Women and Gender in Islam

We all know that the oppressive structures of patriarchy are all-pervasive. But can we see "oppression" in black and white? Certainly not! 

Unless we put things in context and see through their nuances, the vicious Islamophobic tendency (subtly or not) comes into play, caricaturing Islam as the sole source of gender-based oppression. No doubt, the condemnation of Islam flows from prejudice and half-baked Orientalist assumptions surrounding the religion.

Leila Ahmed, a pioneering figure of Islamic feminism, hits hard at the stereotypes surrounding Islam and challenges them. I learned from her that Islam is anything but monolithic, especially from the perspective… show more.

This pioneering volume was the first major single-author work to survey this important subject, and it remains an essential read. Ahmad examines the major issues in the treatment of women in a clear-eyed way. She theorizes that urbanizing families in early Islam constrained women’s freedom beyond what had been common among pagan rural and Bedouin society, but admits that the picture is mixed, and that at the core of the Muslim religious tradition are accounts and insights of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad.