ABSTRACT
Women’s informal associations provide a collective basis for action — much of which has tangible economic, political, or social consequences — they also express and consolidate women’s cultural identities. Religion is often seen as an exclusively conservative force in women’s lives. Religious dicta place limits on acceptable behavior and the religious idiom imputes to those dicta an immutability derived from the permanence of the sacred world order itself. Some women’s religious or ritual associations are closely linked to the formal spheres of political and economic authority in their society. Saints, shrines, and pilgrimage constitute another important domain fostering Muslim women’s leadership. Women obtain considerable organizational and political experience by their various roles associated with the shrines. The women leaders of kin-based, village, market or ritual associations served not only to link other women to the formal authority that they shared, as leaders, with their male counterparts.
