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| "Believing
Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal
Interpretations of the Qur'an Asma Barlas* Preface The central question I have posed in this
book, whether or not the Qur'an is a patriarchal text, is perhaps not a
meaningful one from the Qur'an's perspective since its teachings are not
framed in terms of the claims made by either traditional or modern
patriarchies. However, since the Qur'an was revealed in/to an existing
patriarchy and has been interpreted by adherents of patriarchies ever
since, Muslim women have a stake in challenging its patriarchal exegesis. In writing this book, I have wanted not
only to challenge oppressive readings of the Qur'an but also to offer a
reading that confirms that Muslim women can struggle for equality from
within the framework of the Qur'an's teachings, contrary to what both
conservative and progressive Muslims believe. I am always disheartened to
hear progressive Muslims claim, (dis)ingenuously, it seems to me, that
"Islamism is Islamism," as a young Algerian feminist puts it in
a critically acclaimed film shown recently in the West. To identify Islam
inseparably with oppression is to ignore the reality of misreadings of the
sacred text. Every religion is open to variant readings; the Christianity
of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Conquest that wiped out millions
of people in the name of Christ and commerce bears little family
resemblance to the liberation theology of today. Confusing Islam with
"Islamism" or "Islamists" also ignores that Islam does
not sanction a clergy, or invest anyone with the right to monopolize
religious meaning. To accept the authority of any group and then to resign
oneself to its misreadings of Islam not only makes one complicit in the
continued abuse of Islam and the abuse of women in the name of Islam, but
it also means losing the battle over meaning without even fighting it, as
Abdullahi An-Naim (1990) reminds us. This is not to say that attempts to rethink
our understanding of Islam or to reread the Qur'an are going to be easy,
given the control over religious knowledge of obscurantists and experts
alike. Yet, more and more Muslims, realizing that "no one has a
monopoly over the meaning of what God says," as Aref Ali Nayed (1992)
puts it, are beginning to reclaim their interpretive rights. In fact, the
struggle to reclaim such rights may be related proportionally to attempts
by some Muslim states and clerics to keep Muslims from reading, a true
irony for a people who believe that Revelation to the unlettered Prophet
commenced with the single word "Iqra'!" or "Read!" Although the practice of Islam concerns
only Muslims, Muslim practices are of concern to the community of nations
in which we live. I have thus written this work with both Muslims and
non-Muslims in mind. Writing for such different audiences in a shared
vocabulary has proven hard to do, not because I could not always find the
right words, but because so many people are invested in the myth of
radical difference; that is, the false but comforting idea that they share
absolutely nothing with Others. To speak to such people simultaneously and
in the same language is to threaten in some very real way the imagined
borders that serve as the markers of their identities; it is thus to call
forth unrelenting animosity against oneself, as I have discovered over the
years. To conservative Muslims, terms like
antipatriarchal, sexual inequality, liberation, and even
hermeneutics—all of which I use liberally—smack too much of the
epistemology of non-Muslim Others to be safely applied to themselves, let
alone used in reading the Qur'an. Consequently, even though I engage
Western/feminist thought only circumspectly, and often to differentiate
and privilege what I take to be a Qur'anic viewpoint, my language and the
mere act of engagement are likely to render me a "Western
feminist" in the eyes of those Muslims who are prone to hearing in
such language, and in any criticism of Muslim men, the subversive voices
of Western feminists. Mislabeling Muslim women in this way not only denies
the specificity, autonomy, and creativity of their thought, but it also
suggests, falsely, that there is no room from within Islam to contest
inequality or patriarchy. Conversely, to feminists and non-Muslim
Westerners, terms like liberatory and anti-patriarchal are much too
self-referential to be applied to, or used meaningfully by, others,
especially Muslims. My use of these terms for the Qur'an, as also my
favorable reading of it in comparison with Western/feminist discourses,
will doubtless render me a "Muslim apologist" in their eyes. To
such people, it is inconceivable that Islam (usually labeled
"Other/Eastern") has any truths to offer that may be
commensurable with Judaism and Christianity (considered
"Western"), much less with insights claimed by secular
feminisms. Such views, however, ignore the scripturally linked nature and
Middle Eastern origin of all three religions, hence the commonality of
some of their truth claims. In positing a hyper-separation between Islam
and the West, they also ignore that counterposing Islam to the West is
misleading in that Islam is a way of life and not an "imagined
geography," to borrow Edward Said's (1979) rich phrase; it cannot
therefore meaningfully be compared to one. Further, Islam not only exists
within the West but also has helped to constitute the West, as Said so
compellingly demonstrated two decades ago. What, then, of my own tendency to refer to
"the West" and "Western"? In spite of initial
reluctance, I have chosen to retain such terms because of their usefulness
in providing descriptive access to an unhappy reality: the asymmetric
relationship between a self-defined West and a Western-defined Other
(Islam, non-West). It is this process of naming, with its attendant
material consequences, that I wish to convey rather than to suggest that
the West is absolute, monolithic, or always exclusive of Islam.
