Islam, Women's Sexuality and Patriarchy in Indonesia

Islam, Women's Sexuality and Patriarchy in Indonesia
Author: Irma Riyani
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000221814

This book explores the intimate marital relationships of Indonesian Muslim married women. As well as describing and analysing their sexual relationships, the book also investigates how Islam influences discourses of sexuality in Indonesia, and in particular how Islamic teachings affect Muslim married women’s perceptions and behaviour in their sexual relationships with their husbands. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals that Muslim women perceive marriage as a social, cultural, and religious obligation that they need to fulfil; that they realise that finding an ideal marriage partner is complicated, with some having the opportunity for a long courtship and others barely knowing their partner prior to marriage; and that there is a strong tendency, with some exceptions, for women to consider a sexual relationship in marriage as their duty and their husband’s right. Religious and cultural discourses justify and support this view and consider refusal a sin (dosa) or taboo (pamali). Both discourses emphasise obedience towards husbands in marriage.

Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam

Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam
Author: Bianca J. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2013-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136024328

The traditional Islamic boarding schools known as pesantren are crucial centres of Muslim learning and culture within Indonesia, but their cultural significance has been underexplored. This book is the first to explore understandings of gender and Islam in pesantren and Sufi orders in Indonesia. By considering these distinct but related Muslim gender cultures in Java, Lombok and Aceh, the book examines the broader function of pesantren as a force for both redefining existing modes of Muslim subjectivity and cultivating new ones. It demonstrates how, as Muslim women rise to positions of power and authority in this patriarchal domain, they challenge and negotiate "normative" Muslim patriarchy while establishing their own Muslim "authenticity." The book goes on to question the comparison of Indonesian Islam with the Arab Middle East, challenging the adoption of expatriate and diasporic Middle Eastern Muslim feminist discourses and secular western feminist analyses in Indonesian contexts. Based on extensive fieldwork, the book explores configurations of female leadership, power, feminisms and sexuality to reveal multiple Muslim selves in pesantren and Sufi orders, not only as centres of learning, but also as social spaces in which the interplay of gender, politics, status, power and piety shape the course of life.

Islam, Women's Sexuality and Patriarchy in Indonesia

Islam, Women's Sexuality and Patriarchy in Indonesia
Author: Irma Riyani
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000221911

This book explores the intimate marital relationships of Indonesian Muslim married women. As well as describing and analysing their sexual relationships, the book also investigates how Islam influences discourses of sexuality in Indonesia, and in particular how Islamic teachings affect Muslim married women’s perceptions and behaviour in their sexual relationships with their husbands. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals that Muslim women perceive marriage as a social, cultural, and religious obligation that they need to fulfil; that they realise that finding an ideal marriage partner is complicated, with some having the opportunity for a long courtship and others barely knowing their partner prior to marriage; and that there is a strong tendency, with some exceptions, for women to consider a sexual relationship in marriage as their duty and their husband’s right. Religious and cultural discourses justify and support this view and consider refusal a sin (dosa) or taboo (pamali). Both discourses emphasise obedience towards husbands in marriage.

Gender and Islam in Africa

Gender and Islam in Africa
Author: Margot Badran
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780804774819

Gender and Islam in Africa examines ways in which women in Africa are interpreting traditional Islamic concepts in order to empower themselves and their societies. African women, it argues, have promoted the ideals and practices of equality, human rights, and democracy within the framework of Islamic thought, challenging conventional conceptualizations of the religion as gender-constricted and patriarchal. The contributors come from the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies, religious studies, and law. Their depictions of African women's interpreting and reinterpreting of Islam go back into the nineteenth century and up to today, including analyses of how cultural media such as popular song and film can communicate new gender roles in terms of sexuality and direct examinations of religious and religiously based family law and efforts to reform them.

Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures

Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures
Author: Suad Joseph
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 873
Release: 2003
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004128182

Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.

Sexuality in Muslim Contexts

Sexuality in Muslim Contexts
Author: Anissa Helie
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2012-10-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1780322887

This groundbreaking book explores resistance against the harsh policing of sexuality in some Muslim societies. Many Muslim majority countries still use religious discourse to enforce stigmatization and repression of those, especially women, who do not conform to sexual norms promoted either by the state or by non-state actors. In this context, Islam is often stigmatized in Western discourse for being intrinsically restrictive with respect to women's rights and sexuality. The authors show that conservative Muslim discourse does not necessarily match practices of believers or of citizens and that women's empowerment is facilitated where indigenous and culturally appropriate strategies are developed. Using case studies from Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Israel and India, they argue persuasively that Muslim religious traditions do not necessarily lead to conservative agendas but can promote emancipatory standpoints. An intervention to the construction of 'Muslim women' as uniformly subordinate, this collection spearheads an unprecedented wake of organizing around sexualities in Muslim communities.

