Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Orphans of Islam: Family, Abandonment, and Secret Adoption in Morocco: 2 (Alterations)

Orphans of Islam portrays the abject lives and "excluded body" of abandoned and bastard children in contemporary Morocco, while critiquing the concept and practice of "adoption," which too often is considered a panacea. Through a close and historically grounded reading of legal, social, and cultural mechanisms of one predominantly Islamic country, Jamila Bargach shows how "the surplus bastard body" is created by mainstream society. Written in part from the perspectives of the children and single mothers, intermittently from the view of "adopting" families, and employing bastardy as a haunting and empowering motif with a potentially subversive edge, this ethnography is composed as an intricate, open-ended, and arabesque-like evocation of Moroccan society and its state institutions. It equally challenges received sociological and anthropological tropes and understandings of the Arab world. Review [Bargach's] book is a vital pioneering foundation that could continue to affect social change. I hope that she will continue and others will build and apply this information, bringing society to a higher level and these victims of society closer to social justice and to the basic human dignity of belonging and connection that every person deserves.--Mahasin Saleh, University of Houston "International Journal of Middle East Studies " Through incisive analysis, disciplined passion, and moving prose, Jamila Bargach exposes in this book some of the hidden ambiguities of culture, religion, and power in her own society to the light of thoughtful compassion and humanizing possibilities of redress. This is a truly courageous and inspiring book, confronting silent conspiracies of shame and victimization of innocence with the transforming power of love and truth to enable human agency to overcome its own limitations. An eye opener to see injustice where least acknowledged, and an empowering voice for the oppressed everywhere.--Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Emory University School of Law This is a fine example of how meticulous ethnography of extraordinary power is 'found' in the course of fieldwork that is both rigorous and guided by profound personal connection. Bargach has caught Moroccan society in a revealing contradiction and produces an account from it that is both ethical and honorable.--George Marcus, Rice University About the Author Jamila Bargach received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Rice University. Currently she resides in Morocco where she is assistant professor of social sciences at the National School of Architecture.