Women In The Mosque: A History Of Legal Thought And Social Practice

Juxtaposing Muslim scholarsÕ debates over womenÕs attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of womenÕs activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, this study shows how over the centuries legal scholarsÕ arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim womenÕs behavior. Tracing Sunni legal positions on women in mosques from the second century of the Islamic calendar to the modern period, this volume connects shifts in scholarly terminology and argumentation to changing constructions of gender. Over time, assumptions about womenÕs changing behavioral norms over different stages of the lifecycle gave way to a global preoccupation with sexual temptation, which then became the central rationale for limits on womenÕs mosque access. At the same time, travel narratives, biographical dictionaries, and religious polemics document patterns suggesting that womenÕs usage of mosque space often diverged in both timing and content from the ritual models constructed by scholars. This book demonstrates both the concrete social and political implications of Islamic legal discourse and the autonomy of womenÕs mosque-based activities. It also examines womenÕs mosque access as a trope in Western travelersÕ narratives and the evolving significance of womenÕs mosque attendance among different Islamic currents in the twentieth century.

• | Author: Marion Katz
• | Publisher: Columbia University Press
• | Publication Date: Sep 23, 2014
• | Number of Pages: 432 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0231162669
• | ISBN-13: 9780231162661