Rashida Keshavjee: The Redefined Role of the Ismaili Muslim Woman through Higher Education and the Professions

Excerpts:

This study investigates the effects of higher education among Nizari Ismaili Muslim women, and its impact on traditional cultural mores regarding gender. It explores the lives of seven professional Canadian Ismaili women of Indian descent, from a hitherto traditional society, at different stages of their acculturation, and examines how higher education has affected their roles as Muslim women in society.

Primary sources for data collection included texts and in-depth interviews with women who shared a common background: their Indian descent, their colonial African connection, their Islamic faith, their quest for higher education, and their diasporic experiences.

Results of this study showed that there was no essential Islamic or Ismaili woman, even though images based on various geopolitical movements tend to suggest so. The women of this study managed to extricate themselves from an otherwise patriarchically obsessed exegesis of the Qur’an on women’s rights, solely by relying on the guidance of their Imams, who, in their persuasion of Islam, hold the authority and prerogative to interpret the faith according to the times. Other important variables that were implicated in their oppression were the British and other European colonial policies of racial discrimination, especially regarding educational opportunities. Their Imams worked proactively to counteract this problem. The study also shows that the practice of their faith and its manifestations are largely private. Their adherence to it was neither anachronistic, nor incompatible with their professional lives, though its form and symbols had changed for them compared to what it was for their mothers.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=1BjCAAAACAAJ&dq=keshavjee&lr=&cd=17