Nonetheless, if such terms disturb some of my readers, I ask them to read
beyond them to get at my intent, which is to address Muslims and
non-Muslims, women and men, believers and nonbelievers, the non-West and
the West, in a broadly shared discourse of meanings. Toward that end and
in the interest of facilitating access by non-Arabic speaking readers to
my work, I have relied on a simplified version of the Library of Congress
system of transliterations. (The glossary at the beginning of the book may
also be helpful to readers who are unfamiliar with Arabic words.) Chapter 1: The Qur'an and Muslim Women It was not God who wronged them, but they
wronged their own souls. This work reflects my ongoing engagement
with two questions that have both theoretical significance and real-life
consequences for Muslims, especially women: First, does Islam's Scripture,
the Qur'an, teach or condone sexual inequality or oppression? Is it, as
critics allege, a patriarchal and even sexist and misogynistic text?
Intimately related to that question is the second: Does the Qur'an permit
and encourage liberation for women? When I ask whether the Qur'an is a
patriarchal or misogynistic text, I am asking whether it represents God as
Father/male or teaches that God has a special relationship with males or
that males embody divine attributes and that women are by nature weak,
unclean, or sinful. Further, does it teach that rule by the father/husband
is divinely ordained and an earthly continuation of God's Rule, as
religious and traditional patriarchies claim? Alternatively, does the Qur'an advocate
gender differentiation, dualisms, or inequality on the basis of sexual
(biological) differences between women and men? In other words, does it
privilege men over women in their biological capacity as males, or treat
man as the Self (normative) and woman as the Other, or view women and men
as binary opposites, as modern patriarchal theories of sexual
differentiation and inequality do? When I ask whether we can read the Qur'an
for liberation, I am asking whether its teachings about God as well as
about human creation, ontology, sexuality, and marital relationships
challenge sexual inequality and patriarchy. Alternatively, do the
teachings of the Qur'an allow us to theorize the equality, sameness,
similarity, or equivalence, as the context demands, of women and men? It is obvious that much is at stake for
Muslims in how we answer these questions, especially in view of the
increasing levels of violence against women in many states from
Afghanistan to Algeria today. What is less obvious—given the widespread
tendency to blame Islam for oppressing Muslims rather than blaming Muslims
for misreading Islam—is the possibility that we can answer the first set
of questions—is the Qur'an a patriarchal or misogynistic text—in the
negative, while we answer the second—can the Qur'an be a source for
women's liberation—in the affirmative. Using an interpretive
methodology, or hermeneutics, derived from the Qur'an, as well as two
definitions of patriarchy (as a tradition of father-rule, and as a
politics of gender inequality based in theories of sexual
differentiation), I hope to show not only that the Qur'an's epistemology
is inherently anti-patriarchal but that it also allows us to theorize the
radical equality of the sexes. This book, then, is as much a critique of
sexual/textual oppression in Muslim societies as it is a concerted attempt
to recover what Leila Ahmed (1992) calls the "stubbornly
egalitarian" voice of Islam and to locate it as a legitimate
counter-voice to the authoritarian voice of Islam about which we hear so
much these days, especially in the Western media. If, as Ahmed says, these
"fundamentally different Islams" arise in different readings,
then it is imperative to challenge the authoritarian and patriarchal
readings of Islam that are profoundly affecting the lives and future of
Muslim women. This is not to say, however, that sexual
inequality and discrimination are a function merely of misogynistic
readings of Islam, or that one can explain the status of Muslim women
"solely in terms of the Qur'an and/or other Islamic sources all too
often taken out of context" (El-Sohl and Mabro 1994, 1). As many
recent studies reveal, women's status and roles in Muslim societies, as
well as patriarchal structures and gender relationships, are a function of
multiple factors, most of which have nothing to do with religion. The
history of Western civilization should tell us that there is nothing
innately Islamic about misogyny, inequality, or patriarchy. And yet, all
three often are justified by Muslim states and clerics in the name of
Islam. This recourse to sacred knowledge—or, more accurately, knowledge
that claims to derive from religion—to justify sexual oppression, and
the resulting misassociation of the sacred with misogyny, motivates my own
engagement with Qur'anic hermeneutics and, I believe, renders such an
engagement imperative, even unavoidable, to all projects of Muslim women's
(and men's) liberation. Even though a Qur'anic hermeneutics cannot
by itself put an end to patriarchal, authoritarian, and undemocratic
regimes and practices, it nonetheless remains crucial for various reasons.
