wives and daughters and the female saints of
the Islamic traditions, women have played an
important theological role in Islam. Women of
the ahl al-bayt (“People of the House” of the
Prophet) are sources for sectarian theology in
Islam. Although Muhammad had no living sons,
his daughter Fatima (d. 632 c.e.), married to his
cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), became the
mother of his grandsons, Hasan and Husayn.
The claim to prophetic charisma by the Shiat Ali
(“Party of Ali”) through these grandsons, makes
Fatima, called al-Zahra (the “luminous”), and the
wives/daughters of the early Shii Imams of central
importance to Shii martyrology (based on the
drama annually commemorated among the Shia
of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom at karbala in 680
c.e.). The other most significant figure in Islamic
theology is mary, the blessed virgin of Islam. She
is the only woman to have a chapter of the Quran
named after her (Surat Maryam, Q 19:16–40) and
to have important narratives of the quranic text
devoted to her role as the mother of JesUs, the
last great prophet in Islam before Muhammad (Q
33:33–47).
Muslim women’s traditional importance in
Islamic society has always been and continues
to be the ground and foundation of the Islamic
family. Social values strongly reinforce orientation
toward marriage and children as the normative
pattern based on Muhammad’s own example.
Childrearing and early education and socialization
of children are among women’s most important
tasks in Islamic societies worldwide. Although
traditionally excluded from public male dominant
institutions of Islamic learning, Muslim women
have always been privately involved in study and
oral transmission of Islamic source texts (Quran
and hadith, narratives about the prophets, etc).
In modern times, they have entered into both
secular and religious forms of edUcation with
enthusiasm supporting their long-standing role
as family educators and moral exemplars, and as
training for professional careers in the workplace
outside the home.
Women have also been ritually active in per-
forming the Five pillars of Islamic practice (wit-
ness to Faith, five daily prayers, fasting during
ramadan, almsgiving, and pilgrimage to Mecca)
and they have been centrally involved in the social
and familial aspects of commemorating the two
most important festival occasions in the Islamic
lunar calendar (the Feast of Sacrifice [id al-adha]
at the closure of haJJ, and the Feast of Breaking
the Fast [id al-Fitr] at the end of the month of
Ramadan. Although discussion of women’s ritual
lives is brief before modern times, the study of
the medieval textual record as well as the growing
anthropological and sociological record beginning
in the 19th century bear witness to the complexity
and fervor of women’s devotions whether in the
context of formal institutional practice (the Pil-
lars) or in the wide diversity of “popular” or folk
practices throughout Muslim lands (folk heal-
ing, shrine pilgrimages, etc.). Even those areas
that, because of women’s unique biology, dictate
adaptations or restrictions in ritual practice (such
as the requirement to suspend fasting while men-
struating and continue it later in the year) are
understood by many women as a special challenge
and spiritual opportunity, part of their “greater
Jihad,” or struggle for the faith.
The most important issues that Muslim women
have addressed throughout the 20th century and
into the 21st are diverse struggles to maintain
Islamic identity while adapting to modernity.
Muslim women have struggled to advance wom-
en’s social, educational, and professional status in
Islamic countries throughout the world, and they
have struggled to maintain and affirm their Islamic
identity in the face of growing secularization and
Westernization. One of their responses to this
struggle has been the re-veiling movement. Veiling
has become, perhaps more than any other single
issue, the defining “women’s question” in the last
40 years. Although unveiling and the adoption of
various forms of Western dress among the edu-
cated middle and upper classes since the 1930s
became a visible benchmark of modernity (alongK 712 women