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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Jamila Rodrigues, "Sufi Women, Embodiment and the 'Self': Gender in Islamic Ritual" (Routledge, 2023)
Description: Jamila Rodrigues's new book Sufi Women, Embodiment and the âSelfâ: Gender in Islamic Ritual (Routledge 2023) uses her dance and performance studies background to study womenâs hadra or zikr experiences of a Naqshbandi Sufi community in Cape Town, South Africa. This ritual includes engagement with sacred texts, music, and bodily movement with the aim of reaching union with Allah. This focused study on womenâs bodily movement during zikr and womenâs understanding of the mind and soul provides fascinating insights of what constitutes the âselfâ via ritual and performance studies. Rodrigues also uses auto-ethnography to situate some of this discussion on embodi...