First, hermeneutic and existential questions are ineluctably connected. As
the concept of sexual/textual oppression suggests, there is a relationship
between what we read texts to be saying and how we think about and treat
real women. This insight, though associated with feminists because of
their work on reading and representation, is at the core of revelation
albeit in the form of the reverse premise: that there is a relationship
between reading (sacred texts) and liberation. If this were not the case,
there would be little point in God's communicating with us in order to
reform us. Accordingly, if we wish to ensure Muslim women their rights, we
not only need to contest readings of the Qur'an that justify the abuse and
degradation of women, we also need to establish the legitimacy of
liberatory readings. Even if such readings do not succeed in effecting a
radical change in Muslim societies, it is safe to say that no meaningful
change can occur in these societies that does not derive its legitimacy
from the Qur'an's teachings, a lesson secular Muslims everywhere are
having to learn to their own detriment. However, even though Muslim women directly
experience the consequences of oppressive mis-readings of religious texts,
few question their legitimacy and fewer still have explored the liberatory
aspects of the Qur'an's teachings. Yet, without doing so, they cannot
contest the association, falsely constructed by misreading Scripture,
between the sacred and sexual oppression. This association serves as the
strongest argument for inequality and discrimination among Muslims since
many people either have not read the Qur'an or accept its patriarchal
exegesis unquestioningly. However, as numerous scholars have pointed out,
inequality and discrimination derive not from the teachings of the Qur'an
but from the secondary religious texts, the Tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis) and
the Ahadith (s. hadith) (narratives purportedly detailing the life and
praxis of the Prophet Muhammad). As such, by returning to a fresh and
immediate interpretation of the Holy Book, and by taking a new and
critical look at the Hadiths—in other words, by engaging in creative
ijtihad—modern Islamic authority could very well reform and renew the
position of Islam on the issue of the status of women. (Stowasser 1984,
38) A reinterpretation of the Scripture is
particularly important because the Qur'an's teachings provide Muslims with
role models for both women and men. Since different readings of the Qur'an
(and of other texts) can yield what are for women "fundamentally
different Islams," it becomes crucial for them "to reinvestigate
the normative religious texts" and even to become specialists in the
sacred text, as Fatima Mernissi (1986) urges. Finally, as theorists argue in other
contexts, there is "no practice without a theory," and Muslims
have yet to derive a theory of equality from the Qur'an. This is partly
because, as Fazlur Rahman (1982, 2) points out, Muslims have yet to
resolve "basic questions of method and hermeneutics." Every new
reading of the Qur'an, by helping to resolve these basic questions of
hermeneutics, can also help to generate such a theory. That is why
critiquing the methods by which Muslims produce religious meaning and
rereading the Qur'an for liberation are crucial for ensuring sexual
equality. In attempting to do both here, I
concentrate on recovering the liberating and egalitarian voice of Islam
that is rarely heard today but which we are most in need of hearing. In
the rest of the chapter, I explain my arguments regarding the reading of
the Qur'an; how Muslims read sexual inequality and patriarchy into it; how
we can read the Qur'an for liberation; my epistemology and methodology;
and, finally, the plan of this book. I. Reading the Qur'an Those who read Islam as a misogynistic and
"uncompromising and overtly paternalistic" religion (Hussain
1994, 118) point both to the Qur'an's alleged advocacy of sexual
inequality and to the long history of discrimination against women in most
Muslim societies. My purpose here is not to deny that the Qur'an can be
read in patriarchal modes (as privileging males), that oppressive
practices in many Muslim societies often stem from an uncritical adherence
to what are assumed to be Islamic norms and strictures, or that the images
of "the woman" in the Muslim unconscious are indeed
misogynistic. Nor do I deny that "the enveloping maleness" of
Muslim religious text engenders grave problems for women, as does the
legalization of sexual inequality by classical Muslim law, the Shari'ah.
