By Lana Sirri

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: May 30, 2022

This book sets out a rationale for the compatibility of Islam and Feminism and shows that Islamic Feminism is a diverse and valuable lens through which to analyze religion and gender. In addition, including scholarship written in Arabic, it promotes the decolonization of knowledge production around Islam, gender and sexuality.

Islamic feminism is a field of study that has been marginalized both in contemporary Islamic discourse and in feminist discourse. This study counters this marginalization in two ways. Firstly, it enumerates the diversity of approaches used in Islamic feminist scholarship. Secondly, it foregrounds voices that are often neglected in discussions of Islam, gender and sexuality by highlighting and contrasting the work of two key scholars: Kecia Ali based in the USA and Olfa Youssef based in Tunisia. The book suggests that in addition to geo-political positioning, language, as a ‘prior-text’, also influences an individual’s personal interpretation of Islamic feminism. This comparison, therefore, enables broader issues to be dissected, such as the interrelationships between life experiences, strategies of resistance to patriarchal and other forms of oppression, and the production of knowledge.

About the Author

Lana Sirri is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Source: Routledge

One of the primary concerns of Muslim parents in the West is the religious identity of their children. Many parents wonder what the secret is to raising a child with imān (faith) in a society in which being Muslim can be challenging. Approximately 70% of people in the U.S. identify as Christian, nearly 23% identify as having no religion, and less than 1% identify as Muslim. Although Muslim families transmit their religious affiliation to their children at higher rates than Christians in America, approximately 20% of those raised as Muslims do not identify as Muslim in adulthood.

In this cultural context, where Christianity is the majority religion and the philosophies of secularism, liberalism, feminism, capitalism, and atheism are pervasive and influential, Muslims who desire to transmit Islam to their children need to understand how to socialize their children to develop a healthy Islamic identity.

Exactly what should parents do to inculcate Islamic beliefs, values, and behaviors in their children? What type of schools should they send their children to? What effects do friends have on their children’s religious identity? What types of parent-child relationships and parenting practices facilitate the development of faith? These are the types of questions that parents ask and need answers to, yet relatively little is known about the process of religious identity development in Muslim youth in America.

This paper provides an overview of theories about the mechanisms by which religion is conveyed and passed down to children in America. Although the overwhelming majority of research has been conducted with adherents of other faiths in the United States, the insights from existing research are invaluable in constructing theoretical models and a roadmap to better understand Islamic identity development of Muslim American youth.

Source: Yaqeen Institute