Reviews

Kvinder og køn i islam: historiske rødder til en moderne debat by Leila Ahmed

edwincooperboy's review against another edition

informative reflective relaxing fast-paced

3.5

polo's review against another edition

challenging informative slow-paced

4.5

meganmilks's review against another edition

3.0

this is a classic text, groundbreaking and Important and so on, and i appreciate it on all levels, except that it is fairly tedious to read. (course, trying to get through it in two days didn't help me...)

sofia_reading's review against another edition

5.0

Leilah Ahmad provides a fascinating, well cited and thought provoking history of women in the Middle East prior to the advent of Islam. She provides a history of how the prevailing attitudes and beliefs regarding women were absorbed into Islamic thought as the empire expanded. Ahmad goes on to discuss the effect of colonialisation of Arab countries and the resistance from the indigenous populations arising in the form of certain dogmatisms. From here on she focuses on the Arab world, and more precisely on Egypt. While thoroughly interesting, it could have been even better had she been able to include the non Arab world and its history too. Nonetheless it is still an excellent book and still so relevant all these years after its first publication.

********Edit********
Read this first in 2014, then again in 2015 for my MA, and then again this year (2018) for a Islam and Feminism Critical Reading Group, and have upped my rating to 5 stars because this is a book that keeps giving each time I read it!

vaticanskank's review against another edition

4.0

Ahmed's book comes recommended by Ollie Philosophytube (whose videos are excellent and well worth looking up on Youtube. This is definitely an academic text and an intermediate knowledge of Islam and Islamic history is advised to get the most out of this book. Ahmed's style can sometimes be overly formal and academic, and the limitations of the introduction format of the book were keenly felt: in her discussion of post-19th century Islamic history she was forced to focus mostly on Egypt. In a larger, more comprehensive text, she would have had time and space to include the rest of the Islamic world in her study, which would have been welcome. Nevertheless, her study of Egypt was thorough and impressive.
The book functions as an excellent mythbuster for a lot of received ideas about Islam. Ahmed is as sharply critical of anti-Islamic western ideas (be they couched in feminist rhetoric or not) as she is of traditional Islamic and fundamentalist views. Her chapter on the veil is worth the not-inconsiderable price of this volume alone. Four out of five pillars of faith.

haniah's review against another edition

4.0

i listened as an audio book during walks. this was an academic socio-political approach to women and gender in islam, rather than being an analysis of the quran (which I actually liked). while it was incredibly dense and filled with academic jargin, I feel like i learned a lot from this book and the different perspectives. however, I still don't know if i am versed in women and gender studies in islam which doesn't make sense. I also don't like the full focus on eygpt. this book made me feel smarter tho which is always nice

katrinadalythompson's review against another edition

4.0

If this book was not so academically dry, I would recommend it my friends who have been asking about how Islam and feminism intersect. Ahmed gives a long view of women in Islam from the time of the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) to the late twentieth century, using examples from throughout the Middle East and many from Egypt. At first I thought Ahmed was anti-Islam, since her views of early Islam contradict most of what I've read on the period; she argues that women were actually very ill-treated whereas others argue that early Islam gave women rights that were unusual for the region and time period. However, she goes on to introduce the idea of ethical Islam, the teachings of the Qur'an that men and women are equal, and uses this to show that Orthodox Islam is just one interpretation of Islam -- one which unfortunately has become dominant around the world and under which women have not fared well. I was particularly interested in her chapter on feminism, in which she argues that Western feminism (often misused by colonialist men who were far from feminists back at home) did much to damage the fight for women's rights in the Muslim world, because it advocates a wholesale rejection of Islam as a culture rather than a feminism based in ethical Islam.

gh0stp's review against another edition

5.0

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book was extremely interesting. I have been reading more non-fiction lately so as soon as I saw this I was drawn to it. It is a reasonable easy read, I lacked a lot of background knowledge since this is my first book on the subject, however with the help of the notes and some quick searches you are able to follow what is being said and for me getting new perspectives I was not familiarized with was the goal.

I believe this was a great introduction since you can follow from the historical roots until more recent days and definitely got me interested to read more about the subject. I have a few pages of notes and books to check out and I feel like I got a direction on different perspectives and where to go from here. Overall very worth reading and even though I don't have a formed opinion of a subject I know so litlle about I definitely feel this was extremely valuable to get me started.

nouf's review against another edition

3.0

Another book that took decades to finish.

So much has happened since the conclusion, it would be good to have a new one written.

samiha's review against another edition

Not in the mood for academic writing at the moment.