This list is for you, dear Muslim man
Books that will actually change your life in a male-dominated Muslim world
Remember: as for women, Islam (in its purest form) has never been against their freedom. It is, to the contrary, opposed to the idea of woman-as-object and it gives her back her dignity. A woman is a man’s equal; she and he are both free to determine their destiny and choose their occupations.
And, just to not forget that Islam, in its purest form, honors and elevates women, here it is a list of books highly recommended to anyone interested in understanding re-interpretations of Islam.
The books
These are alternative readings to the traditionalist ones that are largely patriarchal in nature, or otherwise scholarship that complicate simplified ideas of Islam, women, gender, and sexuality (listed in order of author’s last name). Needless to say, this list is not comprehensive and not intended to be such.
- Nabia Abbott’s Aishah: The Beloved of Mohammed
- Nabia Abbott’s Two Queens of Baghdad
- Rukhsana Ahmad’s (edited volume of poetry) We Sinful Women: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry (includes both the original Urdu as well as English translations)
- Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate
- Kecia Ali’s Sexual Ethics in Islam: Feminist Reflections on the Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence
- Ednan Aslan’s (edited volume) Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians
- Reza Aslan’s No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
- Asma Barlas’s Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
- Beth Baron’s Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics
- Beth Baron’s The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press
- Karen Bauer’s Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’ān: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses
- Marilyn Booth’s May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt
- Ayesha Chaudhry’s Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition
- miriam cooke’s Opening the Gates, Second Edition: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing
- miriam cooke’s Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature
- Anita Desai’s The Quilt and Other Stories
- Asghar Ali Engineer’s Islam Women and Gender Justice
- Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
Mothers, you are responsible for the upbringing of the children; you have the duty of nurturing open-minded, free children in your care to hand over to society. We all have this duty, but it is in your care that they receive a better upbringing. A mother’s lap is the best school for a child.
- Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s The Place of Tolerance in Islam
- Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age
- Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women
- Khaled El-Rouayheb’s Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800
- Juliane Hammer’s American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer
- Riffat Hassan’s (article) “Equal Before Allah? Woman-Man Equality in the Islamic Tradition”
- Aysha Hidayatullah’s Feminist Edges of the Qur’an
- Wilson Jacob’s Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940
- Suad Joseph’s Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East
- Deniz Kandiyoti’s Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspective
- Deniz Kandiyoti’s (edited volume) Women, Islam and the State
- Nikki Keddie’s (edited volume) Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender
- Scott Kugle’s Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims
- Jerusha Lamptey’s Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism
- Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
- Fatima Mernissi’s The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights In Islam
- Ziba Mir-Hosseini’s (edited volume) Men in Charge?: Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition
- Sachiko Murata’s The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought
- Afsaneh Najamabadi’s Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity
Women: let your men complain! You have the status of a true human being and a free individual. Maybe they just need more time to fully understand that there is no suppression in Islam. In Islam there is liberty for all strata of society, for women, men, for whites and blacks, for everyone.
- Omid Safi’s (edited volume) Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism
- Asma Sayeed’s Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Note: An e-copy of this book is available online for free through the publisher, Cambridge University Press. Please click here to access it.)
- Sa’diyya Shaikh’s Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arab?, Gender, and Sexuality
- Sa’diyya Shaikh’s (article) “Tafsir of Praxis”
- Amanullah De Sondy’s The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities
- Barbara Stowasser’s Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation
- Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Woman:Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective
- Amina Wadud’s Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam
- Mai Yamani’s Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives
Thanks to Shehnaz Haqqani for providing the list. Shehnaz is an Islamic Studies PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her interests include Islamic feminism, gender and sexuality in Islamic law, and female religious authority. Shehnaz frequently writes on gender issues, Pashtuns (she’s an ethnic Pashtun), and Muslims in America.
