with women’s education, right to vote, entering
the workplace, etc.), the re-veiling movement,
which began in the 1970s, has become a world-
wide phenomenon expressing a new response to
modernity. It also expresses a transnational form
of Islamic feminism that has been marked by the
entry of women into all public spheres of Islamic
life, including formal religious learning (Quran
interpretation) and ritual leadership of the com-
munity (as women imams, or leaders of mixed
male-female prayer in the mosque). The symbol
that had in the past meant public invisibility has
become a politicized expression of Islamic iden-
tity, which ensures perfect public respectability
and supports the entry of Muslim women fully
into contemporary public life.
See also adUlte ry; birth rites: circUmcision;
companions oF the prophet; divorce; hoUses;
mernissi, Fatima; rabia al-adaWiyya; shaaraWi,
hUda al-; ziyara.
Kathleen M. O’ConnorFurther reading: Khaled Abou El-Fadl, Speaking in
God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford,
U.K.: Oneworld Publications, 2001); Lila Abu-Lughod,
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Kamran
Scott Aghaie, The Women of Karbala: Ritual Performance
and Symbolic Discourses in Modern Shi’i Islam (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2005); Leila Ahmed, Women
and Gender in Islam, Historical Roots of a Modern Debate
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Laleh
Bakhtiar, Shariati on Shariati and the Muslim Woman: Who
Was Ali Shariati? For Muslim Women: The Islamic Mod-
est Dress, Expectations from the Muslim Woman, Fatima
Is Fatima and Guide to Shariati’s Collected Works (Chi-
cago: KAZI Publications, 1996); Asma Barlas, “Believing
Women” in Islam, Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations
of the Qur’an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002);
Marjo Buitelaar, Fasting and Feasting in Morocco: Women’s
Participation in Ramadan (Oxford, U.K./Providence: Berg,
1993); Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating
Islamic Feminisms through Literature (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2001); Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender
and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2006); Eleanor A. Doumato, Getting
God’s Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and
the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000);
John L. Esposito with Natana J. DeLong-Bas, Women
in Muslim Family Law, 2d ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2001); Joyce B. Flueckiger, In Amma’s
Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South Asia
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Gavin
R. G. Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World:
Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1998); Camille A. Helminski, ed., Women of Sufism: A
Hidden Treasure, Writings and Stories of Mystic Poets,
Scholars and Saints (Boston: Shambhala, 2003); Muham-
mad H. Kabbani and Laleh Bakhtiar, eds., Encyclopedia of
Muhammad’s Women Companions and the Traditions They
Related (Chicago: KAZI Publications, 1998); Beverly B.
Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman ‘s Jihad: Nana Asma’u,
Scholar and Scribe (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2000); Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Medicines of the Soul:
Female Bodies and Sacred Geographies in a Transnational
Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, and
online); Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook
on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992); Mohammad Akram
Nadwi, al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars of Islam
(Oxford, U.K.: Interface Publications, 2007); Catharina
Raudvere, The Book and the Roses: Sufi Women, Visibility,
and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul (London: I.B. Tau-
ris, 2003); Denise A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the
Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Barbara F. Sto-
wasser, Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, and online);
Pieternella van Doorn-Harder, Women Shaping Islam:
Reading the Qur’an in Indonesia (Champaign: University
of Illinois Press, 2006); Aminah Wadud, Inside the Gender
Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam (Oxford, U.K.: Oneworld
Publications, 2006); Mai Yamani, ed., Feminism and
Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives (New York: New
York University Press, 1996); Sherifa Zuhur, Revealing
Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).women 713 J