The success of transnational religious and feminist movements throughout the globe is simultaneously endorsing the tension between essentialised notions of Islam and the “west” and directing the move towards reinterpreting modernity and redefining the religious sphere. Feminist scholars from within and outside Islamic faith are placing women´s right issues at the heart of the outgoing debate on gendered Islam and multiple modernities.
This collection of articles, emanating from a seminar organized by TAPRI in August 2007, shows a multiplicity of contexts and social locations within women´s movement inside an Islamic framework. The struggles and negotiations are situated in diverse settings and geographical scales: in the debate concerning the conception of ´Islamic feminism` and ´Islamic feminists`; in national contexts of Morocco and Turkey; in the narration of committed Muslim women living in France and in Germany; in a university setting in Italy; and in critical engagement with scholarly texts in religion. The diversity of the sites has been chosen so as to illustrate some if the variety of ways in which patriarchy, along with other axis of domination, is being challenged in an Islamic framework. At the same time, the articles portray different ways of understanding what constitutes ´Islamic feminism` in the wider context of debates concerning gender and religiosity.
