A Quiet Revolution

The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America

Bibliographic Data

ID19922233
AuthorsLeila Ahmed (corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages320
Publication date2017-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueQuiet Revolution (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherYale University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.12987/9780300175059
OpenAlexW3086728816
Open LibraryOL29077560M
ISBN9780300175059
LanguageEN
Citations received10

In Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic. Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam

Economic Justice · Islam · Piety · Political science · Portrait · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Religious studies · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · Clothing · Clothing and dress · Frau · Hijab (Islamic clothing) · Hijab (islamisk klädedräkt) · Islamic fundamentalism · Islamic Society of North America · Islamism · Kläder · Kleidung · Kopftuch · Middle east · Muslim women · Muslimin · Muslimska kvinnor · Religion · Schleier · Slöjor · Social conditions · united states · Veils · Women

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