Juxtaposing Muslim scholars' debates over women's attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of women's activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, Marion Holmes Katz shows how over the centuries legal scholars' arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim women's behavior. Tracing Sunni legal positions on women in mosques from the second century of the Islamic calendar to the modern period, Katz connects shifts in scholarly terminology and argumentation to changing constructions of gender. Over time, assumptions about women's changing behavior through the lifecycle gave way to a global preoccupation with sexual temptation, which then became the central rationale for limits on women's mosque access. At the same time, travel narratives, biographical dictionaries, and religious polemics suggest that women's usage of mosque space often diverged in both timing and content from the ritual models constructed by scholars. Katz demonstrates both the concrete social and political implications of Islamic legal discourse and the autonomy of women's mosque-based activities. She also examines women's mosque access as a trope in Western travelers' narratives and the evolving significance of women's mosque attendance among different Islamic currents in the twentieth century.

"Four american moslem ladies": early U.S. Muslim women in the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, 1920-1923 -- Insurgent domesticity: race and gender in representations of NOI Muslim women during the Cold War era -- Garments for one another: Islam and marriage in the lives of Betty Shabazz and Dakota Staton -- Chadors, feminists, terror: constructing a U.S. American discourse of the veil -- A third language: Muslim feminism in Smerica -- Conclusion: Soul Flower Farm

"The Women's Mosque of America analyzes how American Muslim women cultivate new forms of Islamic authority that contend with gender inequality, anti-Blackness, and global Islamophobia by approaching the Qur'an as a tool for social justice and community building, providing insights on Islamic authority at the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging"--

Analyzes how American Muslim women assert themselves as religious actors in the US and beyond, using the Qur’an as a tool for social justice and community building The Women’s Mosque of America (WMA), a multiracial, women-only mosque in Los Angeles, is the first of its kind in the United States. Since 2015, the WMA has provided a space for Muslim women to build inclusive communities committed to gender and social justice, challenging the dominant mosque culture that has historically marginalized them through inadequate prayer spaces, exclusion from leadership, and limited access to religious learning. Tazeen M. Ali explores this congregation, focusing on how members contest established patriarchal norms while simultaneously contending with domestic and global Islamophobia that renders their communities vulnerable to violence. Drawing on textual analysis of WMA sermons and ethnographic interviews with community members, and utilizing Black feminist and womanist frameworks, Ali investigates how American Muslim women create and authorize new conceptions of Islamic authority. Whereas the established model of Islamic authority is rooted in formal religious training and Arabic language expertise, the WMA is predicated on women’s embodied experiences, commitments to social and racial justice, English interpretations of the Qur’an, and community building across Islamic sects and in an interfaith context. Situating the US at the center rather than at the margins of debates over Islamic authority and showing how American Muslim women assert themselves as meaningful religious actors in the US and beyond, Ali’s work offers new insights on Islamic authority as it relates to the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging.

This volume is the first to bring together analysis of contemporary female religious leadership in ideologically-diverse Muslim communities in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing the emergence, consolidation, and impact of female Islamic authority.

“In this satisfying, lyrical memoir,” an American woman discovers her true faith—and true love—by converting to Islam and moving to Egypt (Publishers Weekly). Raised in Boulder, Colorado, G. Willow Wilson moved to Egypt and converted to Islam shortly after college. Having written extensively on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine, Wilson now shares her remarkable story of finding faith, falling in love, and marrying into a traditional Islamic family in this “intelligently written and passionately rendered memoir” (The Seattle Times, 27 Best Books of 2010). Despite her atheist upbringing, Willow always felt a connection to god. Around the time of 9/11, she took an Islamic Studies course at Boston University, and found the teachings of the Quran astounding, comforting, and profoundly transformative. She decided to risk everything to convert to Islam, embarking on a journey across continents and into an uncertain future. Settling in Cairo where she taught English, she soon met and fell in love with Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow—with her shock of red hair, shaky Arabic, and Western candor—struggled to forge a “third culture” that might accommodate her values as well as her friends and family on both sides of the divide. Part travelogue, love story, and memoir, “Wilson has written one of the most beautiful and believable narratives about finding closeness with God” (The Denver Post).

Muslim women living in America continue to be marginalized and misunderstood since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, yet their contributions are changing the face of Islam as it is seen both within Muslim communities in the West and by non-Muslims.