some important results from that research. The contributors all engage critically with two central juristic concepts; rooted in the Qur’an, they lie at the basis of this discrimination. One refers to a husband’s authority over his wife, his financial responsibility toward her, and his superior status and rights. The other is male family members’ right and duty of guardianship over female members (e.g., fathers over daughters when entering into marriage contracts) and the privileging of fathers over mothers in guardianship rights over their children. The contributors, brought together by the Musawah global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, include Omaima Abou-Bakr, Asma Lamrabet, Ayesha Chaudhry, Sa‘diyya Shaikh, Lynn Welchman, Marwa Sharefeldin, Lena Larsen and Amina Wadud.

Download or read book Islamic Feminisms written by Roja Fazaeli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the contentious topic of women’s rights in Muslim-majority countries, with a specific focus on Iran and the Iranian women’s movement from 1906 to the present. The work contextualizes the authorial self through the use of personal narrative and interviews. A new critique of Islamic law is produced through an in-depth study of the Iranian Constitution, civil and criminal codes. The work presents a novel reconceptualization of the term "Islamic feminism" by revisiting the arguments of various scholars and through analysis of interviews with Iranian women’s rights activists. It is contended that the feminist movements can play a critical role in Islamic law reform and consequently the eventual implementation of international human rights law in Muslim-majority countries. What emerges from this study is not only a feminist critique of two major regimes of law, but also the identification of possibilities for reform in the future. The study transitions from the Iranian national context to the international by way of a comparative legal study of international human rights laws and Islamic laws. The book will appeal both to academics and human rights practitioners.

Download or read book Rethinking Political Islam written by Shadi Hamid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, scholars hypothesized about what Islamists might do if they ever came to power. Now, they have answers: confusing ones. In the Levant, ISIS established a government by brute force, implementing an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tunisia's Ennahda Party governed in coalition with two secular parties, ratified a liberal constitution, and voluntarily stepped down from power. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist movement, won power through free elections only to be ousted by a military coup. The strikingly disparate results of Islamist movements have challenged conventional wisdom on political Islam, forcing experts and Islamists to rethink some of their most basic assumptions. In Rethinking Political Islam, two of the leading scholars on Islamism, Shadi Hamid and William McCants, have gathered a group of leading specialists in the field to explain how an array of Islamist movements across the Middle East and Asia have responded. Unlike ISIS and other jihadist groups that garner the most media attention, these movements have largely opted for gradual change. Their choices, however, have been reshaped by the revolutionary politics of the region. The groups depicted in the volume capture the contradictions, successes, and failures of Islamism, providing a fascinating window into a rapidly changing Middle East. It is the first book to systematically assess the evolution of mainstream Islamist groups since the Arab uprisings and the rise of ISIS, covering 12 country cases. In each instance, contributors address key questions, including: gradual versus revolutionary approaches to change; the use of tactical or situational violence; attitudes toward the nation-state; and how ideology, religion, and political variables interact. For the first time in book form, readers will also hear directly from Islamist activists and leaders themselves, as they offer their own perspectives on the future of their movements. Islamists will have the opportunity to challenge the assumptions and arguments of some of the leading scholars of Islamism, in the spirit of constructive dialogue. Rethinking Political Islam includes three of the most important country cases outside the Middle East-Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan-allowing readers to consider a greater diversity of Islamist experiences. The book's contributors have immersed themselves in the world of political Islam and conducted original research in the field, resulting in rich accounts of what animates Islamist behavior.

Download or read book Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice written by Nevin Reda and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, Muslim women reformers have made great strides in critiquing and reinterpreting the Islamic tradition. Yet these achievements have not produced a significant shift in the lived experience of Islam, particularly with respect to equality and justice in Muslim families. A new approach is needed: one that examines the underlying instruments of tradition and explores avenues for effecting change. In Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice leading intellectuals and emerging researchers grapple with the problem of entrenched positions within Islam that affect women, investigating the processes by which interpretations become authoritative, the theoretical foundations upon which they stand, and the ways they have been used to inscribe and enforce gender limitations. Together, they argue that the Islamic interpretive tradition displays all the trappings of canonical texts, canonical figures, and canon law – despite the fact that Islam does not ordain religious authorities who could sanction processes of canonization. Through this lens, the essays in this collection offer insights into key issues in Islamic feminist scholarship, ranging from interreligious love, child marriage, polygamy, and divorce to stoning, segregation, seclusion, and gender hierarchies. Rooting their analysis in the primary texts and historical literature of Islam, contributors to Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice contest oppressive interpretative canons, subvert classical methodologies, and provide new directions in the ongoing project of revitalizing Islamic exegesis and its ethical and legal implications.

Download or read book In the Name of Women s Rights written by Sara R. Farris and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sara R. Farris examines the demands for women's rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing nationalist political parties, neoliberals, and some feminist theorists and policy makers. Focusing on contemporary France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Farris labels this exploitation and co-optation of feminist themes by anti-Islam and xenophobic campaigns as “femonationalism.” She shows that by characterizing Muslim males as dangerous to western societies and as oppressors of women, and by emphasizing the need to rescue Muslim and migrant women, these groups use gender equality to justify their racist rhetoric and policies. This practice also serves an economic function. Farris analyzes how neoliberal civic integration policies and feminist groups funnel Muslim and non-western migrant women into the segregating domestic and caregiving industries, all the while claiming to promote their emancipation. In the Name of Women's Rights documents the links between racism, feminism, and the ways in which non-western women are instrumentalized for a variety of political and economic purposes.

