Inside the Gender Jihad - by Amina Wadud (Paperback)

About the Book

In this engaging study, Dr Amina Wadud, an Afro-American Muslim herself, introduces the feminist movement in Islam and delves into its challenges, its textual foundations in the Qur'an and its achievements. Beginning with her own place in the effort for greater justice for women in Islam, Wadud goes on tackle a number of pertinent issues, including the state of Muslim women's studies as a discipline in mainstream academia and the role of Muslim women in the domestic space.

Book Synopsis

A world-renowned professor of Islamic studies, Amina Wadud has long been at the forefront of what she calls the 'gender jihad, ' the struggle for justice for women within the global Islamic community. In 2005, she made international headlines when she helped to promote new traditions by leading the Muslim Friday prayer in New York City, provoking a firestorm of media controversy and kindling charges of blasphemy among conservative Muslims worldwide. In this provocative book, Inside the Gender Jihad, Wadud brings a wealth of experience from the trenches of the jihad to make a passionate argument for gender inclusiveness in the Muslim world. Knitting together scrupulous scholarship with lessons drawn from her own experiences as a woman, she explores the array of issues facing Muslim women today, including social status, education, sexuality, and leadership. A major contribution to the debate on women and Islam, Amina Wadud's vision for changing the status of women within Islam is both revolutionary and urgent

Review Quotes

Readers of Inside the Gender Jihad will be taken on a truly thrilling journey - not just through the problems that confront Muslims today, or the many gender injustices that plague contemporary articulations of the Islamic faith, but also through the many forms of intolerable oppression, which have become interminable causes of human suffering in our world.-- "Khaled Abou El Fadl"

Seen as a pioneering feminist, her last book, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (2006) was partly an experiment in autobiography, and included details of the threats to her life in New York.-- "The Independent"

About the Author

Dr Amina Wadud is professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is author of the influential Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective.