Islamic Society in Practice

Abstract

Islamic Society in Practice is written in a new tradition of Western scholarship on Islam that seeks to represent an alternative view to that of Orientalism. The author sets out to analyze Islam as lived and practiced in everyday life, and brings out the human dimension of a region and a religious tradition that largely have been stereotyped in the West. Without advocating conversion or the blurring of differences, she argues that approaching Islamic and Arab cultures on their own terms and recognizing their strengths and weaknesses will produce the crosscultural understanding necessary for world peace in the twenty-first century. The book, the result of more than two decades of research and over five years of residence in Khartoum, Cairo, and Tunis, covers a wide range of subjects. Among these are the five pillars of Islam, Islamic values and social practice, family and gender relations, the ongoing debate on the reform of family law, Islamic identities in a changing world, and the sociopolitical dimensions of contemporary Islamic movements. The author's study of Islam and her residence among and close interaction with Muslims accorded her considerable access to Islamic culture and enabled her to debunk tenured stereotypes. She gives a very intimate picture of the ethos of Muslim societies and pays special attention to the structure of the extended Muslim family and the status of women in Islamic societies. In a bid to explode the myth of the oppressed Muslim woman, she goes beyond facile observations to look at the deeper social and ethical logic that informs apparent genderbased discrepancies in Islamic laws and practices. She also documents facts about the strides that Muslim women have been making that never make it to the headlines: For instance, many major universities in the Middle East, such as Cairo University, have about 50 percent female students, and until recently, there was a greater proportion of female medical doctors and engineers in Arab Muslim societies than in the West ...