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Women in almost every Muslim society have placed issues of women's rights firmly at the heart of their societies' politics. Women-centered secular religious and/or nonreligious perspectives and activities, through their resistance against Islamist gender politics, have introduced a new dynamism into debates over religion and the secular and the separation of state and faith. This essay questions the outcome for women who in their continued and persistent intellectual tendencies push for Islamic feminism as the only homegrown, locally produced, and culturally appropriate frame for feminist activism in Muslim-majority countries.

This article discusses the gender character of displacement. Using the example of the Iranian female diaspora, it argues that women's experience of displacement is relatively more positive than that of men, and women, generally, are more prepared and make more efforts to build a home away from home. However, the pressures for cultural resistance against the dominant culture and the institutional racism in the host country may counterbalance the impact of women's positive experiences. Under the banner of 'cultural resistance', patriarchal values and sexist norms are revitalized within the family as well as in the community, and the voices of dissent are muted and dismissed as outside influences.