This book addresses South Asian Muslim women's lived experiences, whilst questioning dominant concepts of agency. Collectively, this volume showcases Muslim's women's diverse identities and desires that may be sidelined in dominant concepts of agency.

Patricia Jeffery's research focuses on gender politics in South Asia. Her publications include Frogs in a Well (1979) and Confronting Saffron Demography (2006). Routledge is publishing two further books that address demographic change, communal politics and 'jobless growth', based on her long-term research in a Muslim village in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Kaveri Qureshi's research is threaded by concern with intersectional inequalities and how gender, race/ethnicity, class, caste and religion shape experiences of health and intimate/personal life. Her publications include Marital Breakdown among British Asians (2016) and Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora (2019). She works in the UK and Punjab.

Introduction - 'Muslim Woman'/Muslim women: Lived experiences beyond religion and gender in South Asia and its diasporas 1. Muslim daughters and inheritance in India: Sharicat custom and practice 2. Courting agency: Gender and divorce in an English sharia council 3. Muslim marriages, the South African state and the courts: Between limbo, liberation, and the spaces for contestation in-between 4. Being seen: The political and bureaucratic entanglements of Muslim women in West Bengal 5. Gendering the everyday state: Muslim women, claim-making & brokerage in India 6. Life, labour, and dreams: One woman's life in Old Delhi 7. Emotions, identity and the entrepreneurial self: Narratives of working Muslim women in rural India 8. Migration, patriarchy and 'modern' Islam: Views from left behind wives in rural northern Bangladesh