Muslim Textualities

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Muslim women writers located in Europe and American entered the cultural mainstream. Literary and visual productions negotiated static visual emblems of Islam, most prominently "the veil." They did so not by rejecting veiling practices, but by adapting Muslim resources, concepts and visual tradition to empowerment narratives in popular media. Mainstream reception of their works has often overlooked or misread these negotiations. Muslim Textualities argues for more flexible and capacious interpretation, with particular attention to visibility as a metaphor for political agency and to knowledge of cultural contexts. This provocative volume aims to articulate Muslim female agency through clear and accessible analysis of the theory and concepts driving the interpretation of these works. Scholars interested in the working representations of Muslim women, feminist subjectivities, and the complexities of gender roles, patriarchy, and feminism will find this volume of particular interest.

"In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Muslim women writers located in Europe and American entered the cultural mainstream. In literary and visual productions, the authors negotiated static visual emblems of Islam, most prominently as "the veil." They did so not by rejecting veiling practices, but by devising strategies of representation that drew on Muslim resources, concepts. and visual traditions as well as popular empowerment narratives. Mainstream reception of their works has often overlooked or misread the negotiations and tactics of these productions. Muslim Textualities argues for more flexible and capacious interpretation, with particular attention to visibility as a metaphor for political agency and to knowledge of cultural contexts. This provocative volume aims to articulate the Muslim female agency through clear and accessible analysis of the theory and concepts driving the interpretation of these works. Scholars interested in the working representations of Muslim women, feminist subjectivities, and the complexities of gender roles, patriarchy, and feminism in Islamic narratives will find this volume of particular interest"--

Does Islam call for the oppression of women? Non-Muslims point to the subjugation of women that occurs in many Muslim countries, especially those that claim to be "Islamic," while many Muslims read the Qur’an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression, inequality, and patriarchy. Taking a wholly different view, Asma Barlas develops a believer’s reading of the Qur’an that demonstrates the radically egalitarian and antipatriarchal nature of its teachings. Beginning with a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how Muslims came to read inequality and patriarchy into the Qur’an to justify existing religious and social structures and demonstrates that the patriarchal meanings ascribed to the Qur’an are a function of who has read it, how, and in what contexts. She goes on to reread the Qur’an’s position on a variety of issues in order to argue that its teachings do not support patriarchy. To the contrary, Barlas convincingly asserts that the Qur’an affirms the complete equality of the sexes, thereby offering an opportunity to theorize radical sexual equality from within the framework of its teachings. This new view takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender, and patriarchy, allowing them to understand Islam through its most sacred scripture, rather than through Muslim cultural practices or Western media stereotypes. For this revised edition of Believing Women in Islam, Asma Barlas has written two new chapters—“Abraham’s Sacrifice in the Qur’an” and “Secular/Feminism and the Qur’an”—as well as a new preface, an extended discussion of the Qur’an’s “wife-beating” verse and of men’s presumed role as women’s guardians, and other updates throughout the book.

This collection of essays looks at missions, their complicity in European colonialism, and their postcolonial aftermath. It examines the spread of Christianity, ranging over the anthropological, textual, historical, and geographical dimensions of mission enterprises, with topics as diverse as the influence of mission printing and record-keeping on traditional life in Africa to the role of missions in changing styles of dress in India. Also, uniquely, the collection includes essays analyzing the role of proselytizing in Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as American liberal democratic capitalism. The volume is interdisciplinary, focusing on textual and material aspects of missions. Like Griffiths' earlier ground-breaking books in postcolonial studies, and Scott's well-known interdisciplinary work on missions and postcolonial literatures, this collection will be fascinating to scholars in postcolonial/cultural and mission studies and be useful as a teaching tool as well. Mixed Messages was listed among the 15 best books for 2005 in the Jan 2006 issue of The International Bulletin of Mission Studies .

Jesseka Batteau offers here an in-depth study of the work and performances of the writers Gerard Reve, Jan Wolkers and Maarten ’t Hart as iconic mediators of post-religious memory in the Netherlands.

Discussions surrounding the veil often run along essentialist and ahistorical lines, associating Islam with oppression, shame, and honor. Contributing to these stereotypes, the media in both the East and the West obsessively condemn or valorize practices of veiling. In Veil Obsessed, Umme Al-wazedi and Afrin Zeenat present a range of essays to complicate and challenge the dialogue around the veil, exploring its symbolic, religious, and cultural significance. Scholars from a variety of fields analyze and critique the use of the veil in literature, film, television, and the fine arts. Considering the multiple perceptions of the veil, this volume shows that the meaning of hijab can be natural or constructed, real or metaphorical, and religious or political, when it is presented through the media, in the teachings of Islam, and in upholding it as a national symbol of a nation-state. There are inherent tensions among the ideas concerning the power of hijab. Does wearing it give agency to women or does it represent oppression, thereby creating and perpetuating stereotypes? How an individual sees their relationship with the self, family and community, and the nation-state dictates their choice of whether to wear the veil. In exploring the wide range of portrayals, the editors pose critical questions about perceptions of the veil and the dangers of ignoring its multiplicity.

Papers presented at the National Seminar on Textuality and Intertextuality in the Mahabharata : Myth, Meaning and Metamorphosis held at Ajmer.