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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm not the PP that OP is addressing, but I too own Dr. Ahmed's book, thanks to reading about it here a few weeks ago. It's not available as an ebook, but the paperback arrived within 2-3 days.

OP, I disagree with your characterization of this book. Dr. Ahmad's story is indeed nuanced: the point is, pre-Islamic Arabia is a patchwork, contrary to the earlier assertions from you and Muslima that Islam made things better for women in Arabia. I don't see why you quoted from Dr. Ahmed about the Abbassids, when we've focussed on the Quran (and not even Hadith) here.

I find objectionable your murky suggestions of evolution in Dr. Ahmed's conclusions, and your murky insinuation that Dr. Ahmed moved off the unflattering statements at the front of the book. She didn't. As an aside, I'm a researcher myself, and I agree with PP that authors' opinions don't "evolve" as they write. Please. An author who did that, who wrote a book that was internally inconsistent, would never get published. [/quote]

Post the paragraphs please that support your opinion.[/quote]

I don't need to prove I own this book, to you or to anybody else. But I'll play along. How about on page 43, when Ahmed talks about Robertson Smith's theory that pre-Islamic Arabia was matriarchal, and Montgomery Watt's theory that pre-Islamic Arabia was at least matrilineal. Ahmed doesn't adopt these theories as being applicable to the whole pre-Islamic period, but she does think them worth mentioning. She writes, on the same page, that "Smith's and Watt's theories aside, the evidence does at least unambiguously indicate that there was no single, fixed institution of marriage and that a variety of marriage customs were practiced about the time of the rise of Islam, customs suggesting both matrilineal and patrilineal systems were extant. Uxorial practices, for example, can be found in Mohammed's background."

Go ahead and check, I'll wait for you. That was page 43. I'll toss in "gists" as the first word on page 74 and "but" as the first word on page 148. OK, now do you accept that I own the book?

So back to my point. You claimed Ahmed's book "evolves" and you insinuated that Dr. Ahmed changed her mind about pre-Islamic Arabia by the end of her book. In fact, her opinion about pre-Islamic Arabia never changes at all. I'll repeat: she never backtracks on her opinion of pre-Islamic Arabia. Instead Dr. Ahmed (quite understandably) moves to a discussion of Modern Islam, western feminists and even anthropology in our own times (the pages leading up yo p. 248). That, and not any backtracking or changing her mind about pre-Islamic Arabia, is how she ends her book.

I stand by my statement, that you twisted Dr. Ahmed's message with your insinuation that Dr. Ahmed "evolved" from  her statements about pre-Islamic Arabia in the front of her book. [/quote]

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