This article discusses the writings of Amina bint Haydar al-Sadr, a prolific Shi‘i intellectual and novelist in Najaf during the 1960s and 1970s more commonly known by her pen name Bint al-Huda (“Daughter of the Right Path”). It examines the author’s ambivalence about marriage in modern law and society as both a promise of lifelong companionship and a private institution that threatens to close a woman off from her other relationships, especially those with her female friends, and thereby from her means of engaging in the ethical work of developing a pious self. It also reads this ambivalence in relation to the texts’ interpellation of a homosocial public of female Muslim readers in order to raise questions about certain theoretical conceptions of the modern “public” and “private” spheres.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Spring 2012
Research Article|
July 01 2012
Daughters of the Right Path: Family Law, Homosocial Publics, and the Ethics of Intimacy in the Works of Shi‘i Revivalist Bint Al-Huda
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2012) 8 (2): 51–77.
Citation
Sara Pursley; Daughters of the Right Path: Family Law, Homosocial Publics, and the Ethics of Intimacy in the Works of Shi‘i Revivalist Bint Al-Huda. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 1 July 2012; 8 (2): 51–77. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.8.2.51
Download citation file:
Advertisement