Based on first-hand ethnographic insights into Shi'i religious groups in the Middle East and Europe, this book examines women's resistance to state as well as communal and gender power structures. It offers a new transnational approach to understanding gender agency within contemporary Islamic movements expressed through language, ritual practices, dramatic performances, posters and banners. By looking at the aesthetic performance of the political on the female body through Shi'i ritual practices - an aspect that has previously been ignored in studies on women's acts of resistance -, Yafa Shanneik shows how women play a central role in redefining sectarian and gender power relations both in the Middle East and in the European diaspora.