Book Talk: Feminism, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Islam

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

Feminism, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Islam aims to understand Muslims’ relationship with change in Islam. Specifically, it explores why Muslims are resistant to change in some areas but open to it in others. For instance, why does there appear to be so much resistance to permitting women to lead mixed-gender prayers, but rulings on slavery, child marriage, and – to a lesser extent – female inheritance have undergone changes? Shehnaz Haqqani proposes that the process of change, while complicated, exhibits certain patterns, such as the role of gender, generation, power, and lived reality. She shows that inconsistent attitudes towards change and gender affect Muslim women’s quest for scriptural, interpretive, and ritual authority. She theorizes the idea of relevance, connecting lay Muslims’ perception of some gendered issues, such as female-led prayers as “irrelevant,” to academic conversations on the politics of citation and the dismissal of feminist and women’s scholarship. The book offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the tensions between individuals and communities as they make sense of historical traditions that do not coincide with their current moral sensibilities.