Gender, Politics, and Islam

Gender, Politics, and Islam PDF Author: Therese Saliba
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788125027423
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
In a time of increasing hostility towards Islam, this collection extends the boundaries of global feminism to include Islamic women. Challenging Orientalist assumptions of Muslim women as victims of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, these groundbreaking essays focus on the complex relations of power that shape women's negotiations for identity, power, and agency as participants in religious, cultural and nationalist movements. This book brings together Signs essays on women in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Diaspora, from Bangladesh, Canada, Egypt, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan, and Yemen to explore how women negotiate indigenous identities and attempt to gain political, economic, and legal rights. This collection shows that Islam is a heterogeneous set of historically and contexually variable practices and beliefs shaped by region, nation, ethnicity, sect, and class, as well as by responses to local and transnational cultural and economic processes. In examining women's participation in religious and nationalist projects, these critics debate controversial issues: Does Islamic feminism provide an alternative, possibly revolutionary paradigm, to Eurocentric liberal humanism and the individualism of western feminism? Is Islam any more oppressive to women than the workings of the modern secular state? How are the lives and texts of Arab and Muslim women discursively constructed for local or western consumption? These essays expose the shortcomings of the secularist assumptions of many recent feminist analyses, which continue to treat religion in general and fundamentalism in particular as a problematic tool of oppression used against women, rather than as a viable form of feminist agency that produces contradictory effects for women participants.

Gender, Politics, and Islam

Gender, Politics, and Islam PDF Author: Therese Saliba
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788125027423
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
In a time of increasing hostility towards Islam, this collection extends the boundaries of global feminism to include Islamic women. Challenging Orientalist assumptions of Muslim women as victims of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, these groundbreaking essays focus on the complex relations of power that shape women's negotiations for identity, power, and agency as participants in religious, cultural and nationalist movements. This book brings together Signs essays on women in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Diaspora, from Bangladesh, Canada, Egypt, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan, and Yemen to explore how women negotiate indigenous identities and attempt to gain political, economic, and legal rights. This collection shows that Islam is a heterogeneous set of historically and contexually variable practices and beliefs shaped by region, nation, ethnicity, sect, and class, as well as by responses to local and transnational cultural and economic processes. In examining women's participation in religious and nationalist projects, these critics debate controversial issues: Does Islamic feminism provide an alternative, possibly revolutionary paradigm, to Eurocentric liberal humanism and the individualism of western feminism? Is Islam any more oppressive to women than the workings of the modern secular state? How are the lives and texts of Arab and Muslim women discursively constructed for local or western consumption? These essays expose the shortcomings of the secularist assumptions of many recent feminist analyses, which continue to treat religion in general and fundamentalism in particular as a problematic tool of oppression used against women, rather than as a viable form of feminist agency that produces contradictory effects for women participants.

Indonesian Women and Local Politics

Indonesian Women and Local Politics PDF Author: Kurniawati Hastuti Dewi
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9971698420
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In an important social change, female Muslim political leaders in Java have enjoyed considerable success in direct local elections following the fall of Suharto in Indonesia. Indonesian Women and Local Politics shows that Islam, gender, and social networks have been decisive in their political victories. Islamic ideas concerning female leadership provide a strong religious foundation for their political campaigns. However, their approach to women's issues shows that female leaders do not necessarily adopt a woman's perspectives when formulating policies. This new trend of Muslim women in politics will continue to shape the growth and direction of democratization in local politics in post-Suharto Indonesia and will color future discourse on gender, politics, and Islam in contemporary Southeast Asia.

Gender, Governance and Islam

Gender, Governance and Islam PDF Author: Deniz Kandiyoti
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 147445545X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Following a period of rapid political change, both globally and in relation to the Middle East and South Asia, this collection sets new terms of reference for an analysis of the intersections between global, state, non-state and popular actors and their contradictory effects on the politics of gender.The volume charts the shifts in academic discourse and global development practice that shape our understanding of gender both as an object of policy and as a terrain for activism. Nine individual case studies systematically explore how struggles for political control and legitimacy determine both the ways in which dominant gender orders are safeguarded and the diverse forms of resistance against them.

