Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World

This study emphasizes Muslim women's rights as human rights. The book explores the existing patriarchal structures and processes that present women's human rights as contradictory to Islam. Academics and activists, most of whom live in the Muslim world, discuss the major issues facing women of the region as they enter the 21st century. They demonstrate how the cultural segregation of women, contradictory and conflicting legal codes, and the monopoly of the interpretation of religious texts held by a select group of male theologians, have resulted in domestic and political violence against women and the suppression of their rights. The contributors focus on ways and means of empowering Muslim women to participate in the general socialization process as well as in implementing and evaluating public policy.