Refining Islamic Feminisms: Gender, Subjectivity and the Divine Feminine

As a South African born in the late 1960s, my experiences of religion and faith were complicated, contested and nuanced. I grew up nurtured by an enduring current of Islamic spirituality that was foundational to my sense of self. Among my cherished childhood memories are those of sitting on my father’s lap, enthralled by stories about Abdul-Qadr Jilani, the eleventh-century Muslim saint active in Baghdad – he was a Sufi whose love and devotion to his spiritually accomplished mother was as celebrated as his transformative encounter in the desert with a group of marauding bandits. My young imagination was captured