Re-inventing Islam
Gender and the Protestant Roots of American Islamophobia
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:12th Aug '25
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
From the end of the American Civil War to the start of World War II, the Protestant missionary movement unintentionally tilled the soil in which American Islamophobia would eventually take root. What ideas did missionaries in Islamic contexts pass on to later generations? How were these ideas connected to centuries-old Protestant discourses about Muslims and gender beginning in the Reformation? And what bearing does this history have on the birth of Islamophobia and on Christian-Muslim dialogue efforts in the US today? In answering these questions, Re-inventing Islam traces the gender constructs that have informed historical Protestant perceptions of Islam, especially in the far-reaching textual, visual, and material influences of the American and British movement for missions to Muslims. This book first considers Protestant discourse about Muslim women and men from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Then it turns to the colossal archive of literature, images, and cultural objects that missionaries--and particularly missionary women--collected from Islamic contexts and used to inform and motivate their constituents. Anglo-Protestants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perpetually re-invented stereotypes about Muslims and used these negative images to achieve particular Protestant theological and political purposes, including missionary aims. They did so when disseminating gender critiques widely to Protestant men, women, and children. Why did they re-invent Islam? Deanna Ferree Womack argues that they did so to reinforce Protestant theological claims, to justify their evangelistic endeavors, to express both humanitarian concern and Eurocentric views of the world, and to support British and American cultural, economic, and military expansion. Simultaneously, however, this same missionary movement educated its constituents about diverse Islamic cultures, in part by providing humanizing images of Islam. Missionaries also formed personal relationships with Muslims that would open pathways toward formal efforts of Christian-Muslim dialogue after the mid-twentieth century. Americans have inherited all of these legacies. In revisiting this history readers will find new possibilities for building a more open and just future.
Named one of Ten Outstanding Books in Mission Studies, World Christianity, and Intercultural Theology for 2025 by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research
A strength of the book surfaces in the excellent set of photographic images included in the volume. Particularly vivid and unusual is a set of pictures showing Protestant women missionaries and their daughters dressed up in restrictive Islamic garb, an interpretive move that Womack characterizes as "gendered pageantry" [...] In Re-inventing Islam, Womack has delivered a thoughtful and stimulating walk through a neglected but fascinating neighborhood within the Protestant missionary archives. * Stanley H. Skreslet, International Bulletin of Mission Research *
Womack's work highlights not only the writing, thinking, and work of women missionaries in Muslim lands, but it includes material that has been absent in previous research: the fictional publications and material culture collected or worn by missionaries, both men and women. Her research provides an invaluable contribution to the historical interpretation of missionaries living in Muslim majority lands in the twentieth century. * David D. Grafton, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAM AND SOCIETY *
Womack's description of female missionaries' re-inventions of Islam is rich. It considers multimodal forms of communication such as the effect of the emergence of photography, the consequences of tourism with accompanying commodified re-inventions of Islam, and the effect of material religion in missionary exhibitions. Further, Womack is attentive to demonstrate that 'missionaries' personal views of Islam were more nuanced than the common discourse suggested' (25). [...] The main contribution of Re-inventing Islam lies in its rich description of the female missionaries. Further, the analytical concept of re-invention highlights the active role of missionaries when they generate discourse about Muslims. * Jesper Petersen, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations *
This remarkable research work is a milestone in this direction. The author has observed academic honesty and objectivity in interpretation of the scientific data. It is a must-read for all scholars working on contemporary Islam and the Muslim community. * Anis Ahmad, The Muslim World Review *
ISBN: 9780197699164
Dimensions: 226mm x 160mm x 25mm
Weight: 612g
320 pages