UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Questions of gender in Islam, particularly of how Muslim women have been excluded from the interpretation and codification of religion has generated one of the most highly contested and controversial discourses in the contemporary moment of globalization. Across the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, Islam's faithful, especially women, are calling for innovative ways to balance religious teaching with the demands of modernity and globalization. Within this context, Azza Basarudin's disseratation examines how Muslim women scholar-activists in two NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Malaysia and in Egypt negotiate issues of gender, religion, and feminism in Islam.