In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, some advocated a turn toward “tradition,”thereby raising fears that women would be pushed out of the public arena despitetheir active participation and would even lose those gains made underprevious governments. The debates around gender parity vs. complementaritythat were stirred up were not new, but they did manage to...Read More

During a discussion in my “CPRL 373 Women in Islam” class, students werebaffled by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111) candid discussion of sex in hisIḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn.1 I was not surprised, because many assumptions are takenfor granted about medieval Muslim scholars due to their religious and sectarianreputations, cultural environments, and eras. However, without highlightingany sexual...Read More

Sa’diyya Shaikh’s groundbreaking Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi,Gender, and Sexuality not only makes a significant contribution to the growingbody of scholarship on issues of gender and Islam, but also serves as an eloquentand accessible introduction to the life and work of Muhyi al-Din ibnArabi, unquestionably one of the most important voices in the Islamic...Read More

Edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, Women, Leadership, andMosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority is a compilation ofpapers presented at a 2009 conference of the same name. The book’s twentychapters represent a diverse range of geographic, thematic, and methodologicalapproaches to questions of female leadership within mosques, religiousscholarship, education, Muslim organizations, and other Islamic spaces....Read More