Review by Choice Review
US-trained Pakistani anthropologist Ahmad (Lahore Univ., Pakistan) went back to Islamabad in 2004 to research Al-Huda, an Islamic revivalist movement. Established in the 1990s by charismatic female Islamic scholar Farhat Hashemi, Al-Huda began as a school that offered upper- and middle-class women courses in religious education centered on an interpretive approach to the Quran and other Muslim texts as they relate to women. In a short time, the school turned into a social movement "committed to infusing the individuals who engage with it with particular Islamic' principles so that they can transform themselves into pious subjects." One visible change is that women began wearing the hijab, or veil, as a sign of their new piety. The women also gave up dancing at weddings, listening to music, and watching films and television programs, which they now deemed to be un-Islamic and sources of corruption. The author is particularly good at presenting and analyzing the different discourses around the issue of the veil and how it relates to the larger question of women's symbolic and actual role in Pakistan and in the larger Muslim community worldwide. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. A. Rassam emerita, CUNY Queens College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
