Books like The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam

The Veil and the Male Elite is a tricky book to rate, since I am definitely not its target audience. I suppose I expected a feminist look at modern Muslim culture, and this book is really more a theological look at women's rights and a historical look at how various verses of the Koran that are used to justify anti-feminist sentiments in Muslim cultures came to be included. My knowledge of early Muslim history was greatly enhanced by reading this, and yet I felt something of a Sunni bias creeping into its middle chapters. Since I considered my own knowledge inadequate at identifying this in its entirety, it made the entire book less trustworthy for me, since I felt too ignorant to judge what was and was not widely accepted as truth throughout the Muslim world. The introduction and first chapter are an inexplicably unintelligible low point of the book, and I highly recommend skipping them and perhaps returning later; I nearly threw in the towel on reading the entire work because these were either so poorly written or translated that I found them almost unbearable. After that, the book settles into a more historical overview, and takes us through the founding of Islam and the political events that surrounded various prophecies. For those unfamiliar with Islam it's a rapid and fascinating overview. I found the author's feminist insights actually less valuable than her overview of Islam. My favorite part of the book is learning about Sukayna in the conclusion. She sounds fascinating, and I wanted to learn more.