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Author Ahmed, Leila, author.

Title A quiet revolution : the veil's resurgence, from the Middle East to America / Leila Ahmed
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 352 pages)
Contents The Islamic resurgence and the veil: from emergence to migration. Unveiling ; The veil's vanishing past ; The 1970s: seeds of the resurgence ; The new veil: converging influences ; The 1980s: exploring women's motivations ; Islamist connections ; Migrations ; The 1990s: a changing climate in America -- After 9/11: new pathways in America. Prologue ; Backlash: the veil, the burkah, and the clamor of war ; ISNA and the women of ISNA ; American Muslim women's activism in the twenty-first century
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. What she discovered, however, in 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. Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam."--Publisher's description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-338) and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (JSTOR platform, viewed May 15, 2017)
Subject Hijab (Islamic clothing) -- Middle East
Hijab (Islamic clothing) -- United States
Veils -- Middle East
Veils -- United States
Muslim women -- Clothing -- Middle East
Muslim women -- Clothing -- United States
RELIGION -- Islam -- General.
RELIGION -- Islam -- History.
Hijab (Islamic clothing)
Muslim women -- Clothing
Veils
Muslimin
Schleier
Kopftuch
Islam
Kleidung.
Schleier.
Islam.
Muslimin.
Frau.
Hijab (islamisk klädedräkt)
Slöjor.
Muslimska kvinnor -- kläder.
Islamism.
Veils.
Muslim women -- Clothing.
Middle East
United States
Naher Osten
USA
USA.
Naher Osten.
Genre/Form dissertations.
Academic theses
Academic theses.
Thèses et écrits académiques.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300175059
0300175051
9781283096270
1283096277