Throughout the world, and especially in South Asia, myriad constituencies are grappling with rethinking and renegotiating the contours of society, particularly women?s place in the larger social order. This is raising profound questions regarding women?s social roles and rights eliciting disparate, conflicting images concerning what constitutes women?s rights, who is to define these rights, where responsibility lies for ensuring rights, and the role states should play in articulating and clarifying what is acceptable and unacceptable within local contexts. This book analyzes various efforts in Pakistan to conduct ijtihad?interpretation?as different groups reinterpret women?s rights, seeking to reconcile the exigencies of modernity, local and global pressures to ensure women?s rights with prevailing Islamic and cultural views, and feminist analyses of power and control of women and their rights. It begins with an overview of the Government of Pakistan?s construction of an understanding of what constitutes women?s rights, elaborates on traditional views and contrasts these with contemporary popular opinion. It then focuses on three very different groups? perceptions of women?s rights: progressive women?s organizations as represented by the Aurat Foundation and Shirkat Gah; orthodox Islamist views as represented by the Jama?at-i-Islami, the MMA government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (2002-2008), and al-Huda; and the Swat Taliban.