Milk kinship and the maternal body in Shi’a Islam

In Islamic law, kinship is defined by consanguineal and affinal relationships. Birth and Islamic marriage are important events that define religious responsibilities of family members towards each other. Some responsibilities are connected to Mahramiyat, a framework of interpersonal relations that regulates marriages and interactions with the opposite sex. Besides consanguineal and affinal bonds, mahramiyat and kinship can also be established through breastfeeding. The relationship formed through breastfeeding is called milk mahramiyat/kinship. It is spoken of in the Quran and hadith and has been extensively discussed in Islamic Feqh. This study investigates Shi'i guidelines on milk kinship. My interest is in the exploration of existing gendered rulings on the conditions of milk mahramiyat/kinship in Shi'i jurisprudence. The analysis aims to bring forth discussions on the significance of breast milk and the maternal body, and to investigate how milk kinship is framed within the patrilineal system of kinship in Shi'a Islam. The findings discuss rulings on the role of milk-mother and -father in the way kinship takes effect. While patrilineal kinship is often defined based on a paternal 'milk line', the study suggests that alternative readings and interpretations of the Quran and hadith are available that centralize the mother and the maternal body

Women's Ijtihad and Lady Amin's Islamic ethics on womanhood and motherhood

Women's position, identity, and value in Islam have been affected by androcentric interpretations of the Qur'an and hadith throughout Islamic history. Women's roles in society, as well as their position vis-a-vis Islamic sources and authority, have been shaped by these interpretations. In Shi'a Islam, due to the majority male clergy's resistance, women have rarely reached the highest loci of Shi'i authority and jurisprudence. However, there have been women scholars who have transgressed these normative frameworks. Lady Amin, who was one of the most prominent Iranian theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries, is a notable example. Lady Amin had great knowledge of jurisprudence and gained the status of mujtahida at the age of forty. Her scholarly work addressed not only interpretations of the Qur'an and hadith, but also women's issues and gender politics of her time. This study addresses women's ijtihad in Shi'a Islam and investigates Lady Amin's teachings on the topics of womanhood and motherhood. This study focuses on Lady Amin's book of Islamic ethics, titled Ways of Happiness: Suggestions for Faithful Sisters, written as a Shi'i source of guidance with a specific focus on women and gender in Shi'a Islam

‘Do you plan to stay?’ : Iranian migrant women’s experiences of hospitality and intolerence in Belgium

Program for the 2018 Student Funded Fellowship Auction

Women in higher education and academia in Iran

Abstract This article addresses women's contemporary position in academia in Iran. By systematically reviewing available academic and official databases on women's positions in academia published online or in print, the question is raised if women's current position and role in academia is the result of personal choice making or an existent systematic discriminatory social structure. To address this issue, available Iranian research and data on female recruitment in universities are analyzed. The results show that there is a general accordance on two findings in the research addressing women's position in academia. First, gender discrimination is restricting women's choices by systematically excluding them from educational, managerial and administrative positions. Second, in spite of the substantial increase in women's enrolment in tertiary education, significant development in women's position and role in scientific and educational institutions has not taken place. After discussing the data, I will try to compare two sets of sociological theoretical approaches that offer explanations for women's lower levels of participation in the academia; namely, theories of exclusion and theories of participation. I suggest that the former is more effective in analyzing women's position in Iranian academia, because of being based on recognition of the existing structural discriminations. Although women's participation in higher education is gradually growing and gender boundaries are being stretched on a daily basis, there is need for fundamental structural changes in social and educational spheres, and widespread implementation of positive discrimination

“Their Beastly Manner” : discourses of non-binary gender and sexuality in Shi’ite Safavid Persia

The Safavid dynasty ruled Persia between sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as a turning period in the political, social and religious trajectories of Persian history. The ethnographic literature about the Safavid Persian culture written by Western travelers is an indication of the forming relations between the West and the Orient. The travelogues indicate that Safavid discourses of sexuality were different from their counterparts in the West. These non-binary discourses were not based only on gender and sexual orientation, but also on social factors such as age, class and status. Relations of these factors to different forms of “masculinities/femininities” were focal for gendered and sexual categorization. Nonbinary sexual/gendered identities and expressions were explicit, and a sexual continuum was prevalent. The fundamental differentiation of masculinity and femininity were not valid, and sexual relationships were not confined to heterosexuality. This study uses historical sources to explore the discourses of gender and sexuality during the Safavid era. Drawing on criticisms of Orientalism, implications of Western narratives on our understandings of sexuality and gender in the Safavid era are discussed