The book cover: The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World
Introduction: A first-ever collection of contemporary Muslim women’s khutbahs (sermons) drawing on their social, religious, and spiritual experiences and framed by original reflections on emerging Muslim feminist ethics.
Within the Muslim world, there is a dynamic and exciting social change afoot: a number of communities across the globe have embraced more gender-inclusive and representative ideas of religious authority. Within some spaces, women have taken on the role of preacher at the Jumu’ah (Friday) communal prayers. In other communities, women have been leading the prayers, officiating at marriage and funeral ceremonies, or participating on mosque boards or executive committees. These new developments signify a transformation in contemporary positions on gender and religious authority.
The religious sermons (khutbahs) selected for this book highlight an array of pertinent topics: social justice, personal spiritual experiences, marital love, and divine love as well as the views of Muslims of different races, ethnicities, and gender identities. They are by contemporary Muslim women in a variety of new and emerging contexts from South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
The goal of the book is to intentionally disrupt the traditional, heteronormative, patriarchal khutbah genre. The book includes templates and resources to guide readers in developing their own egalitarian khutbah practices.
About the authors:
Sa’diyya Shaikh is a Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She specialises in the study of Islam, gender ethics, and feminist theory, with a special interest in Sufism. Her study of Islam began with an abiding interest in existential questions as well as a commitment to social justice – much of her work is animated by interest and curiosity about the relationship between the realms of the spiritual and the political. She has published on interpretations of the Qur’an, hadith and Sufi texts; Islamic feminism; gender-based violence; Sufism and Islamic Law; contemporary Muslim women’s embodied ethics; and marriage, sexuality and reproductive choices amongst South African Muslim women. Sa’diyya is the Director of the research unit, the Centre for Contemporary Islam at UCT. She is co-editor of Violence Against Women in Contemporary World Religions: Roots and Cures (2007); author of Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality (2012) and co-author/co-editor of The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World (2022) She is involved in a number of socially engaged networks as a scholar-activist invested in ways to promote gender justice and social transformation.
Fatima Seedat (PhD Islamic Law, McGill) is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of African Feminist Studies at the University of Cape Town, and teaches at the intersections of gender, sexuality, law and religion, as they combine with African feminist priorities. She publishes Islamic law, Islamic feminism, gendered legal subjectivity, decolonial pedagogy, and militarised masculinity. She is co-author/co-editor of The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from Around the World (2022) and co-editor of the African Journal of Gender and Religion. Fatima is also Co-director of the Center for Contemporary Islam and Acting Director for the African Gender Institute, both at UCT. She is the PI on the ‘Legal Experience Project’ focused on the practice of Muslim personal law in South Africa. Fatima is a scholar-activist committed to gender-based transformation in communal practices of Muslim family law and religious authority, having initiated various projects in partnership with local and international organisations.
Discussant: Kharnita Mohamed is a black feminist scholar who lectures in Anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her research is focused on epistemology, death, debility, disability, race and gender towards developing conceptual tools for thinking about the making of Black worlds and inequality in and for the Global South. Her 2018 debut novel, Called to Song received the 2020 UCT Meritorious Book Award, was shortlisted for the 2020 National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Fiction Award, and long listed for the 2019 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize.
Convenor: Amina Alaoui Soulimani
More about the HUMA Book Lunch Series
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