1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910781387703321

Autore

Ahmed Leila

Titolo

A quiet revolution [[electronic resource] ] : the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America / / Leila Ahmed

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, : Yale University Press, c2011

ISBN

1-283-09627-7

9786613096272

0-300-17505-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (320 p.)

Disciplina

297.5/76

Soggetti

Hijab (Islamic clothing) - Middle East

Hijab (Islamic clothing) - United States

Muslim women - Clothing - Middle East

Muslim women - Clothing - United States

Veils - Middle East

Veils - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Unveiling -- 2. The Veil's Vanishing Past -- 3. The 1970's -- 4. The New Veil -- 5. The 1980's -- 6. Islamist Connections -- 7. Migrations -- 8. The 1990's -- Prologue -- 9. Backlash -- 10. ISNA and the Women of ISNA -- 11. American Muslim Women's Activism in the Twenty-First Century -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In Cairo in the 1940's, 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.