She then focuses on those arab societies that played a key role in elaborating the dominant islamic discourses about women and gender arabia during the period in which islam was founded iraq during the classical age when the prescriptive core of legal and religious discourse on women was formulated and egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when exposure to western societies . In this book leila ahmed adds a new perspective to the current debate about women and islam by exploring its historical roots tracing the developments in islamic discourses on women and gender. In this book leila ahmed adds a new perspective to the current debate about women and islam by exploring its historical roots tracing the developments in islamic discourses on women and gender from the ancient world to the presentin order to distinguish what was distinctive about the earliest islamic doctrine on women ahmed first describes . In this book leila ahmed adds a new perspective to the current debate about women and islam by exploring its historical roots tracing the developments in islamic discourses on women and gender. Women and gender in islam historical roots of a modern debate yale university press 1993 are islamic societies inherently oppressive to women is the trend among islamic women to appear once again in veils and other traditional clothing a symbol of regression or an effort to return to a pure islam that was just and fair to both sexes