"Vanguard of a New Modernity" draws feminist scholarly and political attention towards the women activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a major movement of Islamic renewal and reform in South Asia. In this ethnographic and textual study, Jamal examines the experiences of these women from 2002 to 2008 when significant numbers of Jamaat women came to occupy leadership positions within Pakistani state structure. By nature of its innovative and original analysis of women members of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, the book a crucial contribution to the field of Pakistan, Islam, and women’s studies. ― Emma Varley, Lahore University of Management Sciences Amina Jamal’s learned and masterly study of Jamaat-e-Islami women in Pakistan is a brilliant intervention into a specifically South Asian gendered modernity. This is required reading for all those interested in the heterogeneity of Muslim women and in the emergence of a female vanguard that cannot be understood through a dichotomy between secular and religious. ― Inderpal Grewal, author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel Jamal’s biggest contribution lies in her ability to challenge the popular constructions of women who occupy leadership positions in the Jamaat. . . . Rather than being rooted in the past, as is so often believed, these women . . . play a very active role in using modernity to meet their ends. ― Sadaf Ahmad, author of Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic Revivalism among Urban Pakistani Women Examines the feminization of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a major movement for Islamic renewal and reform in South Asia. Amina Jamal is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario.