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While many in the West regard feminism and Islam as a contradiction in terms, many Muslims in the East have perceived Western feminist forces in their midst as an assault upon their culture. In this career-spanning collection of influential essays, Margot Badran presents the feminisms that Muslim women have created, and examines Islamic and secular feminist ideologies side by side. Borne out of over two decades of work, this important volume combines essays from a variety of sources, ranging from those which originated as conference papers to those published in the popular press. Also includ

Muslim women's knowledge production in the greater Maghreb: the example of Nana Asma'u of Northern Nigeria / Beverly B. Mack -- Rethinking marginality and agency in postcolonial Niger: a social biography of a Sufi woman scholar / Ousseina D. Alidou -- Deconstructing Islamic feminism: a look at Fatima Mernissi / Raja Rhouni -- Embodied tafsir: South African Muslim women confront gender violence in marriage / Sa'diyyah Shaikh -- Changing conceptions of moral womanhood in Somali popular songs, 1960-1990 / Lidwien Kapteijns -- Guidelines for the ideal mu slim woman: gender ideology and practice in the Tabligh Jamaʻat in the Gambia / Marloes Janson -- Titanic in Kano: video, gender, and Islam / Heike Behrend -- Shariʻa activism and Zina in Nigeria in the era of hudud / Margot Badran -- Women and men put Islamic law to their own use: monogamy versus secret marriage in Mauritania / Corinne Fortier -- Islam, gender, and democracy in Morocco: the making of the mudawana reform / Julie E. Pruzan-Jørgensen -- Family law reform in Mali: contentious debates and elusive outcomes / Benjamin F. Soares -- Legal recognition of Muslim marriages in South Africa / Rashida Manjoo

The emergence and evolution of Egyptian feminism is an integral, but previously untold, part of the history of modern Egypt. Drawing upon a wide range of women's sources--memoirs, letters, essays, journalistic articles, fiction, treatises, and extensive oral histories--Margot Badran shows how Egyptian women assumed agency and in so doing subverted and refigured the conventional patriarchal order. Unsettling a common claim that "feminism is Western" and dismantling the alleged opposition between feminism and Islam, the book demonstrates how the Egyptian feminist movement in the first half of th

By comparing it with the secular feminism that appeared in some Muslim societies starting in the early 20th Century, and sketching its trajectory since its appearance in the 1980s, the novelty of Islamic feminism is brought to light. This movement devoted most of its efforts to defending the rights of citizenship and practiced a secular-nationalist, Islamic-modernist and humanitarian discourse. Islamic feminism, for its part, based its demand for social justice and absolute equality between the genders on sacred texts. Its development has consisted of two stages. In the first stage, which lasted two decades, a model of gender equality in Islam was elaborated on the basis of an innovative reading of the Koran and the fiqh (Islamic law). Although this model drew on the most recent analytical tools of the social sciences, it did not depart from the classical exegetical tradition. The second stage, which began only a few years ago, is characterized, on the one hand, by a desire on the part of its theoreticians to break free of this constraining framework of thought and, on the other, by efforts to construct a transnational movement. It would seem that, in Muslim circles, these two major trends of feminism (secular and Islamic) are today in the process of fusing. Adapted from the source document.

The paper focuses on women and radicalization within the context of Muslim societies (majority, minority, and half Muslim) societies and groups, mainly in Asia and Africa. The basic argument advanced in this paper is that Islamic feminism with its gender-egalitarian discourse and practices has a major role to play in the empowerment of Muslim women—and of men and society as a whole—and should be brought to bear in devising policy, strategy, and tools.