Women Claim Islam

This text presents the literature of contemporary Islamic feminist authors, and analyzes their strategies for self-definition and self-empowerment. Illustrating the tremendous strides that Arab women have made towards independence since the 1970s, it seeks to shatter prevailing stereotypes. It also provides an alternative feminist understanding of recent, significant events such as the Gulf War. Miriam Cooke brings to a wide audience a multitude of voices that need to be heard. She opens the floodgates on women's Islamic literature, featuring writers like Assia Djebar, Nawal El Saadawi, Fatima Mernissi, and Zaynab al-Ghazali.

"[H]ighly readable...provocative." -- World Literature Today"Clearly writen and well argued, this will be important for large public and academic collections supporting Middle Eastern literature, women's studies, and religious studies at the upper-division undergraduate level and above." -- Choice"Miriam Cooke is supportive of Arab women writers and sympathetic to their efforts of self-expression...Well-argued and supportive... capable of creating discussion and new ideas." -- -Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and Daughter ofIsis"This is a very good book--original, highly readable, an important contribution to our thinking about the issues it raises--a solid piece of scholarship. With it, our field will be refreshed and can begin some of the debates anew. Miriam Cooke is just the person to raise these issues." -- Sondra Hale, author of Gender Politics inSudan: Islamism, Socialism and the State"...addresses a very important phenomenon that is emerging across the Muslim world. A significant number of Muslim women have begun a critique of the established Islamic epistemology as the only appropriate interpretation of Islam. By claiming Islam, they are reclaiming their right to their individual identity. Cooke's advantage is that she brings to the subject a sensitivity rooted in this emerging politics of identity." -- Mahnaz Afkhami,Women'sLearning Partnership

Miriam Cooke is Professor and Director of Asian and African Languages and Literatures at Duke University. She is the author of Women and the War Story (1997) and Gendering War Talk (1993), and co-editor of Opening theGates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (1990).