Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis »

Hiadeh Moghissi is Professor in the Department of Sociology, York University, Canada.

An accessible introduction to postmodernism, feminist theory and Islamic fundamentalism, this book is a highly controversial intervention into the debate on postmodernism and feminism which looks at what happens when they are jointly employed to illuminate the sexual politics of Islam. The author describes the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the West's response to it. Postmodernism has exposed the vested interests implicit in racist stereotyped and colonial images of Islam, particularly radical Islam. However, the author argues that regardless of the sophisticated argument of postmodernists and their suspicion of power, as an intellectual and political movement, postmodernism has put itself in service to power and the status quo. She brilliantly demonstrates how this has given rise to a neo-conservative feminism--or a new feminist orientalism, asking some hard questions of those who denounce the racism of Western feminism but uncritically embrace the Islamic identity of Muslim women.