Böcker i Gender, Culture, and Politics-serien

The legal treatment of sexual behavior is a subject that receives little scholarly attention in the field of Middle East women's studies. Important questions about the relationship between sexuality and the law and about the societies enforcing that relationship are rarely addressed in the current literature. Elyse Semerdjian's "Off the Straight Path" takes a bold step toward filling that gap by offering a fascinating look at the historical progression of the treatment of illicit sex under Islamic law. Semerdjian provides a comprehensive review of the concept of zina, i.e., sexual indiscretion, by exploring the diverse interpretation of zina crime as presented in a variety of sources from the Qur'an and hadith to legal literature. She then delves into the history of legal responses to zina within the specific community of Aleppo, Syria. Drawing on a wealth of shari'a court records, Semerdjian provides a realistic view of Syrian society during the Ottoman period. With vivid detail, she describes specific women's lives and experiences as their cases are presented before the court. Semerdjian argues that the actual treatment of zina crimes in the courts differs substantially from sentences prescribed by codified Islamic jurisprudence. In contrast to the violent corporal punishments dictated in the Islamic legal code, the courts often punished crimes of sexual indiscretion with nonviolent sentences, such as removal from the community. Employing exceptional insight, "Off the Straight Path" presents a powerful challenge to the traditional view of Islamic law, enabling a richer understanding of Islamic society.

Following the 2011 wave of revolutions and protest in North Africa and the Middle East, new discussions of individual freedoms have emerged in the Moroccan public sphere and human rights discourses. Public opinion rallied around the removal of an article in the Moroccan penal code that punished sexual relationships outside of marriage. As debates about personal and sexual freedom move to the forefront of society, love and intimacy remain complex issues. Moving between public and clandestine interactions and within online environments, Quest for Love in Central Morocco explores the creative ways young women navigate desire and morality. Menin's ethnography focuses on young women whose lives unfold in the low-income and lower-middle-class neighborhoods of a midsized town in Central Morocco, far from the overt influence of city life. In a way, they form a new generation whose experiences as more educated, economically mobile, and digitally connected individuals vary with those of their mothers and generations of women before them. At the heart of the book, Menin draws upon ideas of "love" as an ethnographic object and source of theoretical examination to show how love is shaped just as much through complex cultural and historical phenomena as through intersecting socioeconomic and political developments. At once, Menin is challenging stereotypes that frame Muslim cultures as too rigid to allow freedom of choice and romantic love while she is bridging the divide between romantic love and discussions of sexuality. Love becomes the metric by which young women approach romantic experiences and also shape their subjectivities around methods of intimate exchange.

Julie Peteet offers a fascinating tour through the rich cultural history of hammams, or baths, in the Mediterranean and Middle East. These sacred structures date back to the Bronze and Iron Ages and have evolved through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods. In this original work, Peteet provides the first comprehensive examination of hammams through their architecture, the labor pool, clientele, meanings, notions of the body and hygiene, and economy. Exploring the hammam as both a tangible architectural structure and an intangible social practice, Peteet sheds light on how the bath has functioned as a central hub of religious ceremonies and a space that transcends any specific religious affiliation.Although hammams have experienced a decline due to modernization, new domestic technologies, and rejection of the Ottoman-Islamic past, their current reinvigorated form illuminates neoliberal conceptions of heritageand leisure industries. Hammams have become spaces for cleansing and fashioning a gendered and aesthetically appropriate body as defined by a global wellness syndrome. Peteet's captivating narrative traces the hammam's historical significance and contemporary role as both a sacred and profane cultural phenomenon.