Miscellaneous

Dossier 26: Constructing Identities - Culture, women’s agency, and the Muslim world*

* This paper inevitably draws on my previous writing on the international network Women Living Under Muslim Laws, especially ‘Controlled or autonomous: identity and the experience of the network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 19, Number 4, 1994, pp 997-1019. Moreover, the analysis presented owes much to the women linked through the network. Any idiosyncrasies, however, are obviously my own.

The Muslim world in context

Dossier 26: The Quest for Gender Justice: Emerging feminist voices in Islam

Who is to say if the key that unlocks the cage might not lie hidden inside the cage?1

If justice and fairness are inherent to Islam - as fuqaha claim and all Muslims believe - should not these virtues be reflected in the ‘Islamic’ laws that regulate the relations between men and women as well as their respective rights? Why have women been treated as second-class citizens in the fiqh books that have come to define the terms of the Shari’a?

Dossier 26: What is your tribe? Women’s struggles and the construction of Muslimness

The first part of the strange title of this article originates in a personal experience. In 1962, after a seven-year bloody war, which made two million victims, Algeria became independent from French colonisation. Shortly after independence, some of us were being introduced, as ‘Algerians’, to some left intellectuals in Paris who had been in favour of our liberation movement.

Dossier 26: Difficult Alliances: Treading the minefield of identity and solidarity politics

Southall Black Sisters (SBS) is a collective of South Asian women.1 We operate an advice, resource, and campaigning centre for women in Southall, an area in west London with a large South Asian population. In comparison with many other Asian communities in this country, Southall is heterogeneous and has a cosmopolitan feel to it. All religions and ethnic groups of the Indian Subcontinent are present there, although the Punjabi Sikh ethnic group and religion are dominant.

Dossier 26: Identity and its Discontents: Women and the nation

Despite the extensive literature on nationalism, there are relatively few systematic attempts to analyse women’s integration into nationalist projects. The few there are convey seemingly contradictory messages. Like Jayawardena, those who link the rise of feminist movements to anti-colonial and nationalist struggles note its coincidence with a move towards secularism and a broader concern with social reform.1 Nationalist aspirations for popular sovereignty stimulate an extension of citizenship rights, clearly benefiting women.

Dossier 26: Contributors

Marieme Hélie-Lucas
Founder and former international coordinator of WLUML
Algerian sociologist, mother of four, born in Algiers 1939 to a family of feminists. Active in the liberation struggle of Algeria. Taught epistemology and methodology in the social sciences in Algiers University before founding WLUML.

Deniz Kandiyoti
Reader in the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies and Chair of the Center of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus, University of London, UK

Dossier 26: Identity Politics

This volume seeks to address issues of concern to women in Muslim countries and communities around the concepts of identity, politics, movements, and alliances. Crucial to identity politics is the fraught question of alliances: all the articles, ultimately, address this question.

Baobab Catalogue of Publications

The titles listed below can be ordered directly from Baobab for Women's Human Rights. Write to them at baobab@baobabwomen.org for more details. Visit the publications section of the Baobab for Women's Human Rights website for more information and links about other titles which have been produced by them: www.baobabwomen.org/publications.htm

Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies

Control of women’s sexuality remains to be one of the most powerful tools of patriarchy in most societies. The essays in this volume show that the sexual oppression of Muslim women is not the result of an ‘Islamic’ vision of sexuality, but a combination of political, social and economic inequalities throughout the ages.

Dossier 11-12-13: Les femmes dans les lois de statut personnel: un symbole privilégié de l’identité islamique

Une perception a-historique du fondamentalisme ne ferait que réduire nos possibilités de l’affronter politiquement sous ses différentes formes et affaiblir nos propres forces.

Il n’y a pas un seul et unique monstre fondamentaliste, mais plutôt des fondamentalismes. Cependant, ce qu’ils ont effectivement en commun est au centre des politiques d’identité et affecte directement les femmes.

Identité menacée et trahison