Presents multifaceted aspects of Asian Muslim women's lives and agencies.This book resists the homogenization of Muslim women by detailing the diversity in their lives and by challenging the dominant paradigm of Arabized Islam as the sole interpreter of the faith. Though much has been written on the Middle East, there is a huge gap in research on Asia, which has two-thirds of the world's Muslim population. These essays reveal that the lives of Muslim women are impacted not only by Islam but also by local politics, class, religion, and ethnicity. Through ethnographic research and other methodologies, the contributors describe how economic globalization, construction of sexualities, and diasporic expectations shape women's lives. The book focuses on women's negotiations and resistances to global, national, and local patriarchies in an attempt to empower themselves.
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh is Professor of Women's Studies at San Diego State University and the editor of Contesting Feminisms: Gender and Islam in Asia, also published by SUNY Press.
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionHuma Ahmed-GhoshPart I. Globalization and Transnationalism: The Muslim Woman and Public Space 1. "Just 6P on a T-shirt, or 12P on a pair of jeans": Bangladeshi Garment Workers Fight for a Livable WageShelley Feldman2. Dilemmas of Women’s Movements in Turkey: Labor, Charity, and Neoliberal PatriarchyDamla Isik3. Complicated Belonging: Gendered Empoerment and Anxieties about "Returning" among Internally Displaced Muslim Women in Puttalam, Sri LankaSandya Hewamanne4. Women in Post-Conflict Sweat, Pakistan: Notes on Agency, Resistance, and SurvivalLubna Nazir ChaudhryPart II. Muslim Women: Lived Realities, Resistance, and the State 5. Maintenance for Divorced Muslim Women after the Muslim Women (Protection of Right on Divorce) Act 1986: A View from the Lower CourtsSylvia Vatuk6. Gender, Sharia, and the Politics of Punishment: A Contemporary Malaysian CaseMaila Stivens7. At the Forefront of a Post-Patriarchal Islamic Education: Female Teachers in IndonesiaAnn Kull8. Education, Gender, and Islam in China: The Place of Religious Education in Challenging and Sustaining "undisputed traditions" among Chinese Muslim WomenMaria Jaschok and Hsu Ming Vicky ChanPart III. Women’s Voices and Agency: Challenging and Reclaiming Islam 9. Cosmetics, Fashion, and Moral Panics: The Politics and Ethics of Beauty in a Girls’ Dormitory in KabulJulie Billaud10. Negotiating Polygamy: Islam, Gender, and Feminism in IndonesiaSonja van Wichelen11. South Asian Muslim American Girls: Resistance and Compliance in Public and Private SpacesMarcia Hermansen and Mahruq F. KhanContributorsIndex
"This book's greatest strength is the diversity of its scope, both geographically and thematically, without reducing Muslim women to particular roles and/or identities." — Bahar Davary, author of Women and the Qur'an: A Study in Islamic Hermeneutics
