Gender And Patriarchy In The Films Of Muslim Nations

There are 49 Muslim-majority countries in the world and Islam is the world’s second largest religion. Yet many in the West are misinformed about Islam and Muslim worldviews. Issues related to gender norms are especially subject to misconceptions. This filmography analyzes gender issues in 56 feature films from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, with a focus on religious, legal and patriarchal legitimization of practices such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, virginity testing, public sexual harassment and molestation, and honor killings.

The relationship between secularism, democracy, religion, and gender equality has been a complex one across Western democracies and still remains contested. When we turn to Muslim countries, the situation is even more multifaceted. In the views of many western commentators, the question of Women Rights is the litmus test for Muslim societies in the age of democracy and liberalism. Especially since the Arab Awakening, the issue is usually framed as the opposition between liberal advocates of secular democracy and religious opponents of women's full equality. Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective critically re-engages this too simple binary opposition by reframing the debate around Islam and women's rights within a broader comparative literature. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, it examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality. Part One addresses the nexus of religion, law, gender, and democracy through different disciplinary perspectives (sociology, anthropology, political science, law). Part Two localizes the implementation of this nexus between law, gender, and democracy and provides contextualized responses to questions raised in Part One. The contributors explore the situation of Muslim women's rights in minority conditions to shed light on the gender politics in the modernization of the nation and to ponder on the role of Islam in gender inequality across different Muslim countries.

This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of "Muslim woman," so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

Introduction -- Chapter 1: Gender and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa: Negotiating with Patriarchal States and Islamism / Zahia Smail Salhi -- Chapter 2: Gender-based Violence in the Middle East and North Africa: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon / David Ghanim -- Chapter 3: Women and Violence in the Light of an Islamic Normative Ethical Theory / Mariam al-Attar -- Chapter 4: Struggle against Male Violence with an Egalitarian Jurisprudence and Islamic Government: The Case of Secular Turkey / Canan Aslan-Akman and Fatma Tütüncü -- Chapter 5: Working in a Hostile Environment: Female Labour Segregation and Women's Impediments to Private Sector Opportunities in Jordan / Claudia Corsi -- Chapter 6: Violence against Underage Girl Domestic Workers in Morocco / Moha Ennaji -- Chapter 7: Gender and Violence in Egypt: Prevalence and Factors Exposing Women to Risk of Spousal Violence in Alexandria / Heba Mamdouh and Ibrahim Kharboush -- Chapter 8: Female Genital Mutilation between Culture and Religion: The Case of Egypt / Hiam Salaheldin Elgousi -- Chapter 9: The Insidious Violence: A Study of Husband-Wife Power Relations in the Algerian Context / Fatma Zohra Mebtouche Nedjai -- Chapter 10: Gender Expletives and Verbal Abuse: A Tunisian Case / Raoudha Kammoun -- Chapter 11: Gender and Language Discrimination in EFL Textbooks: Female Invisibility as a Form of Gender based Violence / Souryana Yassine.

As a result of the uprisings that spread across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011, the issue of state public violence against both men and women dominated the headlines. But gender-based violence, in both its public and private forms, has for the most part remained unnoticed and is often ignored. The forms that this kind of violence can take are influenced by cultural norms and religious beliefs, as well as economic and political circumstances. In 'Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies', violence is perceived not only as physical harm, but includes various forms of violence directed at women because they are women. These include segregation in the workplace and limiting women's access to wealth, gender stereotyping in the media and education, verbal aggression and humiliation, control of women's finances and income, forced veiling, restricted access to education and health. Gender-based violence is thus analysed in its various forms and localities, encompassing both the public and private spheres: within the family, the general community,at work and in various state institutions. Here, Zahia Smail Salhi brings together a wide range of examples of gender-based violence across the Middle East and North Africa, from discrimination in the workplace in Jordan to the physical abuse of underage domestic workers in Morocco, and from psychological and verbal violence against women in Tunisia and Algeria to the practice of female genital mutilation in Egypt. The evidence demonstrates that the violence, far from being of universal character across the region, is instead diverse, in both its intensity and in the processes of addressing such violence.

Contradicting the views commonly held by westerners, many Muslim countries in fact engage in a wide spectrum of reform, with the status of women as a central dimension. This anthology counters the myth that Islam and feminism are always or necessarily in opposition. A multidisciplinary group of scholars examine ideology, practice, and reform efforts in the areas of marriage, divorce, abortion, violence against women, inheritance, and female circumcision across the Islamic world, illuminating how religious and cultural prescriptions interact with legal norms, affecting change in sometimes surprising ways.

This groundbreaking book explores resistance against the harsh policing of sexuality in some Muslim societies. Many Muslim majority countries still use religious discourse to enforce stigmatization and repression of those, especially women, who do not conform to sexual norms promoted either by the state or by non-state actors. In this context, Islam is often stigmatized in Western discourse for being intrinsically restrictive with respect to women's rights and sexuality. The authors show that conservative Muslim discourse does not necessarily match practices of believers or of citizens and that women's empowerment is facilitated where indigenous and culturally appropriate strategies are developed. Using case studies from Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Israel and India, they argue persuasively that Muslim religious traditions do not necessarily lead to conservative agendas but can promote emancipatory standpoints. An intervention to the construction of 'Muslim women' as uniformly subordinate, this collection spearheads an unprecedented wake of organizing around sexualities in Muslim communities.

The first book to examine the troubled relationships between women, Islam and cinema.