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yielding distinct results. All terms are explored within the framework of the particular nuances of gender- inclusive reading of the Qur’an and other texts to justify legitimacy and authority, and to promote greater efficacy crucial to a paradigm shift in Islamic thought.
    Chapter 2, “The Challenges of Teaching and Learning in the Creation of Muslim Women’s Studies,” includes both pedagogical matters and personal narrative affecting new objectives as an academic. This is more than mere objective pedagogy and discourse hierarchies; it is my reality as teacher and scholar. Thus the narratives are integral to what fuels, motivates, justifies, and legitimates actions for rethinking the role of academe in relation to Islamic reform, Islamic activism, and to having control over gender theory. It includes some consideration of the history of Muslim Women’s Studies to suggest possibilities for more interdisciplinary corroborations and coherent theory development by prioritizing Islamic Studies.
    That is one reason why chapter 3, “Muslim Women’s Collectives, Organizations, and Islamic Reform,” follows. It attends to the relationship between theory and practice to situate women’s networks within the framework of women’s full human agency. Special attention is given to African-American Muslim women’s networks, usually formed at the grass- roots level and focused away from controversy in an attempt to “establish what is good.” This is true for many grassroots organizations, and Muslim women globally are contributing to community care-giving in this context. There is a discussion of Sisters in Islam Malaysia, as it developed through various stages, to demonstrate how women’s organizations evolve from the grassroots or personal collectives to the level of international acclaim, especially as granted extensive funding as well as government support.
    Chapter 4, “A New Hajar Paradigm: Motherhood and Family,” is the heart and soul of my life as a Muslim woman. It expands on a single thread that runs through the heart of my gender jihad. It discusses motherhood,

    Introduction 11

    marriage, and “family” as the birthplace of gender inequalities, and situ- ates the life of Hajar as an archetype for the consequences of unexamined applications of laws based on concepts insufficient to include meaningful connections to the realities of single female heads of household in the African-American Muslim community.
    Chapter 5, “Public Ritual Leadership and Gender Inclusiveness,” is based on an important event in South Africa in 1994 with a woman as khatibah , delivering a sermon in the still primarily male role, in an attempt to challenge the status quo. It also, however, points to contradictions and missing comprehensive collective theory dealing with the strategic impli- cation that women are still used as objects of utility rather than fully human identities. It shows how the hybrid of activities can break stasis without reconstructing or building bridges for long-term collective forums and insti- tutional transformation. Ultimately it introduces some radical ideas about removing gender asymmetries in Islamic ritual practices – especially in leadership. Very little research has been focused on a female perspective of Islamic ritual leadership in the haste to articulate other more political opportunities for leadership.
    Chapter 6, “Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities,” context- ualizes the developments from the radical originality initiated in my book Qur’an and Woman as female-voice-inclusive, and the contradictory– complementary nature of text and interpretation. My own research has continued into the major challenge of textual hermeneutics, epistemology, and historiography over the past decade in further developments of textual analysis and implementation in more recent progressive discourse. While I have come to newer articulations of some of my contributions to textual analysis two