Primary Format: Paper
ISBN: 9781584659730
Published: 05/10/2011
Pages: 256
Size: 6 x 9 in.
Subject(s):

Citizenship, Faith, and Feminism: Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights


Jan Feldman

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Religious women in liberal democracies are “dual citizens” because of their contrasting status as members of both a civic community (in which their gender has no impact on their constitutional guarantee of equal rights) and a traditional religious community (which distributes roles and power based on gender). This book shows how these “dual citizens”—Orthodox Jewish women in Israel, Muslim women in Kuwait, and women of both those faiths in the U.S.—have increasingly deployed their civic citizenship rights in attempts to reform and not destroy their religions. For them, neither “exit” nor acquiescence to traditional religious gender norms is an option. Instead, they use the narrative of civic citizenship combined with a more authentic, if alternative reading of their faith tradition to improve their status.

Also alive and well: feminist activism among Orthodox Jews and Muslims in contemporary Israel, Kuwait and the United States. So argues Jan Feldman in “Citizenship, Faith and Feminism: Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights.” Feldman acknowledges her personal stake in this argument; her last book, “Lubavitchers as Citizens,” was an “attempt to square (her) feminism and nonpartisan humanism ... with (her) strong attachment to Lubavitch,” and more recently, she has explained how she became “the only professor on campus” — at the University of Vermont, where she teaches political science — “in a sheitel.”
—Tablet Magazine

Feldman’s Citizenship, Faith & Feminism is a unique text; of course, to Muslim and Jewish feminist scholars and activists the concerns highlighted within the text will not be new. However, the way in which Feldman draws commonalities between Islam and Judaism, and international comparisons between Israel, Kuwait, and the United States is distinct, particularly in light of the conflict between citizenship, religious identity, and multiculturalism. This is not to say that Feldman does not marginalise some complex and historical differences between the faiths, but this is perhaps a strength of Citizenship, Faith & Feminism. Indeed, Feldman does not pretend to have the answers and is right to claim that “Recapturing the promise of gender justice embedded in Judaism and Islam is an ongoing struggle” (71). Equally, Feldman is able to emphasise the fact that Jewish and Muslim feminists share similar concerns, aspirations, and even contexts. This includes the stark choices that Muslim and Jewish feminists make in deciding whether to endure injustice, suffer voluntary exile, or struggle within their communities using civil equality as a basis for reform. For Feldman, this is a common struggle “rooted in a desire [of Muslim and Jewish feminists] to see that G-d given justice prevails for our daughters” (204).
—Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal

JAN FELDMAN is Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, specializing in political theory and political culture. She has published in the field of Soviet political theory, the post-Soviet transition to democracy, trade policy and population theory. She is the author of Lubavitchers as Citizens: A Paradox of Liberal Democracy.

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