This multi-disciplinary work provides deep and wide-ranging coverage of issues relating to Islam and women. The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women offers authoritative contributions from well-known scholars who provide sophisticated and cutting-edge analysis of topics such as Qur'anic hermeneutics regarding women's status and roles, analysis of hadiths (statements attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) that address women's issues, Islamic legal rulings as they pertain to women's legal and social rights, the scholarly and literary activities of Muslim women through time, and their activism in a number of contemporary Muslim-majority societies.

The essays in this volume delineate a broad spectrum of views on these key issues and above all, emphasize the diversity present in Muslim women's lives, both in the pre-modern and modern periods. Close attention is paid to the historical and political contexts that have shaped their lives, framed by the thoughts and actions of key figures throughout Islamic history. Such an approach results in fine-grained studies of the lived realities of Muslim women across time and space that problematize reified assumptions about gender and agency in the context of Muslim-majority societies, assumptions that remain all too common.