"This volume succeeds in questioning the stereotype of the defenseless, victimized, burqa-clad Muslim woman, by providing data about the lives of real Muslim women as they maneuver and survive, defend their rights, manage property, and become active in politics."-Gail Minault, professor of history, University of Texas at Austin

To what extent does Muslim personal law, such as polygamy and triple talaq (the allowance for men to instantly divorce their wives), affect the lives of Muslim women? Are these factors more or less important than other lifestyle issues such as socioeconomic status?

Over the past several decades, the most influential approaches to the study of Muslim women and nearly all the significant campaigns for their rights have focused on religious practices and the urgency to reform Islamic laws. Such focused views, however, give the false sense that religion is the main, if not the only, aspect of Muslim women's lives.

In order to broaden the lens through which this demographic is typically seen, a group of researchers in India carried out a large and unprecedented study of one of the most disadvantaged sections of Indian society. The editors of The Diversity of Muslim Women's Lives in India bring together this research in a comprehensive collection of informative and revealing case studies. The essays examine Muslim identity, not only in terms of religious doctrine, but as a heterogeneous set of characteristics produced at the intersections of class, religion, and gender.

Addressing issues of law, politics, education, race, and other neglected secular subjects, this volume is essential reading for policy-makers, social activists, and scholars.

Contributors are Maitreyi Bordia Das, Nasreen Fazalbhoy, Zoya Hasan, Craig Jeffrey, Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, Kalpana Kannabiran, Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Farida Abdulla Khan, Ritu Menon, Keri Olsen, Aboobacker Siddique, and Sylvia Vatuk.

Zoya Hasan is a professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has published widely in academic journals and periodicals and is the author of Dominance and Mobilisation: Rural Politics in Western Uttar Pradesh and Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh. With Ritu Menon, she is coauthor of Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India. Ritu Menon is a publisher and writer. She is the coauthor of Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition and Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India, and editor of No Woman's Land: Women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh Write on the Partition of India. She has also edited several anthologies of stories by Indian women.

Contents
Introduction by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon
1. Muslim Women and Personal Law by Sylvia Vatuk
2. Muslim Women and Property by Nasreen Fazalbhoy
3. The Mother's Lap and the Civilising Mission: Madrasah Education and Rural Muslim Girls in Western Uttar Pradesh by Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, and Craig Jeffrey
4. Other Communities, Other Histories: A Study of Muslim Women and Education in Kashmir by Farida Abdulla Khan
5. Muslim Women's Low Labour Force Participation in India: Some Structural Explanations by Maitreyi Bordia Das
6. Muslim Women in Indian Politics 1947-2002 by Karin Deutsch Karlekar
7. Panchayati Raj and Women in Kerala: The Case of Muslims by Aboobacker Siddique
8. Issues in Women's Leadership in Andhra Pradesh by Kalpana Kannabiran
9. Disrupting an Almost Seamless Discourse: Working-Class Muslim Women's Accounts of a Communal Clash and Curfew in the City of Ajmer by Keri Olsen
Index