Women Embracing Islam

Women Embracing Islam PDF Author: Karin van Nieuwkerk
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are some of the questions that Women Embracing Islam seeks to answer. In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while no single set of factors can explain why Western women are embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge. These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained sexuality of so much of Western culture.

Women Embracing Islam

Women Embracing Islam PDF Author: Karin van Nieuwkerk
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book

Book Description
Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are some of the questions that Women Embracing Islam seeks to answer. In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while no single set of factors can explain why Western women are embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge. These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained sexuality of so much of Western culture.

Big Little Steps

Big Little Steps PDF Author: Mathilde Loujayne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781847741271
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
"A 'self-help' book for Muslims, which seeks both to inspire Muslim women, but also to educate those outside the faith" - Dr Myriam Francois Since her conversion to Islam in 2002 Mathilde Loujayne has crossed paths with women from all walks of life on a common spiritual journey to discover Islam from a feminine perspective. Fuelled by a desire to find the right words to explain to her mother her choice to embrace Islam, this guide was born. Through Mathilde Loujayne's personal experiences - grief, high school, moving abroad, work, marriage, and motherhood - she addressses women's common concerns as they take the big, little steps towards finding a balanced lifestyle and a glowing heart in Islam.

Muslim Women in America

Muslim Women in America PDF Author: Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195177835
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Muslim women living in America continue to be marginalized and misunderstood since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, yet their contributions are changing the face of Islam as it is seen both within Muslim communities in the West and by non-Muslims.

Engaged Surrender

Engaged Surrender PDF Author: Carolyn Moxley Rouse
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520237940
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Described is why the Islam gives African American women a sense of power and control over interpretations of gender, family, authority, and obligations. The author did her study among the women of the Sunni Muslim mosques in Los Angeles.

Converting to Islam

Converting to Islam PDF Author: Amy Melissa Guimond
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319542508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This text aims to discover the shared lived experiences of white American female converts to Islam in post- 9/11 America. It explores the increasingly hostile social climate faced by Muslim Americans, as well as the spiritual, social, physical, and mental integration of these women into the Muslim-American population. In the United States, rates of conversion to Islam are rapidly increasing—alongside Islamophobic sentiment and hate crimes against Muslims. For a period of time, there was a lull in this negative sentiment. However, in light of the Paris terror attacks, the increased prominence of ISIS/ISIL, and the influx of refugees from Syria, anti-Muslim rhetoric is once again on the rise. This volume analyzes how a singular collection of female converts have adapted to life in the United States in the shadow of 9/11.

Big Little Steps

Big Little Steps PDF Author: Mathilde Loujayne
Publisher: Kube Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1847741282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Since her conversion to Islam in 2002 Mathilde Loujayne has crossed paths with women from all walks of life on a common spiritual journey to discover Islam from a feminine perspective. Fuelled by a desire to find the right words to explain to her mother her choice to embrace Islam, this guide was born. Through Mathilde Loujayne's personal experiences - grief, high school, moving abroad, work, marriage, and motherhood - she addressses women's common concerns as they take the big, little steps towards finding a balanced lifestyle and a glowing heart in Islam.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? PDF Author: Lila Abu-Lughod
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674727509
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights. In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized by Islam with the complex women she has known through her research in various communities in the Muslim world. Here, she renders that divide vivid by presenting detailed vignettes of the lives of ordinary Muslim women, and showing that the problem of gender inequality cannot be laid at the feet of religion alone. Poverty and authoritarianism—conditions not unique to the Islamic world, and produced out of global interconnections that implicate the West—are often more decisive. The standard Western vocabulary of oppression, choice, and freedom is too blunt to describe these women's lives. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam—as well as a moving portrait of women's actual experiences, and of the contingencies with which they live.

Daughters of Another Path

Daughters of Another Path PDF Author: Carol Anderson Anway
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Experiences of American women choosing Islam.

Women and Islamization

Women and Islamization PDF Author: Karin Ask
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000323943
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
The current Islamic revival is frequently associated with fundamentalism and radical politics. This reinforces Western perceptions of Islamic women as victims of a sexist and reactionary rule. What many outsiders fail to realize is that quite a number of Muslim women are ardently embracing their religion as a means through which they can express gender identity, power and creativity.In overturning ingrained notions of Muslim women's subjugation, this timely book situates Islam as a religion undergoing reinterpretation and change -- especially in relation to gender identities -- rather than as a monolithic movement reacting against westernization and modernization. Through their political, educational, and recreational activities, more and more Muslim women are setting agendas of their own and are actively redefining the role of women in Muslim society.

Women's Islam

Women's Islam PDF Author: Zahra Kamalkhani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113617379X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
First published in 1998. This book focuses on two socio-cultural domains - the family and religious activity in the lives of Iranian women. Women maintain the integrity of the household, while at the same time taking part in wider social activities. With this background the author explores the religious practice among today's Shirazi women, its transcendental and pragmatic aspects, specifying women's performance in religious rituals.