Faiza Rahman

Faiza Rahman pursues an inter-disciplinary and ethnographic approach to the study of Islam. Her scholarship focuses on the topics of reproductive care, menstrual norms, and sexual health in the Islamic context of Pakistan. Her book manuscript, Islamic Period: Menstruation and Muslims in Pakistan, is an anthropological study of the creation and circulation of Islamic knowledge about menstruation in Pakistani society. At the heart of Islamic Period is the relationship between menstrual guidance found in Qur'anic texts, and a cultural repertoire of Pakistani women's orally-transferred knowledge about menstrual medicine, menstrual ethics, and menstrual hygiene. This relationship, as the project argues, determines the extent of Pakistani women's engagement with the global feminist currents of menstrual activism in today's world. The project was undertaken through on-ground collaboration with menstrual health advocates in the city of Karachi. Additionally, the project addresses the critical need of speaking and writing about menstruation in Muslim contexts with empathy, responsibility, and cultural relativism.