Miriam Adeney introduces you to women such as Ladan, Khadija, Fatma and others from around the world. You'll learn about their lives, questions and hopes. And you'll gain new understanding of why Muslim women come to Christ.

Experiences of American women choosing Islam.

"Indispensable for those seeking to understand feminist theology. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women share the historical reality of having been silent partners in their own traditions. By bringing their stories together, Daughters of Abraham suggests that they can forge a future characterized by mutual support based on a common bond."--Tamara Sonn, College of William and Mary Important for a general audience interested in women and religion, this book will be especially valuable to scholars in the fields of feminist theology, comparative religion, and interfaith studies. Based on the premise that women’s struggles to have their voices heard are shared throughout the monotheisms, these essays offer new insights into the traditions of three religions during the past century. Six scholars engage in dialogue with their own faith communities, reflecting on their scripture and theology in order to understand the process by which women have been constrained within the patriarchal teachings of the religion. Looking at texts and narratives long utilized to keep women within boundaries, they open up the scriptures and traditions to a feminist interpretation of the historical teachings of their faiths. CONTENTS Women, Religion, and Empowerment, by John L. Esposito 1. Settling at Beer-lahai-roi, by Amy-Jill Levine 2. Hearing Hannah's Voice: The Jewish Feminist Challenge and Ritual Innovation, by Leila Gal Berner 3. The Influence of Feminism on Christianity, by Alice L. Laffey 4. Christian Feminist Theology: History and Future, by Rosemary Radford Ruether 5. Hagar: A Historical Model for "Gender Jihad," by Hibba Abugideiri 6. Rethinking Women and Islam, by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is professor of history and of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University. John L. Esposito is professor of religion and international affairs and professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. Theology/Interfaith Studies/Women’s Studies

“Mom, I have something I need to tell you…” They didn’t talk. Not for ten years. Not about faith anyway. Instead, a mother and daughter tiptoed with pain around the deepest gulf in their lives – the daughter’s choice to leave the church, convert to Islam and become a practicing Muslim. Undivided is a real-time story of healing and understanding with alternating narratives from each as they struggle to learn how to love each other in a whole new way. Although this is certainly a book for mothers and daughters struggling with interfaith tensions , it is equally meaningful for mothers and daughters who feel divided by tensions in general. An important work for parents whose adult children have left the family’s belief system, it will help those same children as they wrestle to better understand their parents. Undivided offers an up close and personal look at the life of an Islamic convert—a young American woman—at a time when attitudes are mixed about Muslims (and Muslim women in particular), but interest in such women is high. For anyone troubled by the broader tensions between Islam and the West, this personal story distills this friction into the context of a family relationship—a journey all the more fascinating. Undivided is a tremendously important book for our time. Will Patricia be able to fully trust in the Christ who “holds all things together?” Will Alana find new hope or new understanding as the conversation gets deeper between them? And can they answer the question that both want desperately to experience, which is “Can we make our torn family whole again?”

For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur’anic schools—and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective. And, in 2011, young women helped to lead antigovernment protests in the Arab Spring. But their voices have not been heard. Their stories have not been told. In Syria, before its civil war, she documents a complex society in the midst of soul searching about its place in the world and about the role of women. In Lebanon, she documents a country that on the surface is freer than other Arab nations but whose women must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. In Abu Dhabi, Zoepf reports on a generation of Arab women who’ve found freedom in work outside the home. In Saudi Arabia she chronicles driving protests and women entering the retail industry for the first time. In the aftermath of Tahrir Square, she examines the crucial role of women in Egypt's popular uprising. Deeply informed, heartfelt, and urgent, Excellent Daughters brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies—from 9/11 to Tahrir Square to the rise of ISIS—and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change.

How would the most cherished stories of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam be different if women were the active central figures? This ground-breaking collection of short stories brings to life the women—daring, brave, thoughtful, and wise—who played important and exciting roles in the early days of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Join Esther as she stands against injustice and her king to save her people, Aisha as she leads hundreds of men into terrifying battle, and Mary as she and Elizabeth dream of the new lives growing inside them. How must Sarah have felt, turning Hagar out into the desert? And how must Hagar have felt, traveling from the safety and security of Abraham's land toward an uncertain future? These stories invite us to come to know and appreciate the struggles and triumphs of these women—mothers, daughters, believers and seekers.

The extraordinary true story of how an iman's daughter escaped her abused childhood, and an honor killing by her strict Muslim family, to find freedom - and love.

In 1957, Henny Harald Hansen, the first Danish female anthropologist, was invited to take part in an archaeological expedition to the site of the projected Dokan Dam on the Little Zab river in Northern Iraq. Although her responsibilities were originally ethnological, she became the guest first of the local sheik and later of her interpreter’s family and as a result, the doors of many Kurdish homes were opened to her that normally would have remained closed to foreigners. She travelled widely among the mountain villages of Iraqi Kurdistan and was able to see from very close range the everyday life of women. First published in 1958 and translated in 1960, this book contains the intimate and fascinating account of Henny Harald Hansen’s travels and her encounters with the women of Kurdistan. It will be of keen interest to those studying women in Islamic societies and anthropology.

We did not stay in our houses. Not in the way our grandmothers had, or our mothers. We went out a little more and veiled ourselves a little less. Some of us longed for more learning and dreamed about leaving home to get it. The elders shook their heads and cautioned: too much education could ruin a girl's future. To be a Muslim girl in the Sri Lanka of the 50s and 60s was to have to stay inside once you hit puberty; where even a glimpse of flesh was forbidden; and where things were done the way they'd always been done. But Yasmin Azad's family is full of love, humour and larger-than-life characters, despite the strictures half of them were under. And almost despite himself, Yasmin's father allows her an education – an education that would open the whole world to her, even as it risked closing her off from those she was closest to. An extraordinary portrait of a time and a community in the midst of profound change, Stay, Daughter vividly evokes a now-vanished world, but its central clash – that of tradition and modernity – is one that will always be with us.