Description:
In recent years, global attention has focused on how women in communities of Muslims are revitalizing Islam by linking interpretation of religious ideas to the protection of rights and freedoms. Humanizing the Sacred demonstrates how Sunni women activists in Malaysia are fracturing institutionalized Islamic authority by generating new understandings of rights and redefining the moral obligations of their community. Based on ethnographic research of Sisters in Islam (SIS), a nongovernmental organization of professional women promoting justice and equality, Basarudin examines SIS members' involvement in the production and transmission of Islamic knowledge to reformulate legal codes and reconceptualize gender discourses. By weaving together women's lived realities, feminist interpretations of Islamic texts, and Malaysian cultural politics, this book illuminates how a localized struggle of claiming rights takes shape within a transnational landscape. It provides a vital understanding of how women "live" Islam through the integration of piety and reason and the implications of women's political activism for the transformation of Islamic tradition itself.
Brief description: Azza Basarudin is a research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. This book is based on her 2009 dissertation.
Review Quotes:
"Humanizing the Sacred is a welcome addition to the study of women's movements and Islamic feminism. . . .This book is therefore a timely and important read. Its accessible language makes it suitable not just for undergraduate and postgraduate students alike, but also readers who are interested in understanding issues of feminism, rights and equality in Islam, especially in Malaysia."
-- "Contemporary Southeast Asia"