New edited volume on women and Islam
This new book, edited by Professor Masooda Bano, provides a comprehensive overview of a timely topic that encompasses the fields of Islamic feminist scholarship, anthropology, history, and sociology.
The Cambridge Companion to Women and Islam offers a detailed analysis of textual debates on gender and Islam, highlighting the logic of classical reasoning and its enduring appeal, while emphasizing alternative readings proposed by Islamic feminists. It considers the agency that Muslim women exhibit in relation to their faith as reflected in women's piety movements. Moreover, the volume documents how Muslim women shape socio-political life, presenting real-world examples from across the Muslim world and diaspora communities. Written by an international team of scholars, the Companion also explores theoretical and methodological advances in the field, providing guidance for future research. Surveying Muslim women’s experiences across time and place, it also presents debates on gender norms across various genres of Islamic scholarship.
Authors include ODID’s Katerina Nordin (Choosing Islamic Conservatism), who writes on ‘Veiling and Restrictions on Sexual Liberty’.
Cambridge Companions are a series of authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods.
Masooda Bano is a Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Golding Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. She has held numerous prestigious research awards including European Research Council Starting and Advance grants. Bano is the author of Female Islamic Education Movements: The Re-Democratisation of Islamic Knowledge (2017) and has edited several volumes on Islamic educational institutions in Muslim-majority countries as well as in the West.