A quiet revolution : the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America

Resource Information

The work A quiet revolution : the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

A quiet revolution : the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America

Title remainder

the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America

Statement of responsibility

Leila Ahmed

Creator

• Ahmed, Leila

Subject

• Hijab (Islamic clothing)
• Hijab (Islamic clothing) -- Middle East
• Hijab (Islamic clothing) -- United States
• Hijab (islamisk klädedräkt)
• Islam
• Islam
• Islamism
• Kleidung
• Kopftuch
• Middle East
• Muslim women -- Clothing
• Muslim women -- Clothing
• Muslim women -- Clothing -- Middle East
• Muslim women -- Clothing -- United States
• Frau
• Muslimin
• Muslimska kvinnor -- kläder
• Naher Osten
• Naher Osten
• Schleier
• Schleier
• Slöjor
• USA
• USA
• United States
• Veils
• Veils
• Veils -- Middle East
• Veils -- United States
• Muslimin

Language

eng

Summary

In Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. However, the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic. This story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

297.5/76

Index

index present

LC call number

BP190.5.H44

LC item number

A46 2011

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography