Women in Islam

Abstract

Anne Sofie Roald, a Norwegian convert to Islam and associate professor ofthe history of religion at Malmo University (Sweden), devotes her book totwo major themes: Examining what the interpretations of the Qur'an andSunnah in the Arab cultural sphere "say" on various women's issues, andhow this interpretation tends to change during the cultural encounter withthe West. The cover picture exemplifies these themes: two young happyMuslim women wearing headscarves while biking, illustrating Muslimwomen well integrated into western society but without giving up theirIslamic identity. The book is divided into two parts: theoretical and methodologicalreflections, and empirical issues.Roald's approach involves exact textual citation. Her emphasis on textis explained, as Islam is a scriptural religion, as "what can be termedIslamic is what can be linked to the text." Further, she analyses how classicaland contemporary scholars have interpreted the text, in addition to theresults of her fieldwork among Arab Sunni Muslim activists living in theWest. This methodology allows her to avoid the reification of Islam - theapprehension of Islam as separated from its social context. She chooses toemphasize the opinions of the Muslim Brotherhood (ikhwarJ) and the postikhwantrend, or an "independent Islamist trend" of Islamists who gobeyond the ikhwan's thought and who are not linked to its organization.Being an Arabic-speaking Muslim herself, Roald plays both roles of beingan "insider" and an "outsider."Her analysis builds basically on two theories: the "basket metaphor"combined with the idea of"normative fields." The "basket," defined as theset-up of traditions in a specific religion or ideology, is a metaphor thatcomes from the idea that a basket leaks from the inside and absorbs fromthe outside. In other words, concepts might leak out and new ones mightget absorbed. Further, even though all of its contents are latently present,what is needed in different times and spaces is subjected to the processes ofselection. Roald explains that Muslims might consider such a metaphorblasphemous, but the selection from ''the basket" is what actually happens.The text's function, how it is being interpreted and applied, is superior tothe text's very existence ...