How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #7
Now, after a lifetime of meeting and talking with Muslims from all over the world, I find this Islam is one of the common varieties—perhaps even the common or garden variety—of the religion. It is the Islam not only of women but of ordinary folk generally, as opposed to the Islam of sheikhs, ayatollahs, mullahs, and clerics. It is an Islam that may or may not place emphasis on ritual and formal religious practice but that certainly pays little or no attention to the utterances and exhortations of sheikhs or any sort of official figures. (123)
Ahmed is speaking of "women's Islam," the version of the religion that she learned at her grandmother's knee. In addition to ignoring the pronouncements of traditional (male) religious figures, "folk" Islam is an oral tradition relying on the recitation of the Quran (rather than on a more literary tradition).
Ahmed goes as far as to say that clerical authority counts for nothing in this version of Islam and that most "ordinary" Muslims (especially women) wouldn't be caught in a mosque. It's an eye-opening revelation for non-Muslims, who often get a glimpse only of the textual, official side of the religion.
Quote #8
This variety of Islam [...] consists above all of Islam as essentially an aural and oral heritage and a way of living and being—not a textual, written heritage, not something studied in books or learned from men who studied books. This latter Islam, the Islam of texts, is a quite different, quite other Islam; it is the Islam of the arcane, mostly medieval written heritage in which sheikhs are trained, and it is "men's" Islam. (125)
Ahmed defines more clearly what she means when she "gender segregates" Islam. She traces two different traditions within the religion: a learned, male-centered, oppressive version and one that is more spiritual and gentle and practiced by "everyday" people.
Ahmed identifies this practical and highly spiritual interpretation of Islam with the women in her family, who passed along their beliefs to her. She also notes that this Islam shuns written tradition and the authority of male clerical figures—practitioners prefer a more direct relationship with God.
Quote #9
There was no doubt that people who were religious were not regarded as quite on par intellectually with those who were unambiguously and forthrightly secular. Even Christians were marked in some sense as intellectually lesser in this ethos. And anyone who belonged to and actually believed in any of those "other" religions like Islam or Hinduism was completely outside the realm of those who were to be taken seriously. (225-226)
Ahmed suffers culture shock on many levels when she attends graduate school at Cambridge, but she finds the level of secularism (and bias against people of faith) a bit surprising. Mostly this is because she was used to her Christian undergrad professors hoping to convert her during her time at Girton. But at the upper levels of study, belief in God = low IQ. It's yet another opportunity for non-Western, non-white students to suffer hostility at the hands of wealthy, well-educated Westerners.