It is widely held today that classical Islamic law denies that wives have any obligation to do housework. Marion Holmes Katz offers a new account of debates on wives' domestic labor that recasts the historical relationship between Islamic law and ethics.
Juxtaposing Muslim scholars' debates over women's attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of women's activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, Marion Holmes Katz shows how over the centuries legal scholars' arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim women's behavior.
Marion Holmes Katz's richly textured book offers a broad historical survey of the rules, values and interpretations relating to Salat, the five daily prayers of Islam. This innovative study on the subject examines the different ways in which prayer has been understood in Islamic law, Sufi mysticism and Islamic philosophy.