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E-book
Author McLarney, Ellen Anne, author.

Title Soft force : women in Egypt's Islamic awakening / Ellen Anne McLarney
Published Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2015]
©2015

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 312 pages) : illustrations
Series Princeton studies in Muslim politics
Princeton studies in Muslim politics.
Contents Women's liberation in Islam -- The liberation of Islamic letters: Bint al-Shatiʼ's literary license -- The redemption of women's liberation: reviving Qasim Amin -- Gendering Islamic subjectivities -- Senses of self: Niʼmat Sidqi's theology of motherhood -- Covering in the public eye: visualizing the inner -- Politics of the Islamic family -- The Islamic homeland: Iman Mustafa on women's work -- Soft force: Heba Raouf Ezzat's politics of the Islamic family -- Epilogue-fann wa-fitra: art and instinct
Summary In the decades leading up to the Arab Spring in 2011, when Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime was swept from power in Egypt, Muslim women took a leading role in developing a robust Islamist presence in the country's public sphere. Soft Force examines the writings and activism of these women--including scholars, preachers, journalists, critics, actors, and public intellectuals--who envisioned an Islamic awakening in which women's rights and the family, equality, and emancipation were at the center. Challenging Western conceptions of Muslim women as being oppressed by Islam, Ellen McLarney shows how women used "soft force"--A women's jihad characterized by nonviolent protest--to oppose secular dictatorship and articulate a public sphere that was both Islamic and democratic. McLarney draws on memoirs, political essays, sermons, newspaper articles, and other writings to explore how these women imagined the home and the family as sites of the free practice of religion in a climate where Islamists were under siege by the secular state. While they seem to reinforce women's traditional roles in a male-dominated society, these Islamist writers also reoriented Islamist politics in domains coded as feminine, putting women at the very forefront in imagining an Islamic polity. Bold and insightful, Soft Force transforms our understanding of women's rights, women's liberation, and women's equality in Egypt's Islamic revival
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-294) and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (Ebsco, viewed March 30, 2015)
Subject Women in Islam -- Egypt
Muslim women -- Political activity -- Egypt
Feminism -- Egypt
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Women's Studies.
RELIGION -- Islam -- General.
Feminism
Muslim women -- Political activity
Women in Islam
Egypt
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781400866441
1400866448