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Fighting Fire with Fire: the Islamic Novel in Iraq and the Battle for Hearts and Minds

This chapter examines for the first time the phenomena of religious novel writing by Iraqi women. It argues that the conservative, and often reactionary religious discourses expounded by devout female authors represented a proxy attack on the Ba‘th’s supposed godlessness. As such, the female body becomes a site of resistance, with modest clothing and limited gender mixing forming part of a wider discourse on purity and contamination. The chapter ultimately concludes that the extremely popular religious novels produced by writers inside and outside Iraq can be considered as a form of counter-propaganda, and their views on women should not be taken at face value.