... (Democratic Islam Congress; DIC) 1 and several other pro-Kurdish religious organizations started a resistance fast ( direniş orucu ) to protest the state’s violent acts toward Kurdish civilians. They declared in their public statement: As the Democratic Islam Congress (DIC) and the Women Assembly...

...Sophia Pandya While I was interviewing young, educated, employed Yemeni women regarding their religious practices, many conveyed to me that their favorite preacher was the charismatic Egyptian televangelist ‘Amr Khaled, whose show is broadcast in Sanaa and in many parts of the Middle East...

...Sherine Hafez Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences , Badran Margot . London : Oneworld Publications , 2009 . 400 pages. ISBN 978-1-85168-556-1 . Copyright © 2011 Association for Middle East Women’s Studies 2011 114  mn  JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST WOMEN’S STUDIES  7...

...Stephanie Chaban In Righteous Transgressions Lihi Ben Shitrit rethinks pious women’s agency by examining women’s participation in nationalist religious movements. Using case studies from the Israeli and the Palestinian religious rights (the Jewish settler movement and the ultra-Orthodox Shas...

... of secularism and religion, and interdisciplinary studies of the state and sexual/gendered citizenship. I focus on two phenomena. One is the Lebanese state’s regulation of religious conversion, a practice the state and its courts consider proof of their secularity. The state actively protects the rights...

...Sophia Pandya This paper looks at the ways in which older generations of Yemeni women in Sanaa negotiate religious change. Practices that are associated with Sufism and popular folk Islam are prevalent in Yemen, especially among older, illiterate women who have had little to no access to textual...

...Maryam Rutner Abstract This article sheds light on the most influential woman religious scholar in twentieth-century Iran, Nusrat Amin (1886–1983). Contemporaneous prominent men religious scholars recognized Amin’s religious authority and expertise in Islamic sciences despite her gender. Amin’s...

... into the interplay of religion and politics in the United States, especially after September 11, 2001, with a focus on conservative Christian conceptions of the Middle East. Copyright © 2005 Association for Middle East Women’s Studies 2005 46  JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST WOMEN’S STUDIES RELIGIOUS...

...Lihi Ben Shitrit Women’s activism in conservative religious-political movements poses a challenge to liberal feminism. Why do women participate in great numbers in political organizations that seem to limit women’s freedom and equality? My work with women activists in the Islamic Movement...

...Kimberly Wedeven Segall Abstract In Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits Laila Lalami writes about a clandestine crossing from Morocco to Spain. Within this story she reveals the effects of this crossing on the changing religious beliefs of her two central female characters. While a probing critique...

... BOOK REVIEWS  133 Th e Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India Shemeem Burney Abbas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Pp. xxx + 209. $45.00 Karen G. Ruffl e, Department of Religious Studies...

... within the community, the article shows that nationalist and religious discourses produced by the historical contexts respectively stimulated (semi)arranged in-group marriages in the 1990s and self-initiated exogamous marriages as of the early 2000s. Among the group, Islam has become the primary form...

...Nelia Hyndman-Rizk Abstract Amid an enduring political deadlock in Parliament, the first civil marriage contracted in Lebanon in 2013 received significant media coverage in a country where the personal status law of eighteen recognized religious sects governs marriage. This case study examines...

...Sophia Pandya In this study I examine the evolving function of the ma’tam (pl. ma’atim), or Shi‘i religious center, in Bahraini Shi‘i women’s lives. Th e role of the ma’tam has changed in Bahraini society, especially in the case of women’s ma’atim. While men’s ma’atim have always been sites...

... with state conceptualizations of modernity and tradition, and negotiate social and religious gender norms. The article argues that Qatari women’s views reflect their strategic negotiation, rather than uncritical submission or acceptance, of social and religious norms alongside increased expectations...

... argue that “Muslim marriages” constitute transnational forms that are not simply marked by the extension or diffusion of kinship networks, ethnonational forms, and religious piety movements across borders. They reveal how transnationalism constitutes a dynamic field in which kinship, ethnonationalism...

... Ruhollah Khomeini published a fatwa declaring that there is no religious restriction on sex reassignment surgery for hermaphrodites. In 1985, he issued an appendage to this fatwa to include transsexuals suffering from gender dysphoria. This reissuance impelled the process that culminated in new state...

... movement, undermining women’s efforts and paving the way for religious conservative victories in the 2004 parliamentary elections and President Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 on a platform of economic justice. The irony is that economic problems led to the victory of a religious conservatism unfavorable...

.... Researchers have assumed that religious zealotry was the primary inspiration for boys to enlist in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ignoring the ways in which class inflected boyhood. While religious fervor may have been a motivation for some of the poor and working-class Iranian...