The Warrior Women of Islam
The Warrior Women of Islam

Author: Remke Kruk

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0857736493

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Colloquial Arabic storytelling is most commonly associated with The Thousandvand One Nights. But few people are aware of a much larger corpus of narrative texts known as popular epic. These heroic romantic tales, originating in the Middle Ages, form vast cycles of adventure stories whose most remarkable feature is their portrayal of powerful and memorable women. Wildly appreciated by medieval audiences, and spread by professional storytellers throughout the cities of the Muslim world, these fictions were printed and reprinted over the centuries and comprise a vital part of Arab culture. Yet virtually none are available in translation, and so remain almost unknown to a non-Arab public. Remke Kruk at last makes these neglected romances available to a Western audience. She recounts the story of Princess Dhat al-Himma, brave and undefeated leader of the Muslim army in its wars against the Byzantines; of Ghamra, brought up as a boy to become a fearless leader of men; and of cool-headed Qannasa, raiding from her mountain fortress to capture and seduce her enemies before putting them pitilessly to the sword. The Warrior Women of Islam puts a bold new complexion on gender roles and the wider perception of women in the Middle East.

Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister
Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister

Author: Minoo Moallem

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005-07-11

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0520243455

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"This is a stunning and original book. It will intervene in existing fields and discourses to change the way Islamic fundamentalism is viewed in the West."—Caren Kaplan, Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Chair of Cultural Studies at the University of California Davis. "Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister is an original and venturesome piece of work. It is daring in its willingness to test just how far the definition of 'fundamentalism' might be extended in contemporary Iran. It sketches lucidly the gendered crises of identity that have emerged there in the wake of colonization/Europeanization and decolonization."—Parama Roy, Associate Professor of English at UC Riverside, author of Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India. "Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister is ground-breaking, enlightening, and challenges mainstream constructions of Islam as fanatic and backward. This book will similarly contribute to the writings on race and gender relations, religion and secularism, cultural nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and popular culture and visual media. The personal, biographical and visual examples are effective in making the more nuanced and complex theoretical arguments tangible and provocative. Exciting and innovative."—Ella Shohat, Professor of Cultural Studies, New York University

Women Warriors for Allah
Women Warriors for Allah

Author: Janny Groen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0812242351

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Dutch investigative journalists Janny Groen and Annieke Kranenberg offer an indispensable corrective to the conventional view that Muslim women in jihad are either pacifist nurturers who steer their husbands and brothers away from violence or passive bystanders who play a mere supporting role in networks run by domineering men.

Fighting Hislam
Fighting Hislam

Author: Susan Carland

Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing

Published: 2017-05-01

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 0522870368

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The Muslim community that is portrayed to the West is a misogynist’s playground; within the Muslim community, feminism is often regarded with sneering hostility. Yet between those two views there is a group of Muslim women many do not believe exists: a diverse bunch who fight sexism from within, as committed to the fight as they are to their faith. Hemmed in by Islamophobia and sexism, they fight against sexism with their minds, words and bodies. Often, their biggest weapon is their religion. Here, Carland talks with Muslim women about how they are making a stand for their sex, while holding fast to their faith. At a time when the media trumpets scandalous revelations about life for women from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, Muslim women are always spoken about and over, never with. In Fighting Hislam, that ends.

The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman
The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman

Author: Melanie Magidow

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0525506039

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Published in English for the first time, and the only Arabic epic named for a woman, The Tale of Princess Fatima recounts the thrilling adventures of a legendary medieval warrior universally known throughout the Middle East and long overdue to join world literature's pantheon of female heroes. A Penguin Classic A fearsome, sword-slinging heroine who defeated countless men in stealth attacks on horseback, Dhat al-Himma, or Princess Fatima, was secretly given away at birth because she wasn't male, only to triumph as the most formidable warrior of her time. Known alternately as "she-wolf," "woman of high resolve," and "calamity of the soul," she lives on in this rousing narrative of female empowerment, in which she leads armies of more than seventy thousand men in clashes between rival tribes and between Muslims and Christians; reconciles with her father after taking him prisoner; and fends off her infatuated cousin, who challenges her to a battle for the right to marry her. Though her cousin suffers an ignominious defeat, he impregnates Fatima against her will and, when she gives birth to a Black son, disowns his own son, who also grows up to be a great warrior, eventually avenging his mother's honor. The epic culminates in a showdown between Fatima and another formidable warrior woman, and earns Fatima a place alongside the likes of Circe, Mulan, Wonder Woman, Katniss Everdeen and other powerful women.

Isabella
Isabella

Author: Kirstin Downey

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0307742164

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An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and León. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain’s reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella’s influence. Using new scholarship, Downey’s luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.

Wanted Women
Wanted Women

Author: Deborah Scroggins

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2012-01-17

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 0062097954

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The author of Emma’s War offers a compelling account of the link between Muslim women’s rights, Islamist opposition to the West, and the Global War on Terror. Wanted Women explores the experiences of two fascinating female champions from opposing sides of the conflict: Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali and neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui. With Emma’s War: An Aid Worker, A Warlord, Radical Islam and the Politics of Oil, journalist Deborah Scroggins achieved major international acclaim; now, in Wanted Women, Scroggins again exposes a crucial untold story from the center of an ongoing ideological war—laying bare the sexual and cultural stereotypes embraced by both sides of a conflict that threatens to engulf the world.