An Islam of Her Own: Reconsidering Religion and Secularism in Women's Islamic Movements * By SHERINE HAFEZ

In this thought-provoking book Sherine Hafez, frequently using words such as ‘the thrill of unlearning’, ‘problematize’, ‘challenge’, ‘trouble’, seeks to rethink the fixed opposition between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’, which has dominated and distorted analysis of Islam and Muslim societies. Her focus is on a women’s private voluntary organization in Cairo, which she calls al-Hilal, and its work both in Cairo and in a village which she calls Mehmeit. To maintain confidentiality, she has changed the names of locations and individuals. Her findings are based on six years of ethnographic research on women’s Islamic activism in Egypt, from 2000 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2008. Her access to this field was helped by her being an Egyptian national and an Arabic speaker, but she is also very aware of the problems associated with her own subjectivities, and of power relations created, potentially, by a Western-educated researcher carrying out interviews in these circumstances.