Women Shaping Islam

What would the global Islamic revival look like if substantial numbers of Muslim scholars and teachers were women? And how might women's enhanced participation change Islam? These are the kinds of questions that come to mind reading Women Shaping Islam, Pieternella van Doorn-Harder's thoughtful study of Muslim women leaders in Indonesia. van Doorn-Harder suggests that the answers to these questions may be found in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population. van Doorn-Harder's argument that Indonesian women's involvement in Islamic institutions is helping to feminize Islam and to inspire new modes of Islamic thought and practice that are more responsive to women's empowerment has important implications and deserves attention from scholars of religion and politics. Women Shaping Islam is a study of women leaders in Indonesia's two largest Muslim organizations, the modernist Muhammadiyah, with an estimated 35 million followers, and the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), with an...

Argument (complex analysis) · Biology · Empowerment · Indonesian · Islam · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Population · Reading (process) · Sociology · Theology · Asian Studies and History · Demography · Gender and Women's Rights · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and Radicalism · Law · Philosophy