This book is premised on the understanding that women’s inclusion in constitutional politics is critical for our equality. In the present political context, particularly Muslim contexts, it is imperative to promote women’s equality both in law and in practice, so that women can move closer towards equality. Utilising a feminist constitutionalist approach, this book highlights the impact of women’s historical underrepresentation in constitutional drafting processes and discussions across the globe, as well as recent feminist interventions to address legislative processes that consider women’s needs and interests. It reflects on the role of Islam in politics and governance, and the varied ways in which Muslim-majority countries, as well as Muslim-minority countries, have sought to define women’s citizenship rights, personal freedoms, and human rights from within or outside of a religious framework. Recognising the importance of Constitutions for the recognition, enforcement and protection of women’s rights, this book explores how women seek justice, equality, and political inclusion in their diverse Muslim contexts.

The book advocates for more inclusive constitutional drafting processes that also consider diverse cultural contexts, political history, and legal and institutional developments from a gendered lens. Tracing the ways in which women are empowered and exercise agency, insist on inclusion and representation in politics and seek to enshrine their rights, the contributing authors present case studies of Afghanistan, Algeria, India, Iran, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. Positioned at the crossroads of secular and religious legal forces, the book situates women’s rights at the centre of debates surrounding constitutional rights guarantees, gender equality, and religious rules and norms. The contributors offer a range of disciplinary approaches and perspectives that illustrate the richness and complexity of this field. The dominant emergent themes that each contributor tackles in considering how women’s rights impact, and are, in turn, impacted by Constitutions, are those of critical junctures such as revolutions or regime change which provide the impetus and opportunity for women’s rights advocates to push for greater equality; the tension between religion and women’s rights, where women’s legal disadvantage is justified in the name of religion, and finally, the recognition of the important role women’s movements play in advocating and organizing for equality. While much has been written about the constitutional processes of the past decade across the Muslim world as a result of pro-democratic uprisings, revolutions, and even regime change, most of such analyses lack a gendered lens, disregard women’s perspectives and fail adequately to acknowledge the significant role of women in constitutional moments. Even less has been written about the importance of constitutionalizing women’s equality rights in Muslim contexts. This edited volume is an effort to fill this gap in the literature. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars, students and activists in the areas of Muslim constitutionalism, feminist constitutionalism, Muslim law and society, gender studies, anthropology, and political science, religious studies and area studies.

EDITORS:

Dr. Vrinda Narain is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada, and Research Fellow, Research Directorate, University of the Free State, South Africa. Professor Narain’s research and teaching focus on constitutional law, social diversity and feminist legal theory. She is the author of two books: Reclaiming the Nation: Muslim Women and the Law in India (University of Toronto Press, 2008) and Gender and Community: Muslim Women's Rights in India (University of Toronto Press, 2001). She was Associate Dean, Academic, at the Faculty of Law from 2016 to 2019. She is a Board Member of the transnational research and solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), Member of the National Steering Committee of the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), Canada, and the President of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC) in Montreal.

Mona Tajali is a scholar of gender and politics in Muslim countries, with a focus on Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. She is the author of Women’s Political Representation in Iran and Turkey: Demanding a Seat at the Table (EUP 2022), and co-author of Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women (WLUML 2011) with Homa Hoodfar. She serves as executive board member of the transnational feminist solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), and is currently the director of research of WLUML’s multi-sited Women and Politics project and its Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute. She is an associate professor of International Relations and Women’s Studies at Agnes Scott College, where she helped found the Middle East Studies Program and directed the Human Rights Program. She is currently researching institutionalization of women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) as a visiting scholar.

This article examines how the evolution of ideational conflicts between Islamist and leftist intellectual advocates over the past four decades has shaped the dominant discourse and narrative through which leftists have sought to justify the repression of Islamist currents in the aftermath of the 2013 coup. Since the mid-1970s, debates and conflicts between Islamist and leftist intellectuals and activists have generated a variety of historical narratives and a repertoire of language that endorsed the political exclusion of ideological rivals. The 1970s and 1980s saw the advent of an Islamist ‘authenticity critique’ of the left. That critique argued that leftist movements do not enjoy an organic connection with Egyptian society, presenting them as foreign implants with questionable national loyalties. The political victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s and Islamist attacks against secular intellectuals in the 1990s, paved the way for a leftist counter-critique of Islamists, one that continues to shape leftist discourse in the contemporary moment. Adopting a strong nationalist veneer, the counter-critique held that it was the Islamist movement that lacked authentic roots in Egyptian society, while arguing that Islamists’ loyalties lie not with Egypt, but with international networks of Islamist groups and governments. By historicising the discursive and narrative battles between Islamist and leftist currents, the article contributes to our understanding of the intellectual origins of ‘affective polarization’ in post-2013 Egypt, shedding light on why it has taken on an exclusionary and violent turn.

After almost two years since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, the international community is coming to terms with the nature of the new regime in Kabul. This Article explores the nature of Taliban 2.0, assessing evidence of both change and disturbing continuity in the new leadership of Afghanistan. Importantly, Taliban 2.0 has demonstrated persistent inflexibility in its imposition of a puritanical form of Islamic rule, exemplified by its treatment of the rights of women and girls. This inflexibility is in direct conflict with its goal of becoming a formally recognized member of the international community. Its lack of international recognition hampers the Taliban's ability to stabilize the Afghan economy and provide even minimal levels of public goods to its people. Yet, in light of this growing humanitarian crisis, the United States and its allies face a delicate balancing act: decreasing the suffering of the Afghan people while maintaining pressure on the Taliban regime. This Article argues that the United States should consider using a mix of carrots and sticks to achieve this delicate balance and test the ultimate flexibility, cohesion, and staying power of Taliban 2.0.

A key challenge that many nations face in the 21st century is to build societies that not only are able to peacefully accommodate increasing ethnic diversity but also to leverage its potential benefits. This is not a straightforward task. Ethnically diverse communities tend to provide fewer public goods to their citizens (e.g. Alesina et al. 2004, Alesina and La Ferrara 2005) and are less likely to voice common priorities (e.g. Ban et al. 2012). With ethnic identities often coordinating political competition as well, it is perhaps not surprising that violent conflict is more likely in ethnically polarised countries and regions (e.g. Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005, Esteban et al. 2012, Jha 2023 and Figure 1). With 82.1 million people around the world forcibly displaced due to persecution and conflict in 2020, and widespread economic migration, the challenge of building resilient inter-ethnic peace is one faced not only by societies that have been diverse historically but increasingly in nations and communities with less experience navigating a diverse setting.

What can economic theory, in combination with the historical experiences of these communities, tell us about the necessary conditions for resilient inter-ethnic peace, and how these can be fostered?

This book presents a synthesis of key recent advances in political-economy research on the various approaches and strategies used in the process of building nations throughout modern history. It features chapters written by leading scholars who describe the findings of their quantitative analyses of the risks and benefits of different nation-building policies. The book is comprised of 26 chapters organized into six sections, each focusing on a different aspect of nation-building. The first chapter presents a unified framework for assessing nation-building policies, highlights potential challenges that may arise, provides a summary of each of the other chapters, and draws out the main lessons from them. The following chapters delve into the importance of social interactions for national identification, the role of education, propaganda and leadership, external interventions and wars, and the effects of representation and redistribution. The book offers a nuanced understanding of effective nation-building policies.