The International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in September 1994 focused world attention on the interplay of religion, family-planning methods, and women's status. The most hotly debated topic of the conference was abortion. Before the conference convened, newspapers in the West and in the Middle East reported “a growing religious furor” that spurred an alliance between Muslim nations and the Vatican based on a common belief in the prohibition of abortion and concern for Western sexual mores. At the conference, Muslim delegations abandoned their slogans and moved away from the Vatican position by denouncing abortion as a method of family planning but leaving open its use under specific circumstances. Although a majority of Muslims worldwide agree with the stance taken at the population conference, and most would state that Islam forbids abortion, the Muslim theological position on abortion does not approximate the Roman Catholic condemnation of the practice. A full prohibition of abortion represents neither the sophisticated Muslim jurisprudence literature on abortion nor current practices of some Muslim women. Discussion with Muslim women and Muslim religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) about the intricacies of the issues that abortion raises tells us that the question is not simple, consensus is far from being reached, and political concerns further complicate understanding of the paradoxical issues involved.

Many Muslim feminists have argued that at the core of Islam lies a gender-neutral belief system that has been obscured by a centuries-long tradition of male-dominated interpretation. Although this gender-neutral system of belief had been almost entirely suppressed by the ruling Islamic discourses, according to Leila Ahmed, marginalized discourses such as Sufism and the antinomian Carmathians were able to preserve Islam's message of the ethical equality of men and women. Amina Wadud-Muhsin argues that the traditional verse-by-verse method of Qurʾanic exegesis, along with its domination by male practitioners, marginalized female experiences in understanding revelation. In her view, these two factors ultimately led to the suppression of the Qurʾan's message of gender equality. Fatima Mernissi, in The Veil and the Male Elite, instead argues that the religious scholars of Islam, because of their fear of subjectivity, were content with a purely empirical science of religion—a methodology that left the door wide open to the manipulation of revelation through interpretation. Unlike Ahmed, however, she recognizes that even within the dominant discourse of the Sunni scholars, not all spoke of women in the same monotonously misogynistic voice.

Long before the French Revolution, an anonymous geographer of the 10th century had already imagined the “boundaries of the world”—(ḥudūd al-ʿālam)—as comprising distinct regions. According to this unknown figure, each territory varied from another “First, by the difference of water, air, soil, and temperature (garma-va-sarma). Secondly, by the difference of religion, law (sharīʿat) and beliefs (kīsh). Thirdly, by the difference of words (lughāt) and languages. Fourthly, by the difference of kingdoms (padshāʾī-hā).” These criteria, as well as natural barriers—mountains, rivers, deserts—allowed the author of this work to divide the world into tracts much like nation-states today.

Amid all the attention that Iranian politics has received since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, local politics has been almost totally neglected. This neglect vitiates our understanding of contemporary Iran, as it is at the local level that state policies are carried out, contested, reshaped, resisted, or revised. Beginning with the centralizing state-building of Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1926–41), Tehran increasingly dominated Iran's politics, commercial activities, and cultural life, and most of the country's Westernized elites lived in the capital. The 1979 revolution was to some extent a populist revolt against this Westernized elite, and among the new rulers those whose social and family roots are outside Tehran abound. Among the common people, “the experience of participation in mass political activity … undermined the feeling of political abjection,” while the new rulers have attempted, not always successfully, to lessen the gap not only between rich and poor, but also between rich and poor provinces. The new prominence of provincials in national life has gone hand in hand with a greater recognition of Iran's ethnic and linguistic diversity, while at the same time the sense of common participation in the revolution and the Iran–Iraq War has knitted people of different ethnic backgrounds more closely together.

In the following article, I present an account of the legacy of the famous saintly mystic Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (d. 1258). The parameters of the study will be narrowed geographically to Tunis and thematically to prayer. Tunis played an important role in the formation of the saint's ṭariqa (mystical order or brotherhood, pi. ṭuruq), and the city today still has a branch of the brotherhood and a number of sacred sites. The theme of prayer as used here includes prayer texts and a wide variety of activity, from popular devotions to spiritual discipline. As will become clear, this is a central element in any discussion of the ṭariqa's organization, ritual, and literature. In addition to the brotherhood and the sites, there is a Tunisian edition of the only recordedcompositions of the saint, his prayers—known as aḥzāb (sing, ḥizb). This study will thus reflect the saint, his brotherhood, and the use of the aḥzāb as integrated elements of the living Shadhili legacy in Tunis. This presentation will go beyond the usual academic treatments of Sufism, which rarely enter the modern period and are concerned mostly with the larger Sufi treatises. I hope not only to bring to light the importance of some lesser known liturgical and ritual practices, but also to begin to appreciate the “lesser tradition,” as it were, of Sufi prayer texts.