Students should work to prepare an introduction, conclusion and format their arguments into coherent paragraphs. Please select one of the questions to answer and reference appropriately using APA-style.

How has history and historical recollections (including those found in religious texts) heavily influenced our perception of Islam?
Where are the women in the readings and texts? Why is it important to seek out Muslim women’s narratives and stories?
How does Leila Ahmed’s framing of women’s daily lives help us understand the norms of pre and post-Islam in Arabia?
When Leila Ahmed discusses the starting place of her analysis as one of ‘discourse discovery’, what discourses is she referring to?
When we think of Islam’s expansion, how can we begin to understand the status of women outside of Arab society?
What has been the most significant contributions of Said’s Orientalism on scholarship focused on Islam and the Middle East?
What does Said mean by the Orient is shaped by the same discourses as the Occident?
Why is it important to ‘gender’ works like Orientalism to reflect critical scholarship on post-colonialism and feminist studies?
Can Western scholarship produce knowledge about Islam and the Middle East that is ‘True’?
Consider the tools used to understand the agency of a historical female figure in Islam. What does A’isha bint Abu Bakr’s life story tell us about women who are not seen as traditionally feminine?
Why is it important to see women as complex figures in Islamic history? Particularly during the medieval times?
What is the link between A’isha bint Abu Bakr and Nana Asma’u’s scholarship?
How is Islamic Feminism framed in relation to Western Feminism? Are Islam and Feminism incompatible?
What strategies to achieve gender equality do Muslim women activists use?
How complex is Islamic feminism portrayed in the Egyptian and Nigerian contexts?
What can we say about the impact of colonialism, decolonial struggles and capitalism on Muslim women in Arab societies?
What does the practice of story-telling and writing tell us about Muslim feminists?
How are Golley and Edwin tackling misconceptions about Muslim women and feminism both from within their respective contexts and from outside of it?

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