DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Jocelyne Cesari editor José Casanova editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:27th Apr '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective cover

The relationship between secularism, democracy, religion, and gender equality has been a complex one across Western democracies and still remains contested. When we turn to Muslim countries, the situation is even more multifaceted. In the views of many western commentators, the question of Women Rights is the litmus test for Muslim societies in the age of democracy and liberalism. Especially since the Arab Awakening, the issue is usually framed as the opposition between liberal advocates of secular democracy and religious opponents of women's full equality. Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective critically re-engages this too simple binary opposition by reframing the debate around Islam and women's rights within a broader comparative literature. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, it examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality. Part One addresses the nexus of religion, law, gender, and democracy through different disciplinary perspectives (sociology, anthropology, political science, law). Part Two localizes the implementation of this nexus between law, gender, and democracy and provides contextualized responses to questions raised in Part One. The contributors explore the situation of Muslim women's rights in minority conditions to shed light on the gender politics in the modernization of the nation and to ponder on the role of Islam in gender inequality across different Muslim countries.

Its engagement with a broad range of comparative literature, providing rich topics, issues, and debates, makes it a fascinating read. * Ravza Altuntaş Çakır, Insight Turkey *
[T]he book succeeds in problematizing the simplistic association of women's equality with secularism. Its essays present a wide swath of experiences which are diverse enough to demonstrate why the targeted bifurcation is too simplistic (as it is in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Senegal) without ignoring contexts in which it sometimes appears applicable (as it does to varying extents in Iran, India, Morocco, and Tunisia)... It would work well as a supplement in undergraduate or graduate sociology, anthropology, or political science courses that discuss religion and gender, although instructors should select chapters judiciously to ensure representation of the breadth of perspectives from its case studies that is necessary to problematize its target simplifications. * Rachel Jonker, Reading Religion *

ISBN: 9780198788553

Dimensions: 242mm x 171mm x 25mm

Weight: 626g

320 pages