Pious Fashion

Pious Fashion
Author: Elizabeth M. Bucar
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017-09-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0674976169

Who says you can’t be pious and fashionable? Throughout the Muslim world, women have found creative ways of expressing their personality through the way they dress. Headscarves can be modest or bold, while brand-name clothing and accessories are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry that caters to pious fashion from head to toe. In this lively snapshot, Liz Bucar takes us to Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia and finds a dynamic world of fashion, faith, and style. “Brings out both the sensuality and pleasure of sartorial experimentation.” —Times Literary Supplement “I defy anyone not to be beguiled by [Bucar’s] generous-hearted yet penetrating observation of pious fashion in Indonesia, Turkey and Iran... Bucar uses interviews with consumers, designers, retailers and journalists...to examine the presumptions that modest dressing can’t be fashionable, and fashion can’t be faithful.” —Times Higher Education “Bucar disabuses readers of any preconceived ideas that women who adhere to an aesthetic of modesty are unfashionable or frumpy.” —Robin Givhan, Washington Post “A smart, eye-opening guide to the creative sartorial practices of young Muslim women... Bucar’s lively narrative illuminates fashion choices, moral aspirations, and social struggles that will unsettle those who prefer to stereotype than inform themselves about women’s everyday lives in the fast-changing, diverse societies that constitute the Muslim world.” —Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Believing Women in Islam

Believing Women in Islam
Author: Asma Barlas
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2019-01-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 147731590X

Is women’s inequality supported by the Qur’an? Do men have the exclusive right to interpret Islam’s holy scripture? In her best-selling book Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an, Asma Barlas argues that, far from supporting male privilege, the Qur’an actually encourages the full equality of women and men. She explains why a handful of verses have been interpreted to favor men and shows how these same verses can be read in an egalitarian way that is fully supported by the text itself and compatible with the Qur’an’s message that it is complete and self-consistent. A Brief Introduction presents the arguments of Believing Women in a simplified way that will be accessible and inviting to general readers and undergraduate students. The authors focus primarily on the Qur’an’s teachings about women and patriarchy. They show how traditional teachings about women’s inferiority are not supported by the Qur’an but were products of patriarchal societies that used it to justify their existing religious and social structures. The authors’ hope is that by understanding how patriarchal traditionalists have come to exercise so much authority in today’s Islam, as well as by rereading some of the Qur’an’s most controversial verses, adherents of the faith will learn to question patriarchal dogma and see that an egalitarian reading of the Qur’an is equally possible and, for myriad reasons, more plausible.

Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity

Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity
Author: Nadia Maria El Cheikh
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674736362

When the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750 CE and ushered in Islam’s Golden Age, ideas about gender and sexuality were central to the process by which the caliphate achieved self-definition and articulated its systems of power and thought. Nadia Maria El Cheikh’s study reveals the importance of women to the writing of early Islamic history.

Mobilizing Piety

Mobilizing Piety
Author: Rachel Rinaldo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2013-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199948100

"Investigates how different approaches to religious interpretation influence Indonesian women's engagement with global Islam and feminism. It also explores the consequences of a more public Islam for women's participation in the public sphere. The book is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork between 2002 and 2010 with four different groups of women activists in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The groups include a secular feminist NGO (Solidaritas Perempuan), a Muslim women's rights NGO (Rahima), the women's group of one of the country's largest Muslim organizations (Fatayat N.U.), and women in a conservative Muslim political party (the Prosperous Justice Party). The women in these have all been deeply influenced by the ongoing Islamic revival. In addition, they are part of the urban middle class. The women of Rahima and Fatayat N.U. are influenced by global feminism and Islamic discourses. They use Islam to express feminist and liberal ideals of equality and rights, and they strive to integrate these frameworks in their own lives. In contrast, women in the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) reject feminism as Western and secular and are more influenced by global Islamic discourses. Although some scholars argue that pious Islam and liberal ideals are incompatible, these activists embrace modernity and sometimes speak in terms of individual agency, empowerment, and rights. The women of Solidaritas Perempuan maintain a balance between their secular activism and personal religiosity. The overall conclusion of Mobilizing Piety is that the Islamic revival has not stymied but has in fact helped to empower many Indonesian women, especially by allowing them to participate in national debates about moral and religious issues"--