Download or read book Mainstreaming the Headscarf written by Esra Özcan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the early 2000s in Turkey, the headscarf that used be looked down upon by the secular middle and upper classes moved to the mainstream. It has since become a symbol of desirable womanhood. This development has pushed Turkey's secular feminists, who had been critical of the headscarf ban, to the margins. This book is the first to trace this new phase of conservative gender politics by examining the images of women's headscarves across secular and Islamic news media. Based on the analysis of photographs and the columns of conservative women journalists, the book sheds light on how the AKP is transforming the image of womanhood. It also identifies the rise of the conservative female journalist as an important phenomenon in the country. Esra Özcan problematizes designators such as “Islamist women” or “Islamic feminists” and instead aims to understand these women in terms of their commitment to right-wing activism and politics, which has so far been ignored. An original contribution to feminist scholarship on Muslim women, this book draws on the unique perspectives of Visual Culture and Communication Studies.

Download or read book Women Shaping Islam written by Pieternella van Doorn-Harder and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, precious little is known about the active role Muslim women have played for nearly a century in the religious culture of Indonesia, the largest majority-Muslim country in the world. While much of the Muslim world excludes women from the domain of religious authority, the country's two leading Muslim organizations--Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)--have created enormous networks led by women who interpret sacred texts and exercise powerful religious influence. In Women Shaping Islam, Pieternella van Doorn-Harder explores the work of these contemporary women leaders, examining their attitudes toward the rise of radical Islamists; the actions of the authoritarian Soeharto regime; women's education and employment; birth control and family planning; and sexual morality. Ultimately, van Doorn-Harder reveals the many ways in which Muslim women leaders understand and utilize Islam as a significant force for societal change; one that ultimately improves the economic, social, and psychological condition of women in Indonesian society.

Download or read book Muslim Women and Power written by Danièle Joly and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize 2017 This book provides an account of Muslim women’s political and civic engagement in Britain and France. It examines their interaction with civil society and state institutions to provide an understanding of their development as political actors. The authors argue that Muslim women’s participation is expressed at the intersections of the groups and society to which they belong. In Britain and France, their political attitudes and behaviour are influenced by their national/ethnic origins, religion and specific features of British and French societies. Thus three main spheres of action are identified: the ethnic group, religious group and majority society. Unequal, gendered power relations characterise the interconnection(s) between these spheres of action. Muslim women are positioned within these complex relations and find obstacles and/or facilitators governing their capacity to act politically. The authors suggest that Muslim women’s interest in politics, knowledge of it and participation in both institutional and informal politics is higher than expected. This book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, sociology, gender studies and social anthropology, and will also be of use to policy makers and practitioners in the field of gender and ethno-religious/ethno-cultural policy.

Download or read book Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism written by Haideh Moghissi and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 1999-07 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly controversial intervention into the debate on postmodernism and feminism, this book looks at what happens when these modes of analysis are jointly employed to illuminate the sexual politics of Islam. As a religion, Islam has been demonized for its gender practices like no other. This book analyzes that Orientalism, with particular reference to representations of Muslim women and describes the real sexual politics of Islam. The author goes on to describe the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the West's response to it. She argues that regardless of the sophisticated argument of postmodernists and their suspicion of power, as an intellectual and political movement postmodernism has put itself in the service of power and the status quo. Moghissi brilliantly demonstrates how this trend has given rise to a neo-conservative feminism. A major feminist critique of Islamic fundamentalism, this book asks some hard questions of those who, in denouncing the racism of Western feminism, have taken up an uncritical embrace of the Islamic identity of Muslim women. It is urgent reading for all those concerned about human rights, as well as for students and academics of women's studies, political science, social theory and religious studies.

Download or read book The Management of Islamic Activism written by Quintan Wiktorowicz and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how the laws governing civil society are used to regulate Islamic activism in Jordan.

Download or read book Muslim Women and Sport written by Tansin Benn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the global experiences, challenges and achievements of Muslim women participating in physical activities and sport, this important new study makes a profound contribution to our understanding of both contemporary Islam and the complexity and diversity of women’s lives in the modern world. The book presents an overview of current research into constructs of gender, the role of religion and the importance of situation, and looks closely at what Islam has to say about women’s participation in sport and what Muslim women themselves have to say about their participation in sport. It highlights the challenges and opportunities for women in sport in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, utilizing a series of extensive case-studies in various countries which invite the readers to conduct cross-cultural comparisons. Material on Iraq, Palestine and Bosnia and Herzegovina provides rare insights into the impact of war on sporting activities for women. The book also seeks to make important recommendations for improving access to sport for girls and women from Muslim communities. Muslim Women and Sport confronts many deeply held stereotypes and crosses those commonly quoted boundaries between ‘Islam and the West’ and between ‘East and West’. It makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in the interrelationships between sport, religion, gender, culture and policy.

Download or read book Between Feminism and Islam written by Zakia Salime and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How feminists and Islamists have constituted each other’s agendas in Morocco