Women Claim Islam

Abstract

This book embarks on a sojourn into the stories and autobiographies of Arab women writers who "claim Islam" by "writing themselves into the history of the twentieth century." Being situated outside their nations' historical narratives, Cooke examines the literary practices of Arab Muslim women who have entered into global political discourses as vibrant public intellectuals, rather than as history's invisible subtext. According to her, Arab Muslim women "have been left out of history, out of the War Story, out of the narratives of emigration and exile, out of the physical and hermeneutical spaces of religion." Thus Muslim women intellectuals and writers are challenging the erasures of their experiences in the public and discursive spaces of nation, community, and faith. Cooke argues that women have become the "symbolic center" in societies increasingly dominated by Islamic discourse. But while this discourse gives "unprecedented importance to women," it also centers them as pivotal to the "virtuous Muslim community" and thereby dictates constricting rules for their "appropriate behavior." This has resulted in a preoccupation with regulating and policing women's bodies (clearly evident in Talibanized Afghanistan). Yet at the same time, shifting women's experiences from the margins to the center of discursive focus has allowed their voices to emerge in new ways. 1n many cases, this stakes their claim to a more empowering Islamic identity. This movement has allowed Muslim women writers and intellectuals to develop a gendered Islamic epistemology. According to Cooke, these women "do not challenge the sacrality of the Qur'an, but they do examine the temporality of its interpretations." ...