In the decades leading up to the Arab Spring in 2011, when Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime was swept from power in Egypt, Muslim women took a leading role in developing a robust Islamist presence in the country's public sphere. Soft Force examines the writings and activism of these women--including scholars, preachers, journalists, critics, actors, and public intellectuals--who envisioned an Islamic awakening in which women's rights and the family, equality, and emancipation were at the center. Challenging Western conceptions of Muslim women as being oppressed by Islam, Ellen McLarney shows how women used "soft force"--a women's jihad characterized by nonviolent protest--to oppose secular dictatorship and articulate a public sphere that was both Islamic and democratic. McLarney draws on memoirs, political essays, sermons, newspaper articles, and other writings to explore how these women imagined the home and the family as sites of the free practice of religion in a climate where Islamists were under siege by the secular state. While they seem to reinforce women's traditional roles in a male-dominated society, these Islamist writers also reoriented Islamist politics in domains coded as feminine, putting women at the very forefront in imagining an Islamic polity. Bold and insightful, Soft Force transforms our understanding of women's rights, women's liberation, and women's equality in Egypt's Islamic revival.

About the Author
Ellen McLarney is assistant professor of Arabic literature and culture at Duke University.

Reviews
Winner of the 2016 JMEWS Book Award, Journal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies and Association of Middle East Women's Studies "Women's roles in the intellectual, organizational and political development of Islamist movements have rarely received the attention they deserve. McLarney focuses in depth on the writings of a wide array of Egyptian women involved with Islamist movements, presenting a nuanced and careful reading of their religious and political thought."--Marc Lynch, WashingtonPost.com's Monkey Cage blog "McLarney offers a different and highly important ... perspective, refreshingly free of the shadows of neo-orientalism."--Caron E. Gentry, Times Higher Education "McLarney (Arabic literature and culture, Duke Univ.) provides an intellectual history of women's ideas within the Islamist movement in Egypt over the past century... This work will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars in Islamic studies, women's studies, political science, and literary theory. It illuminates the essential role of women in the modern Islamist movement in a unique way."--Choice "Through her eloquent, sophisticated and careful analysis, McLarney offers a very important but somewhat overlooked contribution to the in depth understanding of the various roles of women in the historical and current developments within the Muslim world... The wealth of information in this volume makes it an important contribution to the study of Islamic revivalism, women and Islam within the context of 20th and 21st century developments in Egypt and the wider Middle East."--Katherine Ranharter, Ph.D., Journal of Global Analysis



Book Information
ISBN 9780691158495
Author Ellen Anne McLarney
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 454g