Feminism, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Islam

Download or read book Feminism, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Islam written by Shehnaz Haqqani and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Islamic tradition has always been flexible, changing over time and constantly adapting to the different societies Muslims find themselves in. Few Muslims today would abide by the fatwa against the printing press under the Ottomans. Moreover, although Islamic law legislates for slavery and child marriage, only a vanishing minority of Muslims consider these practices acceptable today – and some will even argue that Islam never permitted them. Yet some issues, like the prohibition on female-led prayer and female interfaith marriage seem curiously impervious to change. Why is that? Through a mixture of interviews with ordinary Muslims in Texas and critical analysis of contemporary and historical scholarship, Shehnaz Haqqani demonstrates the gendered dimensions of change and negotiation in Islamic tradition. She argues that a reliance on a mostly-male scholarly consensus means that the ‘tradition’ preserves male privilege at the expense of justice for Muslim women.