The author investigates the configurations of power implicated in the production of the discourses on the 'muslim woman' in the West and North Africa. She argues that as a single category, the 'muslim woman' is an 'invention', whether in the Western discourses of Orientalism (Isabelle Eberhardt) and psychoanalytic feminism (De Beauvoir, Irigaray, Cixous and Lacan), or in the discourses of islamic feminism (Djebar and Mernissi) and Maghrebian nationalism (Habib Bourguiba and Tahar al Haddad).

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the ‘educated girl’ to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women’s and girls’ education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-subjects with specific relationships to the patriarchal family, paid work, Islam, and the nation-state. Thus, discourses on girls’/ women’s education are sites for the construction of not only gender but also class relations, religion, and the nation.

DIVArgues that the discursive erasure of Muslim women within colonial and Hindu nationalist discourse underpinned the construction of other identity categories in late colonial Bengal and remains linked to violence against Indian Muslim women today./div

The war on terror and the Islamophobia it has unleashed have affected the lives of Muslims throughout the United Kingdom--but that affect is felt differently by men and women. This book looks specifically at the role of gender in the debate over terrorism and security, showing how the concept of the "Muslim woman" has been deployed as part of government and media discussions of terrorism and revealing how such stereotyping and mischaracterization affects the varied, distinct lives of countless Muslim women.

Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.

Following a long historical legacy, Muslim women’s lives continue to be represented and circulate widely as a vehicle of intercultural understanding within a context of the "war on terror." Following Edward Said’s thesis that these cultural forms reflect and participate in the power plays of empire, this volume examines the popular and widespread production and reception of Muslim women’s lives and narratives in literature, poetry, cinema, television and popular culture within the politics of a post-9/11 world. This edited collection provides a timely exploration into the pedagogical and ethical possibilities opened up by transnational, feminist, and anti-colonial readings that can work against sensationalized and stereotypical representations of Muslim women. It addresses the gap in contemporary theoretical discourse amongst educators teaching literary and cultural texts by and about Muslim Women, and brings scholars from the fields of education, literary and cultural studies, and Muslim women’s studies to examine the politics and ethics of transnational anti-colonial reading practices and pedagogy. The book features interviews with Muslim women artists and cultural producers who provide engaging reflections on the transformative role of the arts as a form of critical public pedagogy.

The book highlights issues related to the construction of gender in Africa and African identity politics. It explores the limitations of the constructed category of “African Muslim woman” in West Yorkshire. Amina Alrasheed Nayel uses Black feminist epistemology along with postcolonial, feminist, and critical race theory to examine the multiple identities that Sudanese women negotiate in the UK. The diverse settings of Islam and Islamic culture, circumscribed around issues of performativity of Islam and identity construction in the diasporic space are unpacked in this volume. In addition, this work analyzes specific practices and performances, starting with the multifaceted nature of Islam and the problematic concepts of “Sunni/Sufi,” “Muslim woman,” “race,” and “blackness.” The book reveals that exile, nostalgia, and racial/ethnic differences within Islam and the wider UK community underpin the performativity of Muslimness of the Sudanese women living in West Yorkshire, and reiterates the importance of moving beyond the homogeneity of the idea of “Muslim woman” towards investigating the complexities of this group.

The book first explores some of the concrete issues fundamental to status of Muslim women, such as the production of statistics which mask women's contribution to the economies of Arab states. Mernissi also looks at a variety of demographics including education and literacy - she shows their importance not only for empowering women but also for improving their health.

The first to combine the study of representation, gender theory, and Muslim women from a historical and geographical perspective, this book examines where women have represented themselves in art, architecture, and the written word in the Muslim world. The authors explore the gendering and implicit power relations present in the positioning of subject and object in the visual field and look specifically at occasions when women publicly adopted the stance of the viewer, speaker, writer, or patron. Contributors include Ellison Banks Findly, Elizabeth Brown Frierson, Salah M. Hassan, Nancy Micklewright, Leslie Peirce, Kishwar Rizvi, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Yasser Tabbaa, Lucienne Thys-Senoçak, and Ethel Sara Wolper.

Selected as Emma Watson's Jan/Feb 2019 pick for her feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf A Guardian Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for London's Big Read From established literary heavyweights to emerging spoken word artists, the writers in this ground-breaking collection blow away the narrow image of the 'Muslim Woman'. Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride. Among stories of honour killings and ill-fated love in besieged locations, we also find heart-warming connections and powerful challenges to the status quo. From Algiers to Brighton, these stories transcend time and place revealing just how varied the search for belonging can be. Alongside renowned authors such as Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Soueif and Leila Aboulela are emerging voices, published here for the first time.