Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Study of Discourse and Practice fills a gap in academic scholarship by examining public debates and judicial practices surrounding the performance of women as judges in eight Muslim-majority countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco). Gender, class, and ethnic biases are inscribed in laws, particularly in the domain of shari a-derived family law. Editors Nadia Sonneveld and Monika Lindbekk have carefully woven together the extensive fieldwork and expertise of each author. The result is a...

Border Lives offers an in-depth account of how people in Arsal, a northeastern town on the border of Lebanon with Syria, experienced postwar sociality, and how they grappled with living in the margins of the Lebanese state in the period following the 1975-1990 war. In a rich ethnography of ‘changing times,’ Michelle Obeid shows how restrictions in cross-border mobility, transformations in physical and social spaces, burgeoning new industries and shifting political alliances produced divergent ideologies about domesticity and the family, morality and personhood. Attending to...

In Moroccan Female Religious Agents: Old Practices and New Perspectives, Ouguir studies Moroccan female religious agents in particular historical women saints and Sufis, the way they constructed powerful saintly personalities that challenged the dominant conventional norms, and the way they are received by venerators and feminist Islamist activists of modern Morocco. Through hagiographic and oral narratives, Ouguir examines the techniques religious women followed to achieve ethical self-formation and strong religious personalities that promoted them to leadership. She also examined the...