Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam

Although both written by Muslim women, these two books pose an interesting contrast. The British book(let) is a compilation by a male Muslim journalist of brief essays by Muslim women, mainly activists, some of them with a record of government approval. The American book on the other hand is a very solid work of research by a Muslim feminist academic trying to get to grips with the theoretical concepts underpinning the arguments between the early Muslim fuqaha’ of the formative period.

The publisher’s blurb on the back of the British book says that it helps to redress the imbalance in the discussion of Muslim women by ‘allowing Muslim women to speak for themselves about the challenges, as they see them, of living in a liberal society’. For them, ‘forced marriage, polygamy and domestic violence

... are living, not abstract questions’. The book aims to ‘stimulate analysis and lead to more informed debate’.