I always become angered and confused when I witness incidents of women being belittled. Why must we be afraid and worried about women who assertively express themselves? What is the relationship between sexuality that is supposed to be a personal matter, social order, and politics? How is the image of women used to define both the identities of the family and society and how does it contribute to preserving them? In this book, historian Nadia Cheikh takes us on a journey through the Islamic world in search of answers to these questions (and several others). She does not analyze Islamic society as a homogenous whole; instead, she unveils various (and sometimes conflicting) ideologies. Her main focus is the groups that challenged the Islamicization of society and the new moral system that Islam advocated. These groups are the Jahilis (pre-Islamic peoples), the Qaramita heretics, and the Byzantines, all of whose identities...

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