Between Feminism and Islam

Between Feminism and Islam PDF Author: Zakia Salime
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452932697
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
How feminists and Islamists have constituted each other’s agendas in Morocco

Muslim Women of Power

Muslim Women of Power PDF Author: Clinton Bennett
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826400876
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
An exploration of powerful Muslim women covering issues of gender, culture and politics in Islam.

Women and Gender in Islam

Women and Gender in Islam PDF Author: Leila Ahmed
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258178
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A classic, pioneering account of the lives of women in Islamic history, republished for a new generation This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book is now reissued as a Veritas paperback, with a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining its enduring influence. “Ahmed’s book is a serious and independent-minded analysis of its subject, the best-informed, most sympathetic and reliable one that exists today.”—Edward W. Said “Destined to become a classic. . . . It gives [Muslim women] back our rightful place, at the center of our histories.”—Rana Kabbani, The Guardian

Religion, Politics and Gender in Indonesia

Religion, Politics and Gender in Indonesia PDF Author: Sonja van Wichelen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136963863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The political downfall of the Suharto administration in 1998 marked the end of the "New Order" in Indonesia, a period characterized by 32 years of authoritarian rule. It opened the way for democracy, but also for the proliferation of political Islam, which the New Order had discouraged or banned. Many of the issues raised by Muslim groups concerned matters pertaining to gender and the body. They triggered heated debates about women’s rights, female political participation, sexuality, pornography, veiling, and polygamy. The author argues that public debates on Islam and Gender in contemporary Indonesia only partially concern religion, and more often refer to shifting moral conceptions of the masculine and feminine body in its intersection with new class dynamics, national identity, and global consumerism. By approaching the contentious debates from a cultural sociological perspective, the book links the theoretical domains of body politics, the mediated public sphere, and citizenship. Placing the issue of gender and Islam in the context of Indonesia, the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world, this book is an important contribution to the existing literature on the topic. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

Islam and Democracy in Iran

Islam and Democracy in Iran PDF Author: Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857713752
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In today's world all eyes are on Iran, which has grappled with an experiment that has had a massive global impact. For some, the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was the triumph of a modern, political Islam, heralding Muslim justice and economic prosperity. Others, including many of the original revolutionaries, saw religious fanatics attempting to roll back time by creating a despotic theocracy. Either way, the Iranian Revolution changed the Muslim world. It not only inspired the Muslim masses but also reinvigorated intellectual debates on the nature and possibilities of an Islamic state. The new 'Islamic Republic of Iran' combined not just religion and the state, but theocracy and democracy. Yet the revolution's heirs were soon engaged in a protracted struggle over its legacy. Dissident thinkers, from within an Islamic framework, sought a rights-based political order that could accept dissent, tolerance, pluralism, women's rights and civil liberties. Their ideas led directly to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami and, despite their political failure, they did leave a permanent legacy by demystifying Iranian religious politics, and condemning the use of the Shariah to justify autocratic rule. This book tells the story of the reformist movement through the world of Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari. An active supporter of the revolution who became one of the most outspoken critics of theocracy, Eshkevari developed ideas of 'Islamic democratic government', which have attracted considerable attention in Iran and elsewhere. In presenting a selection of Eshkevari's writings, this book reveals the intellectual and political trajectory of a Muslim thinker and his attempts to reconcile Islam with reform and democracy. As such it makes a highly original contribution to our understanding of the difficult social and political issues confronting the Islamic world today.

Questioning French Secularism

Questioning French Secularism PDF Author: Jennifer Selby
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137011327
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book examines how contemporary secularism in France is positioned as a guarantor of women’s rights. Selby argues that the complex “fetishization” of headscarves in public, governmental, and feminist French discourse positions publicly-visible Muslim women in ways that obscure their engagement with laïcité (French secularism).

Muslim Women and Power

Muslim Women and Power PDF Author: Danièle Joly
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137480629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
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.