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This book examines the relationship between religion, democracy, and women's organizations in Kuwait. More specifically, it looks at whether these organizations are working toward achieving formal political rights for women. Helen Rizzo examines how interpretations of religion affected the goals and activities of the organizations in terms of women's empowerment and if the organizations were pushing the democratization process. Much of the recent literature on the relationship between Islam, democracy, and women's rights has been negative and pessimistic. Instead, this book examines the complicated relationship between these three things, arguing that some women in Kuwait are using Islam in their discourse to justify women's right to equality and public participation, thus countering the arguments that see Islam, democracy, and women's rights as inherently and culturally incompatible.
This collection reframes the debate around Islam and women's rights within a broader comparative literature that examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality.
Is Islam compatible with democracy? Must fundamentalism win out in the Middle East, or will democracy ever be possible? In this now-classic book, Islamic sociologist Fatima Mernissi explores the ways in which progressive Muslims--defenders of democracy, feminists, and others trying to resist fundamentalism--must use the same sacred texts as Muslims who use them for violent ends, to prove different views. Updated with a new introduction by the author written in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Islam and Democracy serves as a guide to the players moving the pieces on the rather grim Muslim chessboard. It shines new light on the people behind today's terrorist acts and raises provocative questions about the possibilities for democracy and human rights in the Islamic world. Essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East today, Islam and Democracy is as timely now as it was upon its initial, celebrated publication.
The relationship between secularism, democracy, religion, and gender equality has been a complex one across Western democracies and still remains contested. When we turn to Muslim countries, the situation is even more multifaceted. In the views of many western commentators, the question of Women Rights is the litmus test for Muslim societies in the age of democracy and liberalism. Especially since the Arab Awakening, the issue is usually framed as the opposition between liberal advocates of secular democracy and religious opponents of women's full equality. Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective critically re-engages this too simple binary opposition by reframing the debate around Islam and women's rights within a broader comparative literature. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, it examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality. Part One addresses the nexus of religion, law, gender, and democracy through different disciplinary perspectives (sociology, anthropology, political science, law). Part Two localizes the implementation of this nexus between law, gender, and democracy and provides contextualized responses to questions raised in Part One. The contributors explore the situation of Muslim women's rights in minority conditions to shed light on the gender politics in the modernization of the nation and to ponder on the role of Islam in gender inequality across different Muslim countries.
In Rethinking Islam, Katajun Amirpur argues that the West’s impression of Islam as a backward-looking faith, resistant to post-Enlightenment thinking, is misleading and—due to its effects on political discourse—damaging. Introducing readers to key thinkers and activists—such as Abu Zaid, a free-thinking Egyptian Qur’an scholar; Abdolkarim Soroush, an academic and former member of Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution Committee; and Amina Wadud, an American feminist who was the first woman to lead the faithful in Friday Prayer—Amirpur reveals a powerful yet lesser-known tradition of inquiry and dissent within Islam, one that is committed to democracy and human rights. By examining these and many other similar figures’ ideas, she reveals the many ways they reject fundamentalist assertions and instead call for a diversity of opinion, greater freedom, and equality of the sexes.
The military rule of General Zia ul-Haq, former President of Pakistan, had significant political repercussions for the country. Islamization policies were far more pronounced and control over women became the key marker of the state's adherence to religious norms. Women's rights activists mobilized as a result, campaigning to reverse oppressive policies and redefine the relationship between state, society and Islam. Their calls for a liberal democracy led them to be targeted and suppressed. This book is a history of the modern women's movement in Pakistan. The research is based on documents from the Women's Action Forum archives, court judgments on relevant cases, as well as interviews with activists, lawyers and judges and analysis of newspapers and magazines. Ayesha Khan argues that the demand for a secular state and resistance to Islamization should not be misunderstood as Pakistani women sympathizing with a western agenda. Rather, their work is a crucial contribution to the evolution of the Pakistani state. The book outlines the discriminatory laws and policies that triggered domestic and international outcry, landmark cases of sexual violence that rallied women activists together and the important breakthroughs that enhanced women's rights. At a time when the women's movement in Pakistan is in danger of shrinking, this book highlights its historic significance and its continued relevance today.
In Turkey, no secular party has approximated the high levels of membership and intense activism of women within the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy examines the experiences of these women, who represented an unprecedented phenomenon within Turkish politics. Using in-depth interviews, Yeşim Arat reveals how the women of the party broadened the parameters of democratic participation and challenged preconceived notions of what Islam can entail in a secular democratic polity. The women of the party successfully mobilized large groups of allegedly apolitical women by crossing the boundaries between the social and the political, reaching them through personal networks cultivated in private spaces. The experiences of these women show the contentious relationship between liberal democracy and Islam, where liberalism that prioritizes the individual can transform, coexist, or remain in tension with Islam that prioritizes a communal identity legitimized by a sacred God.
Gender relations in Muslim-majority countries have been subject to intense debate in recent decades. In some cases, Muslim women have fought for and won new rights to political participation, reproductive health, and education. In others, their agendas have been stymied. Yet missing from this discussion, until now, has been a systematic examination of how civil society groups mobilize to promote women’s rights and how multiple components of the state negotiate such legislation. In Bargaining for Women’s Rights, Alice J. Kang argues that reform is more likely to happen when the struggle arises from within. Focusing on how a law on gender quotas and a United Nations treaty on ending discrimination against women passed in Niger while family law reform and an African Union protocol on women’s rights did not, Kang shows how local women’s associations are uniquely positioned to translate global concepts of democracy and human rights into concrete policy proposals. And yet, drawing on numerous interviews with women’s rights activists as well as Islamists and politicians, she reveals that the former are not the only ones who care about the regulation of gender relations. Providing a solid analytic framework for understanding conflict over women’s rights policies without stereotyping Muslims, Bargaining for Women’s Rights demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Islam does not have a uniformly negative effect on the prospects of such legislation.
This book explores the relationship between gender, religion and political action in Indonesia, examining the patterns of gender orders that have prevailed in recent history, and demonstrating the different forms of social power this has afforded to women. It sets out the part played by women in the nationalist movement, and the role of the women’s movement in the structuring of the independent Indonesian state, the politics of the immediate post-independence period and the transition to the authoritarian New Order. It analyses in detail the gender relations of the New Order regime, focused around the unitary family form supposed by the family system expounded in the New Order ideology and the contradictory implications of the opening up of the economy to foreign capital and ideas, for gender relations. It examines the forms of political activism that were possible for the women’s movement under the New Order, and the role it played in the fall of Suharto and the transition to democracy. The relationship between Islam and women in Indonesia is also addressed, with particular focus on the way in which Islam became a critical focus for political dissent in the late New Order period. Overall, this book provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between gender, religion and democracy in Indonesia, and is a vital resource for students of gender studies and Indonesian affairs.