Partners of Zaynab


Book Description

How do pious Shia Muslim women nurture and sustain their religious lives? How do their experiences and beliefs differ from or overlap with those of men? What do gender-based religious roles and interactions reveal about the Shia Muslim faith? In Partners of Zaynab, Diane D'Souza presents a rich ethnography of urban Shia women in India, exploring women's devotional lives through the lens of religious narrative, sacred space, ritual performance, leadership, and iconic symbols. Religious scholars have tended to devalue women's religious expressions, confining them to the periphery of a male-centered ritual world. This viewpoint often assumes that women's ritual behaviors are the unsophisticated product of limited education and experience and even a less developed female nature. By illuminating vibrant female narratives within Shia religious teachings, the fascinating history of a shrine led by women, the contemporary lives of dynamic female preachers, and women's popular prayers and rituals of petition, Partners of Zaynab demonstrates that the religious lives of women are not a flawed approximation of male-defined norms and behaviors, but a vigorous, authentic affirmation of faith within the religious mainstream. D'Souza questions the distinction between normative and popular religious behavior, arguing that such a categorization not only isolates and devalues female ritual expressions, but also weakens our understanding of religion as a whole. Partners of Zaynab offers a compelling glimpse of Muslim faith and practice and a more complete understanding of the interplay of gender within Shia Islam.




Women's Rituals and Ceremonies in Shiite Iran and Muslim Communities


Book Description

In this volume the authors present and discuss different aspects of their field researches and experiences in regard to the women's rituals and devotional practices. One of the main aims of this book is to broaden our understanding of women's devotional life, as well as calling attention to its relation to general social change. Most of the contributions are based on field researches, direct observations and rituals participations. This gives the reader a unique opportunity for better understanding of methodological challenges related to gender issues and field research among Muslim communities. --




Shia Women


Book Description

On the customs, practices, and doctrines of Shīʻah women; partially discusses religious life and status of women in Shia sect of Islam.




Female Personalities in the Qur'an and Sunna


Book Description

This book investigates the manner in which the Qur’an and sunna depict female personalities in their narrative literature. Providing a comprehensive study of all the female personalities mentioned in the Qur’an, the book is selective in the personalities of the sunna, examining the three prominent women of ahl al-bayt; Khadija, Fatima, and Zaynab. Analysing the major sources of Imami Shi‘i Islam, including the exegetical compilations of the eminent Shi‘i religious authorities of the classical and modern periods, as well as the authoritative books of Shi’i traditions, this book finds that the varieties of female personalities are portrayed as human beings on different stages of the spiritual spectrum. They display feminine qualities, which are often viewed positively and are sometimes commendable traits for men, at least as far as the spiritual domain is concerned. The theory, particularly regarding women’s humanity, is then tested against the depiction of womanhood in the hadith literature, with special emphasis on Nahj al-Balagha. Contributing a fresh perspective on classical materials, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Women’s Studies and Shi’i Studies.




Rebuilding Community


Book Description

Over the course of the twentieth century, Shia Ismaili Muslim communities were repeatedly displaced. How, in the aftermath of these displacements, did they remake their communities? Shenila Khoja-Moolji highlights women's critical role in this rebuilding process and breaks new ground by writing women into modern Ismaili history. Rebuilding Community tells the story of how Ismaili Muslim women who fled East Pakistan and East Africa in the 1970s recreated religious community (jamat) in North America. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, Khoja-Moolji illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congregants on feast days and looking after sick coreligionists to engaging in memory work through miracle stories and cookbooks. Khoja-Moolji situates these activities within the framework of ethical norms that more broadly define and sustain the Ismaili sociality. Jamat--and religious community more generally--is not a given, but an ethical relation that is maintained daily and intergenerationally through everyday acts of care. By emphasizing women's care work in producing relationality and repairing trauma, Khoja-Moolji disrupts the conventional articulation of displaced people as dependent subjects.




Women in Shi'ism


Book Description

What is the nature and social role of women? In today's Shi'ism, these questions are often answered through the "separate-but- equal" ideology which emphasizes the role of women as wives and mothers, and places men in authority. But is this the only ideology which can be derived from Shi'i scriptural sources? This book takes a more nuanced approach to that question by exploring how women are portrayed in hadith on ancient sacred narrative - the stories of the prophets. It shows far more diverse views on what it means to be a woman (and, by extension, a man) - and that early Shi'is held competing views about ideals for women.




The Women of Karbala


Book Description

Commemorating the Battle of Karbala, in which the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hosayn and seventy-two of his family members and supporters were martyred in 680 CE, is the central religious observance of Shi'i Islam. Though much has been written about the rituals that reenact and venerate Karbala, until now no one has studied women's participation in these observances. This collection of original essays by a multidisciplinary team of scholars analyzes the diverse roles that women have played in the Karbala rituals, as well as the varied ways in which gender-coded symbols have been used within religious and political discourses. The contributors to this volume consider women as participants in and observers of the Karbala rituals in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and the United States. They find that women's experiences in the Shi'i rituals vary considerably from one community to another, based on regional customs, personal preferences, religious interpretations, popular culture, and socioeconomic background. The authors also examine the gender symbolism within the rituals, showing how it reinforces distinctions between the genders while it also highlights the centrality of women to the symbolic repertory of Shi'ism. Overall, the authors conclude that while Shi'i rituals and symbols have in some ways been used to restrict women's social roles, in other ways they have served to provide women with a sense of independence and empowerment.




Women as Imams


Book Description

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.




"Neither East Nor West"


Book Description

It is argued that Islam is not a homogeneous religion and that Shia women are actively researching, self-reflecting, questioning, and proposing a new approach to Islamic gender norms. This dissertation seeks to show that these empowered Shia women are willfully paving a new path for more progressive Islamic gender norms centered on gender justice rather than gender equality which is still closely in line with the spirit of CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms Discrimination against women. To improve the power dynamics of the global system which is bias in favor Western liberal norms, more focus should be put on why countries and people may oppose or challenge such norms. As such, progressive Muslims need to have their voices heard within international human rights discourses.




Female Religious Authority in Shi'i Islam


Book Description

Reflects on women participating in Islamic scholarly traditions from the classical period to the present