Author: Gisela Webb (Editor)ÂÂ
Publisher: Syracuse University Press (June 2000)ÂÂ
Pages: 256 Binding: PaperbackÂÂ

This collection of essays brings together voices from the most recent development in Muslim womens studies, namely, the burgeoning network of Muslim women working on issues of womens human rights through engaged revisionist scholarship in such areas as theology, law and jurisprudence, and womens literature.

The essayists are leading Islamic women scholars in North America who affirm their religious self-identity in their acknowledgement of, and striving toward solving, serious problems women have faced in Muslim societies and communities around the world. Their approach is designed as "scholarship-activism," because it comes from the common conviction that to look at womens issues from with the Islamic perspective must unite issues of theory and practice.

Any theory or analysis of womens nature, role, rights, or problems must include attention to the practical, "on-the-ground" issues involved in actualizing the Quranic mandate of social justice. Concomitantly, any considerations of practical solutions to problems and injustices faced by women must have a solid theological grounding in the Quranic world view. Contributors include representatives from the variety of constituents of Islam in America -- "immigrant" and "indigenous" -- whose works are in the forefront of Islamic discussion and reform today: Amina Wadud, Nimat Hafez Barazangi, Maysam J al-Faruqi, Azizah Y. al-Hibri, Asifa Quraishi, Riffat Hassan, Aminah Beverly McCloud, Mohja Kahf, Rabia Terri Harris, and Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons.