ABSTRACT
Violence against women is present across historical periods, cultures, and political systems, in the context of the politicization of ethnicity, and of course during wars. But how do religious-based movements and religious laws encourage or legitimize violence against women? And what explains the violence of many contemporary Islamist movements? In this chapter, I examine three cases from the Muslim world—Iran, Afghanistan, and Algeria—to show how “the woman question” has figured prominently in Islamist discourses and legal frames, and how these discourses and laws led not only to social and sexual controls over women but also to physical violence and death. The violent politics of militant Islamist movements are rooted in the struggle against secular modernities, feminisms, and globalization, in hegemonic masculinity, and in the legacy of the heroic Islamic warrior.
