Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective.

• Author: Cesari, Jocelyne

Gender and democratization are among the topics in which the notion of 'Islamic exceptionalism' appears to be most evident. Excep-tionalism here implies an intrinsic quality in 'Islamic' culture that prevents women's emancipation and gender equality. The edited volume, Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective, succeeds in disproving the assumptions of exceptionalism. A universal approach does not exist for the development of women's rights. The contributors to this volume aptly demonstrate that the relationship between religion, secularism, democracy, and gender is multifaceted, not only in the Muslim world but globally.

The editors, Jocelyne Cesari and Jose Casanova divide the volume into two conceptual parts. The first looks at religion, gender, state, law, and democracy through diverse disciplinary perspectives such as sociology, history, law, and political science. Part two consists of case studies of different Muslim examples, both in terms of women's rights policies and the con-textualized responses of social actors, Islamic and secular alike, to the question of gender.

A central theme of the edited volume is the diverse correlation between democratization and women's rights in Muslim national settings, as elsewhere in the world. Jose Casanova (Chapter 2) and Joan W. Scott (Chapter 3) look at the intersection of women's rights concerning secularism and democratization in the Catholic world and present critical insights with comparative significance for Muslim contexts. Casanova argues that during the third wave of democratization, issues of gender, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, did not play a determining role. He prob-lematizes the correlation between democracy and secularism and the oversimplifications produced by this connection regarding women's rights. Scott questions the secularization thesis by showing that secularization did not necessarily go hand in hand with the extension of women's rights in France, where laicism maintained a misogynistic character until the mid-twentieth century. Scott finds l'affaire du foulard to be not an issue of women's emancipation, but a 'civilizing mission' in disguise, driven by laicism that has never accorded gender equality a primary position (p. 74).

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective contains contributions showing the miscellaneous and contested nature of the relationship between democratization, secularism, and women's rights. Case studies of Iran...