Books by Miriam Cooke

This book offers a collection of journal entries, interviews, fiction, and poetry by twentieth-century Middle Eastern and South Asian women writing about war and political conflicts. It reflects the realization that through their writing, women have created a new mythology of the war-peace paradox.

In 1928, a young Lebanese woman, Nazira Zeineddine al-Halabi, wrote a book called "e;Unveiling and Veiling"e;, an indictment of patriarchal oppression in which she boldly stated that the veil was un-Islamic, directly challenging the teachings of wiser"e; male scholars. Considered by many an attack on Islam, it rocked the Muslim world and was banned by many clerics, although it quickly went into a second edition and was translated into several languages. In this latest addition to Makers of the Muslim World series, Miriam Cooke offers an intimate portrait of the life and work of this pioneering champion of Islamic feminism.

The Lebanese War has seen the publication of many more works of fiction by women than men and this book challenges the theory that men write of war and women of the hearth. The author terms these women "The Beirut Decentrists" and traces the transformation of consciousness among them.

Women Claim Islam presents the literature of contemporary Islamic feminist authors, and analyses their strategies for self-definition and self-empowerment.