92 Islam and Modernity
nationalisms called upon women to contribute, as educated and enlightened
‘citizens’, to the national development effort. The social sciences, dominated at
this stage by the modernisation and Marxist paradigms, offered accounts of tran-
sitions to modernity, with corresponding sociologies of gender and the family.
The combination of these infl uences with a growing unease with Orientalist
depictions of Muslim women and the desire to apprehend Muslim societies
through the lenses of mainstream social-scientifi c analysis meant that references
to Islam remained relatively muted until the 1970s (Kandiyoti 1996a).
This state of affairs was to change dramatically after the Iranian Revolution
in 1979, likened by some to a seismic event that swept away the world view and
predictions of modernisation theorists (Burke 1988). By the 1980s, the phase of
state-led development in the Middle East was superseded by processes of struc-
tural adjustment and economic liberalisation that produced profound shifts in
state–society relations with tangible implications in the realm of gender (Hatem
1992; Brand 1998). This period witnessed the rise of both Islamist oppositional
movements and new forms of grass-roots activism, some aiming to palliate
the dearth of social services to the poor and the downwardly mobile (Lubeck
2000; Bayat 2002). State elites seeking to bolster their fl agging legitimacy, in
their turn, resorted to alliances with Islamist social forces and to various forms
of state-sponsored religiosity.^4 The effects of cold-war policies that sought
to mobilise Islam as a bulwark against communism were most starkly felt in
front-line states such as Afghanistan, where geo-politics took a direct hand in
shaping jihadi resistance movements (Zubaida 2004). Islam was, once again, at
the forefront of analyses and polemics. The issue of women’s rights achieved
particular prominence in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States
and the ensuing military operations in Afghanistan. The plight of women under
the Taliban became a cause célèbre that was presented both as the epitome of fun-
damentalist excess and as a humanitarian crisis justifying armed intervention.
The politics of gender – which I defi ne as a process of appropriation, contesta-
tion and reinterpretation of positions on gender relations and women’s rights
by state, non-state and global actors – acquired a new and potentially perni-
cious twist when blueprints for ‘democratic’ governance were ushered in by
armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (Kandiyoti 2007a). The changing
scholarly agenda thus inscribes itself against the backdrop of a highly charged
geo-political context.
Diverse agendas, contending approaches
It is possible to identify several strands of scholarship on gender, Islam and
modernity that refl ect a plurality of analytic perspectives and political concerns.
One strand is marked by a strong scriptural and textual focus shared by both
conservative apologists and Muslim reformers attempting progressive readings