Inside The Gender Jihad

A world-renowned professor of Islamic studies, Amina Wadud has long been at the forefront of what she calls the 'gender jihad,' the struggle for justice for women within the global Islamic community. In 2005, she made international headlines when she helped to promote new traditions by leading the Muslim Friday prayer in New York City, provoking a firestorm of media controversy and kindling charges of blasphemy among conservative Muslims worldwide. In this provocative book, "Inside the Gender Jihad", Wadud brings a wealth of experience from the trenches of the jihad to make a passionate argument for gender inclusiveness in the Muslim world. Knitting together scrupulous scholarship with lessons drawn from her own experiences as a woman, she explores the array of issues facing Muslim women today, including social status, education, sexuality, and leadership. A major contribution to the debate on women and Islam, Amina Wadud's vision for changing the status of women within Islam is both revolutionary and urgent.

Fourteen centuries of Islamic thought have produced a legacy of interpretive readings of the Qu'ran written almost entirely by men. Now, with Qu'ran and Woman, Amina Wadud provides a first interpretive reading by a woman, a reading which validates the female voice in the Qu'ran and brings it out of the shadows. Muslim progressives have long argued that it is not the religion but patriarchal interpretation and implementation of the Qu'ran that have kept women oppressed. For many, the way to reform is the reexamination and reinterpretation of religious texts. Qu'ran and Woman contributes a gender inclusive reading to one of the most fundamental disciplines in Islamic thought, Qu'ranic exegesis. Wadud breaks down specific texts and key words which have been used to limit women's public and private role, even to justify violence toward Muslim women, revealing that their original meaning and context defy such interpretations. What her analysis clarifies is the lack of gender bias, precedence, or prejudice in the essential language of the Qur'an. Despite much Qu'ranic evidence about the significance of women, gender reform in Muslim society has been stubbornly resisted. Wadud's reading of the Qu'ran confirms women's equality and constitutes legitimate grounds for contesting the unequal treatment that women have experienced historically and continue to experience legally in Muslim communities. The Qu'ran does not prescribe one timeless and unchanging social structure for men and women, Wadud argues lucidly, affirming that the Qu'ran holds greater possibilities for guiding human society to a more fulfilling and productive mutual collaboration between men and women than as yet attained by Muslims or non-Muslims.

In Rethinking Islam, Katajun Amirpur argues that the West’s impression of Islam as a backward-looking faith, resistant to post-Enlightenment thinking, is misleading and—due to its effects on political discourse—damaging. Introducing readers to key thinkers and activists—such as Abu Zaid, a free-thinking Egyptian Qur’an scholar; Abdolkarim Soroush, an academic and former member of Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution Committee; and Amina Wadud, an American feminist who was the first woman to lead the faithful in Friday Prayer—Amirpur reveals a powerful yet lesser-known tradition of inquiry and dissent within Islam, one that is committed to democracy and human rights. By examining these and many other similar figures’ ideas, she reveals the many ways they reject fundamentalist assertions and instead call for a diversity of opinion, greater freedom, and equality of the sexes.

There are numerous conflicts ensuing in the Middle East, but not all are being fought with rockets and rifles. While the Internet has proven invaluable to those who wish to uphold a patriarchal society and spread the message of Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim women have used the Web to build a transnational community intent on growing women’s rights in the Middle East. There is a large disparity between a Muslim woman's role according to the Qur'an and her role as some corners of Muslim society have interpreted it. In Velvet Jihad Faegheh Shirazi reveals the creative strategies Muslim women have adopted to quietly fight against those who would limit their growing rights. Shirazi examines issues that are important to all women, from routine matters such as daily hygiene and clothing to controversial subjects like abortion, birth control, and virginity. As a woman with linguistic expertise and extensive life experience in both Western and Middle Eastern cultures, she is uniquely positioned as an objective observer and reporter of changes and challenges facing Muslim women globally.

This book discusses the role of women in jihadi organizations. It explores the critical puzzle of why, despite the traditional restrictive views of Islamic jurisprudence on women’s social activities, the level of women’s incorporation into some jihadi organizations is growing rapidly both in numbers and roles around the world. The author argues that the increasing incorporation of women and their diversity of roles reflect a strategic logic –jihadi groups integrate women to enhance organizational success. To explain the structural metamorphosis of jihadi organizations and to provide insight into the strategic logic of women in jihadi groups, the book develops a new continuum typology, dividing jihadi groups into operation-based and state-building jihadi organizations. The book uses multiple methods, including empirical fieldwork and the conceptual framework of fragile states to explain the expanding role of women within organizations such as ISIS. Addressing a much-overlooked gap in contemporary studies of women’s association with militant jihadi organizations, this book will be of interest to scholars in the field of gender and international security, think tanks working on the Middle East security affairs, activists, policy-makers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking study or research associated with gender and militant non-state actors.

This is a study and critique of feminist interpretation of the Qur'an, examining its dynamic challenges to Islamic tradition and contemporary Muslim views of the Qur'an. Hidayatullah analyses major feminist readings of the Qur'an by Muslim women beginning in the late 20th century, synthesizing their common concepts and methods, and tracing their collective trajectory as key to the development of the nascent field of feminist tafsir (exegesis).

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.