Women Islam & the State

The book insists that women in the Middle Eat must be studie through the differing plitical projects on nation-sate, with their distinct histories, relatioship to colonialism and the West, class politics, ideological uses of an Islamic idiom, and struggles over the roleof Islamic law in state legal appartues. Linking attemptsat family reform and women's rights to the efforts of the modern state to break up the autonomy of local kin roups and thus enhancetheir own power, to mobilize labor forces or political constituencies to meet national needs, or most recently to meet the requirments of international develoment agencies.