Women Embracing Islam: Gender and Conversion in the West - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292713029 ISBN 13: 9780292713024

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2006

Synopsis

Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are some of the questions that Women Embracing Islam seeks to answer.

In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while no single set of factors can explain why Western women are embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge. These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained sexuality of so much of Western culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Karin van Nieuwkerk is an anthropologist and professor of contemporary Islam in Europe and the Middle East at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Her many books include Women Embracing Islam: Gender and Conversion in the West, Performing Piety: Singers and Actors in Egypt’s Islamic Revival, and Islam and Popular Culture.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0292713029
• ISBN 13: 9780292713024
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308
• Editor: Van Nieuwkerk Karin