Zahra Ayubi

Dartmouth College

2020 Fatema Mernissi Book Award Honorable Mention

Ayubi’s work finally puts gender into a study of medieval Islamic philosophy and ethics, fields of study about male medieval scholars and peopled almost exclusively by modern male scholars. Ayubi tackles issues of personal rather than political ethics, exploring how theories of moral responsibility and familial and communal living were gendered and hierarchized. In addition to being conversant with theory on femininity and gender, Ayubi looks at how Islamic ethics constructed masculinity in terms of a tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism, or, in her terms, between justice and power, and she examines men's ethical engagements with women and men's construction of homosocial relationships as well.

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