This paper explores how Ottoman-Muslim women’s lives were portrayed in Fatma Aliye Hanim’s Nisvan-i Islam (Women of Islam), published in 1892. The book depicts three different encounters with three European women travelers who come to visit at her house, wanting to catch a glimpse of the Ottoman-Turkish way of life. A combination of fiction, autobiography, and didactic essays, the book draws heavily on Islamic texts to argue that as a religion, Islam grants women more rights than other monotheistic religion. In this paper, I argue that the coupling the books’ generic liminality with a dialogic and serial narration enables Fatma Aliye to reclaim the value of Ottoman interpretations of Islam against a European audience while simultaneously critiquing her Ottoman-Muslim contemporaries’ use of those interpretations to undermine women’s progress. Indeed, there are two instances in which Aliye directly contrasts the rules of Islam with current Ottoman customary practices, and identifies the latter as a hindrance for women’s progress. The first is the issue of polygamy. She argues that it is not by order of God that Muslim men were allowed to be polygamous. Since Islam recognizes divorce as a legitimate practice, men who chose to marry multiple times without divorcing (as they do in Ottoman provinces) were not acting according to religion, but according to custom. The second is the issue of men and women not “socializing” together. She argues that Islam allows them to socialize when the woman is dressed appropriately. This “appropriate” dress does not need to cover one’s face; a simple head covering would do. In making these claims, Aliye also emphasizes the importance of women’s religious literacy and ability to reread religious texts, including but not limited to the Qur'an, for the removal of the exclusions and oppressions imposed on women by customary practices. In examining these arguments within their literary and historical context, this paper suggests that women’s religious literacy and intimate and romantic relationships were closely intertwined in the creation of a new Ottoman-Muslim identity.