Rather, I argue that descriptions of Islam as a religious patriarchy that
allegedly has "God on its side" confuse the Qur'an with a
specific reading of it, ignoring that all texts, including the Qur'an, can
be read in multiple modes, including egalitarian ones. Moreover,
patriarchal readings of Islam collapse the Qur'an with its exegesis
(Divine Discourse with "its earthly realization"); God with the
languages used to speak about God (the Signified with the signifier); and
normative Islam with historical Islam. Thus, Islam and Muslims are
confused on the one hand, and texts, cultures, and histories are collapsed
on the other. My purpose is both to critique the methods by which Muslims
generate patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and to recover the egalitarian
aspects of Qur'anic epistemology. I do this on the basis of two claims,
whose substantiation provides the subject matter of the two parts of this
book. My first and relatively simple claim is
that, insofar as all texts are polysemic, they are open to variant
readings. We cannot therefore look to a text alone to explain why people
have read it in a particular mode or why they tend to favor one reading of
it over another. This is especially true of a sacred text like the
Qur’an that "has been ripped from its historical, linguistic,
literary, and psychological contexts and then been continually re-contextualized
in various cultures and according to the ideological needs of various
actors" (Arkoun 1994, 5). We need, therefore, to examine who has read
the Qur'an historically, how they have read it—that is, how they have
chosen to define the epistemology and methodology of meaning, hence
certain ways of knowing (the realm of hermeneutics)—and the
extra-textual contexts in which they have read it. In particular, we need
to examine the roles of Muslim interpretive communities and states (the
realm of sexual politics) in shaping religious knowledge and authority in
ways that enabled patriarchal readings of the Qur'an. I address these
issues, which impinge on the power and politics of reading itself, in Part
I of the book. If emphasizing the Qur'an's textual
polysemy allows me to argue against interpretive reductionism, however, it
merely reiterates modern definitions of the text and also a well-known
historical fact; it says nothing specific about the Qur'an itself. And I
do want to make a more specific, if also more controversial, claim (in
dialogue with recent Muslim and feminist scholarship), which is that the
Qur'an is egalitarian and anti-patriarchal. This, of course, is a harder
claim to establish for at least two reasons. First, while there is no
universally shared definition of sexual equality, there is a pervasive
(and oftentimes perverse) tendency to view differences as evidence of
inequality. In light of this view, the Qur'an's different treatment of
women and men with respect to certain issues (marriage, divorce, giving of
evidence, etc.) is seen as manifest proof of its anti-equality stance and
its patriarchal nature. However, I argue against this view on the grounds
both that (as many feminists themselves now admit) treating women and men
differently does not always amount to treating them unequally, nor does
treating them identically necessarily mean treating them equally. Second,
as my reading will show, the Qur'an's different treatment of women and men
is not based in claims about either sexual difference or sameness that
theories of sexual inequality and oppression make. Another difficulty with claiming that the
Qur'an is egalitarian and anti-patriarchal is that some of its teachings,
especially those dealing with polygyny and "wife beating,"
suggest otherwise, as does the fact that the Qur'an recognizes men as the
locus of power and authority in actually existing patriarchies. However,
recognizing the existence of a patriarchy, or addressing one, is not the
same as advocating it. Moreover, the Qur'an's provisions about polygyny,
"wife beating," and so forth—which have been open to serious
misinterpretation—were in the nature of restrictions, not a license.
