Headstrong Daughters review: Nadia Jamal on the lives of young Muslim women

Headstrong Daughters

Nadia Jamal

Allen & Unwin, $29.99

It's a sign of the self-assurance of younger Muslims in Australia that they are comfortable discussing the tensions within Islam and within their own lives, while being at ease with their own identity and faith. The second generation Muslim women in this collection talk openly of the challenges of relationships between Shias and Sunnis, of undertaking Hajj to Mecca as a single woman, whether IVF is haram or halal and how questions of inheritance are influenced by Sharia law. A natural storyteller, Nadia Jamal teases out the subtleties of these and other issues as they play out in the lives of the women she speaks to, revealing how this generation negotiate their loyalties to their families and commitment to their faith as they strive to follow their own path, and how navigating these obligations and obstacles enriches them as human beings.