Published in: International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10:4, December 2008, pages 439-454

This Special Issue has its genesis in a Ford Foundation-funded Institute held at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 12-16 September 2007. The Institute, titled 'Engaging Islam: Feminisms, Religiosities and Self-Determinations', brought together 29 scholars and activists from around the world to discuss challenging and provocative issues relating to the intersectionalities of Islam, feminism, secularism and democracy. The participants (10 invited keynote speakers and 19 competitively selected panel presenters) came from and focused their work on a variety of locations, including Bangladesh, Bosnia, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Syria, Turkey and the United States. The discussions drew on the vibrant exchange of perspectives underway within academic and activist networks of transnational feminism. This exchange seeks to disrupt unproductive binaries between secularism and religiosity and to disprove the absolute links often drawn between secularism and democracy, on the one hand, and religiosity and authoritarianism, on the other. It also challenges the negative representations of Muslim women that play a role in imperialist and globalizing projects and that are sometimes found within feminism itself.