Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures

Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures. Edited by Gul Ozyegin. United States: Ashgate, 2015.In Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures (hereafter, GSMC), Gul Ozyeing brings together 19 chapters by international scholars from a variety of disciplines (such as history, feminist studies, anthropology, sociology) to examine intersections between gender and sexuality in Muslim contexts with the goal of providing an understanding of what constitutes a Muslim identity. As a scholar that has previously worked on gender and sexuality in Muslim societies, I find that GSMC contributes to this body of literature by engaging in current and past debates and, thus, is helpful to build an understanding on these issues among those who are not familiar with Islamic studies while expanding the knowledge of those who have been previously interested in these topics. The book is itself an example of the many nuances of a Muslim identity in countries such as Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Pakistan, among others. It is organised into five thematic sections, each exploring different fields in relation to gender and sexuality through chapters based on in-depth ethnographic and historical research. In presenting the argumentative structure of this volume, my focus will be on those chapters I consider most ground-breaking.Part 1, under the title "Challenged Masculinities", addresses the crisis of hegemonic masculinity, which is now challenged and reconfigured under the pressure of different forces (marriage, migration, the army, disability). The included studies present the struggle of men to fight patriarchal constructions. Salih Can Aciksoz (Chapter 1) examines the Turkish state-sponsored assisted conception program, which has been seeking to make fathers out of veterans who got disabled as a consequence of their fight with Kurdish guerrillas. Aciksoz provides an interesting account of how disabilities can lead to an expulsion from hegemonic masculinity. Taking into consideration how both gender and disability have traditionally been used as a discriminatory tool, I consider Aciksoz's chapter an important contribution to the intersection of both gender and disability studies.Mustafa Abdalla (Chapter 2) brings the reader to Egypt in order to explore how the introductions of neoliberal economic policies have challenged the positions that men hold in traditional patriarchal schemes. This idea is evidenced through the case of young men working in the tourism sector and permanently exposed to foreign tourists, an experience that leads them to a greater investment in their bodies in the absence of economic capital. The chapter can be framed within a body of literature that has focused on this type of man and that keeps growing with titles such as Romancing Strangers: The Intimate Politics of Beach Tourism in Kenya (Tami 2008) discussing the concept of the 'beach boy', and Islam, Youth and Modernity in the Gambia (2013) in which Marloen Janson explores the growth in sex tourism on the Gambian coast.Aisha Anees Malik (Chapter 3) considers the experiences of Pakistani men migrating to the UK by marrying Muslim women of their origin. The study contributes to the understudied intersectional field of marriage, migration and masculinity by focusing on the transnational marriage of men migrating from two specific Pakistani villages to the United Kingdom, which leads to the experience of a gender crisis.The last three chapters in Part 1 focus on Turkey. Through an approach that does not only include narrative analysis, but also pays attention to the social context through participant observation and in-depth interviews, the last three chapters of Part 1 bring the discussion forward through the inclusion of ethnographies and the analysis of archival documents.In Chapter 6, "Masculinity and Male Friendship in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul", Serkan Delice explores an issue of particular interest for the development of debates on the performance of transgressive masculinities by presenting the experiences of the so-called "beardless youths" (116), lower-class young shampooers offering their sexual services in the hammams of Istanbul. …