Published by Orient BlackSwan, 2021
Author: Sherin Basheer Saheera, Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow 2023-24
Recent Indian political developments have brought back the category of the ‘Muslim woman’ into politico-legal and academic discourse. The state’s fetish with Muslim women has included their being viewed as ‘victims’ of religious conservatism, as subjects in need of saving, and as ‘veils’ shielding Muslim men during the Citizenship Amendment Bill protest. The identification of the category of Muslim women as homogeneous, mostly as victims of their religious identity, has clouded their agency as subsumed to their religion while neglecting the intersections of caste, location, economic-situation, education, health and importantly the aspect of ‘choice’—to choose as an individual capable of making a ‘rational choice’ for herself. The book by B. S. Sherin is a welcome break as it aspires towards viewing women’s agency from a decolonial approach and breaks away from normative feminist interventions. Its view is provided through the lens of socio-religious heterogeneity. This is not an easy task to achieve, as Islamic feminist scholars writing on women often face the conundrum of swinging between Western Enlightenment and Islamic worldview.
Reviews of the book:
