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Criminalization of sexual relations outside the institution of marriage in Iran fosters – among other means – concealment as one of the safest methods to undermine social and legal impediments. In a context where any alternative practices of sexualities are subject to persecution, sexual concealments are applied as tactics for survival. The female body in such a normative-laden society is conditioned by its “openness” which makes it a subject of honor for family and kin and core for the management of desire and regulating the intimate for the theocratic state. Based on life stories of young women who have had pre-marital sexual relations in Tehran, this article addresses sexual concealment as the main method used by those women. Findings of the study suggest a three-fold model of concealment practiced in various social settings. Body concealment which was encouraged by the families and authorities to reduce the visibility of the female body during adolescence, engenders other types of concealment. Lesbian-like practices were utilized by women in homosocial settings to undermine the heteronormative social structure. Concealment of sexual orientations, desires and practices was applied to “keep the order of things in place” and to undermine the repressive policies and practices based on the socio-religious normative.

This Handbook traces and presents the fundamentals of Islam and their history and background, and provides a global and holistic, yet, detailed picture of Islamic education around the world. It introduces the reader to the roots and foundations of Islamic education; the responses of Islamic educational institutions to different changes from precolonial times, through the colonial era up to the contemporary situation. It discusses interactions between the state, state-run education and Islamic education, and explores the Islamic educational arrangements existing around the world. The book provides in-depth descriptions and analyses, as well as country case studies representing some 25 countries.The work reflects the recent series of changes and events with respect to Islam and Muslims that have occurred during the past decades. The globalization of Islam as a religion and an ideology, the migration of Muslims into new areas of the globe, and the increasing contacts between Muslims and non-Muslims reinforce the need for mutual understanding. By presenting Islamic education around the world in a comprehensive work, this Handbook contributes to a deeper international understanding of its varieties.

A distinct feature of Muslim cities is demarcated separation between zones of public economic and private domestic activities. Such spatial distinction has been the organic extension of a social structure with limited presence of women in public zones. However, separation of spaces in the Muslim city and the way it is utilized, shaped and reproduced by men and women is not a simple case of dividing public-­private geographies and assigning them to males and females, respectively, and has been subject to appropriations and adaptations. The Shiite traditional Muharram procession is one of the instances of such appropriation which produces a semi-­private or tertiary (social and spatial) realm, where gendered behaviours are more fluid, the loyalties of the kin stretch beyond the dominant normative, and both men and women move with greater ease. Such spatial fluidity exacerbated during the rituals of Muharram, where presence of women in public space is promoted and invigorated. Among other means, the ephemeral space sanctification is utilized to create a space where the social sanctions are temporarily lifted, and gender spatial boundaries are suspended. As an ethnographical piece of research using methods informed by urban planning and urban sociology and based on a cross-­disciplinary study of gendered spatial divisions (socially and architecturally), this article endeavours to investigate the notion of ephemeral space sanctification in a Muslim city among the Guilani population in Lahijan, in northern Iran.

Islamic education in the modern era has been at the crossroad of globalization, rapid economic development, social changes, and resurgence of rival religious ideologies. Islam as a global force has affected other forces and has affected by them, and along the way the Islamic education has changed to adapt to the realities of the modern world. Such adaptation is the reflection of the diversity across the Muslim world and heavily influenced by the domestic factors and on the other hand by the nature and extent of the linkage to other global forces. Despite the contextual variations and diversity changes within the Islamic education in the modern era have certain features in common: (a) affected by the new socioeconomic development and changes within the civil society; (b) affected by the realities of the modern state and governance; (c) influenced by the cultural (traditional/religious) factors and political climate; and (d) affected by the international factors. Despite the variations, Islamic education reform across the Muslim world has one thing in common: all have lost the grandeur and glory of the past, they are struggling to meet the demands of a competing world, and they exist in the margin of a strong formal education system. There are endavors to synchrone traditional approaches and contents of the Islamic education with those of the formal education to inhibit or enhance the chance for the accreditation of the religious education across the Muslim world. This has partially resulted in internationalization of the institutions of Islamic education and tailoring the curricula to add new subjects such as foreign languages and natural sciences to accommodate the global discourse and attract new groups of students internationally.

Public spaces are the renditions of the power symmetry within the social setting it resides in, and is both controlling and confining of power. In an ideologically-laden context, urban design encompasses values and meanings and is utilized as a means to construct the identity and perpetuate visible and invisible boundaries. Hence, gendered spatial dichotomy based on a biological division of sexes is often employed systematically to evade the transgression of women into the public spaces. The production of modern urban space in the Middle East is formed in the interplay between modernity, tradition and religion. Examining women in public spaces and patterns of interaction with gender -segregated and -mixed space, this book argues that gendered spaces are far from a static physical spatial division and produce a complex and dynamic dichotomy of men/public and women/private. Taking the example of Iran, normative and ideologically-laden gender segregated public spaces have been used as a tool for the Islamization of everyday life. The most recent government effort includes women-only parks, purportedly designed and administered through women's contributions, as well as to accommodate their needs and provide space for social interasction and activities. Combining research approaches from urban planning and social sciences, this book analyses both technical and social aspects of women-only parks. Addressing the relationships between ideology, urban planning and gender, the book interprets power relations and how they are used to define and plan public and semi-public urban spaces. Lack of communication across disciplinary boundaries as result of complexities of urban life has been one of the major hindrances in studying urban spaces in the Middle East. Addressing the concern, the cross-disciplinary approach employed in this volume is an amalgamation of methods informed by urban planning and social sciences, which includes an in-depth analysis of the morphological, percept