ecropolis

By: Asma Lamrabet “The question of women in Islam has long been seen from within the framework of one of two extreme viewpoints: the one bound by a strict conservative Islamic approach, the other by ethnocentric and Islamophobic Western conceptions. These two perceptions are, of course, in conflict, but they both end up at the

By: Nevine Abdullah “In some Muslim societies, this question is still being asked, although in other Muslim countries, women have made great strides and contributions in the areas of law and the judiciary. It is now the twenty first century and it is time to settle this question once and for all and empower Muslim

By: Azizah al-Hibri, Esq. “In this age of information technology that shrank our world into a global village, it is fair to ask how this recent development has impacted Muslim women’s rights across the world. Having just traveled through nine Muslim countries, ranging from Pakistan and Bangladesh to the Gulf States, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon,

“The zina and rape laws of Pakistan are the subject of heated debate both inside and outside the Muslim world. Opponents of the Shari’a law have found in the subject an ideal opportunity to attack Islamic law as patriarchal and unjust to women. Some have even argued that Shari’a law, in its entirety, should be abolished. On the other hand, many

By: Asma Afsaruddin “The study of gender as an academic discipline is a fairly recent development in the humanities and social sciences. Pioneering works that have focused on gender have considerably affected academic discourse on how we interpret the paradigms of social, economic, and ultimately power relations between men and women, in both modern and

By: Azizah al-Hibri, Esq. “The crisis of modernity in Islamic societies, generally, and of Muslim women’s rights, specifically, has led some individuals to wonder whether Islam has become outdated. After all, the Qur’an was revealed over fourteen hundred years ago to an illiterate man in the Arabian peninsula. How relevant could that revelation be today

By: Azizah al-Hibri, Esq. “The new millennium is blowing winds of change over the Muslim world. After centuries of relative seclusion, Muslim women have awakened to their critical role in society and are demanding their right to full participation in the public square. Patriarchal customs are being rejected, laws are being revised, and women are

By: Raja El Habti “The recent French law banning visible religious signs that display a student’s religious affiliation in public schools has unleashed heated debates on wearing the Islamic headscarf/veil/hijab (used here interchangeably). Although this law does not apparently target the French Muslim community in particular and will affect other religious minorities such as the Jewish

By: Azizah al-Hibri, Esq. “Muslim women’s rights have been the subject of a great deal of debate, most recently in Beijing and Huairou. While many secular feminists have criticized patriarchal religiously-justified laws in Muslim countries, many Muslim women have defended Islam as the guarantor par excellence of women’s rights. This broad perceptual gap among women was partly