Book Review: Women in the Quran, by Asma Lamrabet

This book is at its best when it's recounting the stories of the women mentioned in the Quran and the stories of the female companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to whom the Quran was revealed. The stories told are stories we are familiar with as Muslims but they're told with a feminine voice that is both strong and refreshing.

In my opinion, the author really should have stuck to these stories and the lessons of courage, endurance and sacrifice extracted from them. Instead, she continues and closes off by opening up and trying to take on some contentious issues like polygamy and women's inheritance and testimony. The problem is that she raises questions in this domain but doesn't really offer substantiated, convincing answers. It comes across a little ill-conceived and rushed, and it's a classic case of less is more.

My other problem with the book is that the translator seems to have taken to the thesaurus to pick the most difficult word on offer whenever there was a choice. It hurts the readability of the book. Expect words like anachronism, ethnocentric, hegemony and preponderance... and that's just in the first three pages of the introduction. It would be great in future editions of this book if the choice of words was revisited and simpler words chosen wherever possible.