On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era

Abstract

A diverse collection of essays written by women about current aspects of the Muslim woman’s experience, On Shift ing Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era covers a vast array of the issues facing Muslim women today. Editor and contributor Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone explains that the book “illuminates the global and local forces in play, asking the reader to relinquish preconceived notions of Western-style feminism as the only goal for all women, and secular, Western-style democracy as the only viable political structure for all societies” (xvi). Indeed, the essays in On Shift ing Ground challenge the reader to rethink ideas about the veil, feminism within Islam and Muslim women’s role in the media. Th is book is an ambitious attempt to off er up-to-date discourse on age-old debates within feminist Middle Eastern theory and the new issues that have come to the fore in this technology era. Scholars and graduate students in Middle East or women’s studies may fi nd the collection of essays to be a useful tool for examining different aspects of theory and the modern female Muslim experience. As a work in its entirety, the reader may fi nd the themes from essay to essay to be somewhat disjointed and diffi cult to follow. Despite the broad spectrum of topics within the book, On Shift ing Ground contributes a great deal of insight and expertise to the complex arena: Muslim Women in the Global Era. Th e title of the book is clearly an accurate refl ection of the massive undertaking of such a project. Contributor Lila Abu-Lughod discusses women’s views about the participation of Muslim women in the media in her essay, “Onand Off Camera in Egyptian Soap Operas: Women, Television, and the Public Sphere.” She highlights the complexities regarding the oft en-pejorative attitudes among women in an Egyptian community toward their counterparts’ work in the Egyptian television industry. In her essay, “Singing a New Song: Bonding and Breaking with the Past,” Sherifa Zuhur examines the presence of Arab women in vocal entertainment and the contradiction of the perceived achievement of women’s independence and agency in their entrance and sustained presence in a career versus

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