Questioning the ‘Muslim Woman’

Questioning the ‘Muslim Woman’
Author: Nida Kirmani
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-03-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134910371

The marginalisation of Muslims in India has recently been the subject of heated public debate. In these discussions, however, Muslim women are often either overlooked or treated as a homogenous group with a common set of interests. Focusing on the narratives of women living in a predominantly Muslim colony in South Delhi, this book attempts to demonstrate the complexity of their lives and the multiple levels of insecurity they face. Unlike other studies on Indian Muslims that focus on Islam as a defining factor, this book highlights the ways in which religious identity intersects with other identities including class/status, regional affiliation and gender. The author also sheds light on the impact of such events as the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 and the subsequent riots, the Gujarat communal carnage in 2002, and the anti-Sikh violence in New Delhi in 1984, along with the rise of Hindutva, and growing Islamophobia experienced worldwide in the post-9/11 period — on the articulation of identities at the local level and increasing religion-based spatial segregation in Indian cities. The study highlights how these incidents combine in different ways to increase the sense of marginalisation experienced by Muslims at the level of the locality. Understanding the need to look beyond preconceived religious categories, this book will serve as essential reading for those interested in sociology, anthropology, gender, religious and urban studies, as well as policymakers and organisations concerned with issues related to religious minorities in India.

Unequal Citizens

Unequal Citizens
Author: Zoya Hasan
Publisher: OUP India
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006-09-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780195684599

This survey based study of Muslim women in India seeks to dispel popular misperceptions and stereotypes regarding their status, as well as seriously engage with academic debates on gender and Islam.

Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women

Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
Author: Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0253062055

When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world. Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them. Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.

Indian Muslim Women’s Movement

Indian Muslim Women’s Movement
Author: Zakia Soman, Dr. Noorjehan Safia Niaz
Publisher: Notion Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2020-07-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1649199872

This collection of essays and articles captures the beginning of the Muslim women’s movement in India in the last two decades. Written at different points during the journey, these pieces provide a glimpse into the collective tumultuous journey of women demanding reform in Muslim family law in India and for equal citizenship without discrimination. This journey was undertaken by ordinary women under their own leadership. This collection highlights the challenges faced by women. It also celebrates successes such as the organization of women into groups, abolition of triple talaq and women’s entry into the mazar of Haji Ali Dargah. This book is a collection of articles written by authors, individually and jointly in various newspapers, magazines, journals and other publications. It challenges the misogynist regressive norms for women in family set by patriarchal religious groups. It calls for state accountability in providing safety, security and equality to Muslim citizens. Based on experiences and insights from grounded struggle of ordinary women, these essays give hope and provide strength in addressing discrimination through shared vision and collective democratic action. It calls out the failure of conservative religious leadership as well as elected representatives in providing an enabling environment to the community and particularly, women. It calls out certain feminists for their dual standards and for unsuccessful attempts to weaken the movement for reform in family law led by ordinary Muslim women.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
Author: Lila Abu-Lughod
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2013-11-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0674726332

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam. It offers a detailed, moving portrait of the actual experiences of ordinary Muslim women, and of the contingencies with which they live.

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans
Author: Thomas Chambers
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787354539

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans provides an ethnography of life, work and migration in a North Indian Muslim-dominated woodworking industry. It traces artisanal connections within the local context, during migration within India, and to the Gulf, examining how woodworkers utilise local and transnational networks, based on identity, religiosity, and affective circulations, to access resources, support and forms of mutuality. However, the book also illustrates how liberalisation, intensifying forms of marginalisation and incorporation into global production networks have led to spatial pressures, fragmentation of artisanal labour, and forms of enclavement that persist despite geographical mobility and connectedness. By working across the dialectic of marginality and connectedness, Thomas Chambers thinks through these complexities and dualities by providing an ethnographic account that shares everyday life with artisans and others in the industry. Descriptive detail is intersected with spatial scales of ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’, with the demands of supply chains and labour markets within India and abroad, with structural conditions, and with forms of change and continuity. Empirically, then, the book provides a detailed account of a specific locale, but also contributes to broader theoretical debates centring on theorisations of margins, borders, connections, networks, embeddedness, neoliberalism, subjectivities, and economic or social flux.

Muslim Women's Quest for Gender Justice

Muslim Women's Quest for Gender Justice
Author: Mengia Hong Tschalaer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2017-07-04
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107155770

"Discusses the claim that understanding the legal world as plural is an important starting point to think about women's access to justice"--

Contemporary Muslim Girlhoods in India

Contemporary Muslim Girlhoods in India
Author: Saba Hussain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre: Muslim girls
ISBN: 9780367728359

Based on empirical research in India, this book presents a post-colonial feminist analysis of subjectivities available to Muslim girls and the ways in which they are inhabited and negotiated. Examining government education policies together with the narratives of teachers and parents, the author explores the manner in which gender, class, ethnicity and religion intersect both to confer certain subjectivities and to challenge or reinforce the conferred subjectivities. A study of the imposition of subjectivities that label Muslim girls as economically subordinate and culturally different, Contemporary Muslim Girlhoods in India analyses Muslim girls' reconstructions of self through a combination of reflexivity, resilience and agency, and conformity. Drawing on the thought of Pierre Bourdieu and Nancy Fraser, this volume offers an original contribution to the study of gendered minorities, institutions and relationships in post-colonial contexts, and an alternative to identitarian politics or cultural explanations of Muslim women's educational deprivation in India. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and gender studies with interests in education, class, religion and identity.

Reclaiming the Nation

Reclaiming the Nation
Author: Vrinda Narain
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0802092780

Living in pluralist India has had critical consequences for Muslim women who are expected to follow a determined and strict code of conduct. The impact of this contradiction is most evident in the continuing denial of gender equality within the family, as state regulation of gender roles in the private sphere ultimately affects the status of women in the public sphere. Reclaiming the Nation examines the relationship between gender and nation in post-colonial India through the lens of marginalized Muslim women. Drawing on feminist legal theory, postcolonial feminist theory, and critical race theory, Vrinda Narain explores the idea of citizenship as a potential vehicle for the emancipation of Muslim women. Citizenship, Narain argues, opens the possibility for Indian women to reclaim a sense of selfhood free from imposed identities. In promoting the hybridity of culture and the modernity of tradition, Narain shows how oppositional categories such as public versus private, Muslim versus feminist, and Western versus Indian have been used to deny women equal rights. A timely account of the struggle for liberation within a restrictive religious framework, Reclaiming the Nation is an insightful look at gender, nationhood, and the power of self-determination.