Muslim Mothering: Global Histories, Theries and Practises

M. Aziza Pappano

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781772580709
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Muslim Mothering is an interdisciplinary volume, concentrating on the experiences of Muslim mothers, largely in the contemporary period. The volume is notable for the global range of its contributors and topics, indicative of the number of Muslim majority national contexts and large and diverse Muslim diaspora of today's world. While motherhood is highly valued in the sacred texts of Islam, the lived reality of Muslim mothers demonstrates that their lives do not often conform with traditional religious paradigms. For instance, prominent among the themes uniting these essays from diverse global contexts are the challenges facing Muslim mothers to protect and nurture their children in the context of war and militarization.  With ongoing turbulence in the Middle East and subcontinent, many Muslims mothers face the difficulties of rearing children amongst frequent bombings and episodes of violence. Muslim mothers living in the diaspora face other challenges, such as the difficulty of fostering positive Muslim identity as a minority and in a context of Islamophobia. Other contributions discuss the way that Muslim mothers negotiate cultural institutions and practices, such as divorce, adoption/guardianship, post-partum confinement, and societal/religious expectations of procreation. This collection demonstrates the diverse and complex ways that Muslim mothers define and redefine the resources of Islam to negotiate better situations for themselves and their children, revealing how religious identity is a dynamic and vital force in their everyday lives.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I. MUSLIM MOTHERING AMID WAR AND VIOLENCE
• 1. Empowered Muslim Mothering
• 2. “God as My Witness”
• 3. Mourning Mothers in Iran
• II. REMAKING KINSHIP: MUSLIM SINGLE MOTHERS, ADOPTIVE MOTHERS, AND CO-MOTHERS
• 4. Constructing Counter-Narratives of the “Good” Muslim Mother in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• 5. Between Blood and Milk, East and West
• 6. “Sister Mothers”
• III. MUSLIM MOTHERING IN THE DIASPORA
• 7. Muslim, Immigrant, and Francophone in Ontario
• 8. Managing the Family, Combatting Violence
• 9. A Poetic Inquiry
• IV. REPRODUCTION AND MATERNITY IN MUSLIM SOCITIES
• 10. Social and Religious Constructions of Motherhood in Indonesia
• 11. Confinement Practices of Young Malay Muslim Mothers
• 12. The Impact of Maternity Beliefs on Reproductive Health in Muslim Societies
• V. MUSLIM MOTHERING AS ACADEMIC INQUIRY
• 13. Theoretical Constructions of Muslim Motherhood
• About the Contributors