Customer Reviews

Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Feminism and Islam" edited by Mai Yamani "the first Saudi Arabian woman to earn a doctorate degree from Oxford." Chapter titles include: "Entrepreneurial Women In Egypt"; "Law and the Desire for Social Control: An Insight into the Hanafi Concept of Kafa'a with Reference to the Fatawa Alamgiri (1664-1672)"[equality in marriage: Kafa'a]; "Women, Islam and Patriarchalism in Morocco" [sexual segregation, female abuses 1980s]; "Women in Islamic law" [kinship; sharia; muhsinat; qawwamun; polygamy]; " The Political Agendas and Textual Strategies of Levantine Women Writers" [since 1850s, novels; al-Sabbar; PLO; Hamidah Na'na]; "Crimes of Honour and the Construction of Gender in Arab Societies" ; "Islam and Feminism: An Analysis of Political Strategies" [Iran 1980s]; "The Mythology of Modernity: Women and Democracy in Lebanon" [1980s decline]; "Gulf Women and Islamic Law" [Egyptian Abdul-Halim Abu Shaqqa 1980s]; "Some Observations on Women in Saudi Arabia" [the veil, segregation, commercial law]; " A Feminist Reading of the Sharia in Post-Khomeini Iran" ; "Islamic Family Legislation" [divorce, motherhood rights]. The main shortcoming of these articles is that they tend to be short, and therefore tend to be briefly `generic' in their pro-feminist perspectives. Most of the articles refer to tradition as noted in the ahadith, but there is no extensive in-depth analysis of any particular topic between the various religious-law schools. But this is a useful book in beginning to understand the complaints by Muslim women as to how they believe Islamic ahadith have been `improperly' interpreted in curtailing the rights of women in having greater freedom - whether that be political, social, or economic - but I saw no discussion as to how women should have some new rights in influencing Islamic religious thinking.