Leila Ahmed's "Women and Gender in Islam"

Here's the first of the series on Feminist Interpretations of the Qur'an. Suggestions and feedback will be greatly appreciated! And if you've read this book, you are welcome to offer your own thoughts about the book as well. Rest assured, your opinion will be given the respect and attention it deserves.

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.

Leila Ahmed has served as a professor of Women’s Studies and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. There, she was also the director of the Women’s Studies program from 1991 to 1992. Since 2003, she has been a Victor S. Thomas Professor at the Harvard Divinity School, where she teaches courses in the Women’s Studies and Religion departments. Her other publications include A Border Passage, Edward William Lane: A Study of His Life and Work,  and of British Ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century, "Arab Culture and Writing Women's Bodies," and "Between Two Worlds: The Formation of a Turn of the Century Egyptian Feminist."

Women and Gender in Islam is a historical analysis of the subordination of women. Ahmed argues that Muslim women’s subjugation seems to have arisen as a result of urbanization. Exploring the concept of unveiling in Assyrian law (ca. 1200 BCE), she lists the types of women who had to veil through Middle Eastern history as well as those who were exempt from the practice. Ahmed concludes that it was through cultural exchanges that women have been subordinated in Muslim societies. Early Muslim jurists ensured women’s seclusion in society by defining certain Arabic terms, such as aurah, in a way that denied women access to the public sphere; for example, scholars like Ibn al-Hajj (ca. 13th century CE), asserted that a woman’s voice must be kept private because it has the potential to attract males.

Click here to read about Kecia Ali's text.