Expands and updates family law as it pertains to women with regard to marriage, divorce and inheritance throughout the Middle East.This second revised edition of John L. Esposito's landmark work expands and updates coverage of family law reforms -- marriage, divorce, and inheritance -- throughout the Middle East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Given the intense political scrutiny of Islam and Muslims, which often centres on gendered concerns, The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender is an outstanding reference source to key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into seven parts: Foundational texts in historical and contemporary contexts Sex, sexuality, and gender difference Gendered piety and authority Political and religious displacements Negotiating law, ethics, and normativity Vulnerability, care, and violence in Muslim families Representation, commodification, and popular culture These sections examine key debates and problems, including: feminist and queer approaches to the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic law, and ethics, Sufism, devotional practice, pilgrimage, charity, female religious authority, global politics of feminism, material and consumer culture, masculinity, fertility and the family, sexuality, sexual rights, domestic violence, marriage practices, and gendered representations of Muslims in film and media. The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, Islamic studies, and gender studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as cultural studies, area studies, sociology, anthropology, and history.

The eighteen essays in this volume cover a wide range of material and reevaluate women's studies and Middle Eastern studies, Muslim women and the Shari'a courts, the Ottoman household, Dhimmi communities, children and family law, morality, and violence.

Dante is one of the towering figures of medieval European literature. Yet many riddles and questions about him persist. By re-reading Dante with an open mind, Barbara Reynolds made remarkable discoveries and unlocked previously hidden secrets about this greatest of Florentine poets. A fundamental enigma has tantalised readers of the 'Commedia' for seven centuries. Who was the leader prophesied by Virgil and Beatrice to bring peace to the world? Many attempts have been made to identify him, but none has seemed conclusive - until now. As well as proposing a solution to the famous prophecies, this lively, engaging and elegantly-written biography contains a provocative new idea in virtually every chapter. Dr Reynolds' research indicates that Dante smoked cannabis to reach new heights of creativity. That Beatrice, Dante's great love, was not who most scholars think she was. That Dante was a talented public speaker, who created a quite new form of poetic art, holding audiences spellbound. Above all, Reynolds views Dante as one of the greatest spin-doctors of Western civilization. His aim was not to preach an interesting parable about punishments for sin and rewards for virtue. It was to use poetry to change the politics of the age, and unite Europe around the secular authority of an Emperor. To promote this idea, which dominated his writings from his exile onwards, Dante combined it with a dramatic presentation of the Christian belief in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Vividly told in the first person, with a colour and immediacy derived from the pop art of street narrators - now made to seem respectable by its use of classical predecessors like Virgil - this extraordinary journey through the three realms was always profoundly political in intent. Dante here comes alive as never before: irate, opinionated, settling scores - a man of mutifaceted gifts and extraordinary genius, whose role as an interpreter of world history makes him more than ever relevant to the new millennium.

Gender equality is a modern ideal, which has only recently, with the expansion of human rights and feminist discourses, become inherent to generally accepted conceptions of justice. In Islam, as in other religious traditions, the idea of equality between men and women was neither central to notions of justice nor part of the juristic landscape, and Muslim jurists did not begin to address it until the twentieth century. The personal status of Muslim men, women and children continues to be defined by understandings of Islamic law codified and adapted by modern nation-states that assume authority to be the natural prerogative of men, that disadvantage women and that are prone to abuse. This volume argues that effective and sustainable reform of these laws and practices requires engagement with their religious rationales from within the tradition. Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law offers a groundbreaking analysis of family law, based on fieldwork in family courts, and illuminated by insights from distinguished clerics and scholars of Islam from Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia, as well as by the experience of human rights and women s rights activists. It explores how male authority is sustained through law and court practice in different contexts, the consequences for women and the family, and the demands made by Muslim women s groups. The book argues for women's full equality before the law by re-examining the jurisprudential and theological arguments for male guardianship (qiwama, wilaya) in Islamic legal tradition. Using contemporary examples from various contexts, from Morocco to Malaysia, this volume presents an informative and vital analysis of these societies and gender relations within them. It unpicks the complex and often contradictory attitudes towards Muslim family law, and the ways in which justice and ethics are conceived in the Islamic tradition. The book offers a new framework for rethinking old formulations so as to reflect contemporary realities and understandings of justice, ethics and gender rights. "

A longitudinal, intersectional study of migrant women, this book examines the lives of first generation Bangladeshi migrants to the UK, considering the dynamic relationship between people and place. Shedding new light on a migrant population about which little is known, the author explores the experiences of women who left rural homes to live in London, speaking no English, with no experience of local customs and having to adjust to what would now be dramatically shrunken family sizes, within which they would act as bearers of culture and tradition. Based on research spanning a decade Family, Citizenship and Islam draws on qualitative interviews with over 100 women and examines questions of identity, belonging, citizenship and Britishness, religion, ageing, care, and the family. With attention to the fluidity of the experiences of the first generation of migration women, the book offers an alternative to much ethnographic research, which often offers only a 'snapshot' of a particular minority or migrant group as fixed and preserved in time. As such, Family, Citizenship and Islam will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and anthropology with interests in migration and diaspora, citizenship, gender, religion, family and the lifecourse, and the ways in which these different aspects of a person's life come together to shape lived experience.

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

For several decades, the Muslim world has experienced a religious resurgence. The reassertion of Islam in personal and political life has taken many forms, from greater attention to religious practice to the emergence of Islamic organizations, movements, and institutions. One of the most controversial and emotionally charged aspects of this revival has been its effect on women in Muslim societies. The essays collected in this book place this issue in its historical context and offer case studies of Muslim societies from North Africa to Southeast Asia. These fascinating studies shed light on the impact of the Islamic resurgence on gender issues in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Oman, Bahrain, the Philippines, and Kuwait. Taken together, the essays reveal the wide variety that exists among Muslim societies and believers, and the complexity of the issues under consideration. They show that new things are happening for women across the Islamic world, and are in many cases being initiated by women themselves. The volume as a whole militates against the stereotype of Muslim women as repressed, passive, and without initiative, while acknowledging the very real obstacles to women's initiatives in most of these societies.