FEMINISM IN ISLAM : SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CONVERGENCES BY MARGOT BADRAN (PAPERBACK) OLD BOOK

Badran’s book is focused on the indigenous roots of Middle Eastern feminism and the relationship between Islamic feminism and secular feminism. For her, Islamic feminism articulates a discourse that relies on a single religiously-grounder discourse and secular feminism draws upon and is constituted by multiple discourses. Badran claims that these constitute two parallel but intersecting modes of feminism, despite many claiming the two are antithetical. She argues that Middle Eastern feminisms originate in the region and are not imported from the West—demonstrating that Western forms of feminism are not the patrimonial home of feminism from which all other feminisms stem from. Badran claims this is an important point to counter the Islamist critiques of feminisms in the region with the aim of undermining their authenticity by casting them as Western arms of domination. She investigates the compatibility of Islam with feminism by relaying the vast history of Muslim scholars who engaged with modernity and modernization. She draws the majority of her
evidence from Egypt and concludes that Middle Eastern feminisms are locally rooted and unaffected by Western forms of feminism.