Women S Rights In Islam

It has been argued that Islam liberated Muslim women by granting them full rights as citizens. Yet in reality we see that women have long been subjected to both cultural and political oppression. Instances such as forced marriages are sadly common in the Muslim World, as are restrictions on education and on their role in the labour force.

Written for Western readers by an American Muslim who gives a perceptive and personal look at women's rights in Islam. She relates her own struggles with inequity and their resolution. Includes stories of other women from around the world.

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

This collection of essays brings together voices from the most recent development in Muslim women's studies, namely, the burgeoning network of Muslim women working on issues of women's human rights through engaged revisionist scholarship in such areas as theology, law and jurisprudence, and women's literature. The essayists are leading Islamic women scholars in North America who affirm their religious self-identity in their acknowledgment of, and striving toward solving, serious problems women have faced in Muslim societies and communities around the world. Their approach is designated as "scholarship-activism" because it comes from the common conviction that to look at women's issues from within the Islamic perspective must unite issues of theory and practice. Any theory or analysis of women's nature, role, rights, or problems must include attention to the practical, "on-the-ground" issues involved in actualizing the Qur'anic mandate of social justice. Concomitantly, any considerations of practical solutions to problems and injustices faced by women must have a solid theological grounding in the Qur'anic world view. Contributors include representatives from the variety of constituents of Islam in America" immigrant" and "indigenous"—whose works are in the forefront of Islamic discussion and reform today: Amina Wadud, Nimat Hafez Barazangi, Maysam J. al-Faruqi, Azizah Y. al-Hibri, Asifa Quraishi, Riffat Hassan, Aminah Beverly McCloud, Mohja Kahf, Rabia Terri Harris, and Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons.