CM08: Men in Islam

Ziauddin Sardar confesses his shortcomings as a Muslim man, Merryl Wyn Davies asks what exactly is the problem with men, Abdennur Prado grapples with Muslim masculinities, Ziba Mir Hosseini tries to get out of the dead-end of male superiority justified by the Sharia, Kecia Ali is exasperated with the omnipresent male scholar, Asma Afsaruddin argues that the history of Islam includes people who were not men, Saleck Mohamed Val is impressed by traditional female commentators of the Qur’an, Shamim Miah is disgusted by Pakistani men who groom vulnerable teenage girls, Tanjil Rashid argues that Islamists like Syed Qutb are complex men, Stefano Bigliardi suggests that men who follow the flat-earth ideology of Turkish creationists Haroon Yahya need psychotherapy, Leyla Jagiella relates her painful experiences as a woman who was a man, Alev Adil extolls the beauty of men, and Jenny Taylor thinks it’s time both men and women were a bit more chaste. 

Also in this issue: Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton is bowled over by the Iraqi pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Hassan Mohamdallie is captivated by Ayad Akhtar’s award-winning play, M A Qavi is enthralled by Dervla Murphy’s sojourn in Gaza, Claire Chambers is engrossed by John Siddique’s achingly personal love poems, a short story by Tam Hussain, poems by the widely-acclaimed Mark Gonzales, Mohja Kahf and Imtiaz Dharkar, and our list of ten species of angry Muslim men.

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In this issue

CM08: Men in Islam

Ziauddin Sardar confesses his shortcomings as a Muslim man, Merryl Wyn Davies asks what exactly is the problem with men, Abdennur Prado ...

Ten Species of Angry Muslim Men

You are sitting comfortably in an assembly of Muslim men. Women are, as usual, segregated and ...

Out of this dead-end

Read an article from the current issue: Out of This Dead-End by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

The Shadows of Muslim Men by Ziauddin Sardar

A confession. In case you did not know I am a man. A generic, universal entity about which the seventeenth century French aristocrat Madame de ...

The Problem of Men by Merryl Wyn Davies

To paraphrase the classic pop song: men — what are they good for? Currently a consensus appears to be forming around the song’s ...

Muslim Masculinities by Abdennur Prado

There is no lack of books, pamphlets, scholarly tomes and polemical works on ‘Women in Islam’. Every genre is covered: classical, ...

Out of this Dead-End by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

In July 1979, six months into the Iranian Revolution that brought Islamists into power, Ahmad Shamloo wrote a poem, ‘In This ...