However, we can only address these types of issues if, in addition to
questioning the textual strategies Muslims have used to read the Qur'an,
we also keep in mind the historical context of its revelation in a
seventh-century (Arab) tribal patriarchy (much like the Taliban in
Afghanistan today). Contextualizing the Qur'an's teachings (i.e.,
explaining them with reference to the immediate audience and social
conditions to which they were addressed), shows that, far from being
oppressive, they were profoundly egalitarian; it depends on how we
position the Qur'an and also ourselves vis-à-vis it historically. If this line of reasoning suggests that the
meanings we derive from, or ascribe to, the Qur'an are unfixable, or are
fixable only in the context of a given historical period or hermeneutic
method, it does not mean that we can never know the Qur'an’s meanings or
intent, or that all the meanings we derive from it are equally legitimate.
Nor does it mean that the Qur'an is not universal in its scope, or that
its teachings were egalitarian only by the standards of a seventh-century
society and are irredeemably oppressive by ours. On the contrary, I will
contest each of these propositions on the basis both of a hermeneutic
argument and by reading (in Part II) the Qur'an's teachings on a wide
range of issues, extending from the nature of Divine Self-Disclosure (how
God defines God), to the Qur'an's view of prophets, parents, spouses,
human creation, moral agency, sex/gender, and sexuality. My reading draws
on hermeneutic principles suggested by the Qur'an for its own
interpretation, as well as on a comprehensive definition of patriarchy; it
also is based in conceptual distinctions that Muslims who read the Qur'an
as a patriarchal text usually fail to make. Prior to specifying my own
approach, however, I would like to discuss how Muslims and their critics
read patriarchy, inequality, and even misogyny into the Qur'an. II. Reading Patriarchy They treat men's oppression Muslims read patriarchy and sexual
inequality into the Qur'an on the basis both of specific verses (Ayat, s.
Ayah) and of the Qur'an's different treatment of women and men with regard
to such issues as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. From these, they
infer that men and women are not only biologically different but also
unequal, and are opposites, a view mirrored in the claim that in Islam the
masculine and the feminine principles also are strictly separated. On the
readings of conservatives, male superiority is both ontological, since
woman is said to have been created from/after man and for his pleasure,
and moral-social, since God is alleged to have preferred men in "the
completeness of mental ability, good counsel, complete power in the
performance of duties and the carrying out of (divine) commands." God
also is said to have given men a "degree" above women and to
have appointed them guardians (in some accounts, rulers) over women. The
woman, on the other hand, is represented as a "tragic being [whose]
sex functions and physiology make her unfit for any work or activity
except child-bearing," which is her "biological tragedy" (Maududi
in Khan 1983, 21). Not only do biological and mental functions and
capacities differentiate the two sexes, argue conservatives, but they also
justify a sexual division of labor in which women must submit to the man
"who is responsible for the maintenance of this system be he her
husband, father or brother" (61-62). On conservative views, it is
clear that Surpassing the audacity even of Europeans
like Freud, some conservative Muslims label a woman's anatomy her
"pre-destiny," claiming that nature itself "has given man
superiority over woman" and made her redundant to civilization (Vajidi
in Khan, 173). Such
misogynistic readings of Islam derive not from the Qur'an's teachings,
however, but from attempts by Muslim exegetes and Qur'an commentators
"to legitimise actual usage of their own day by interpreting it in
great detail into the Holy Book." In fact, one can trace changes in
Muslim women's status "through a comparative study of [Qur'anic]
interpretations such as those of Tabari (d. 923), Zamakhshari (d. 1144),
Baydawi (d. 1286) al-Suyuti (d. 1505)," and so on, all of whose works
form part of the Sunni canon today. This is why we need to examine not
just the methods by which Qur'anic exegesis and religious meaning have
been and continue to be produced, but also the extratextual contexts of
their production. Recent scholarship increasingly makes clear that conservative readings of the Qur'an are a function of the methods Muslims have used—or have failed to use—to read it. In particular, argue critical scholars, Muslims have not read the Qur'an as both a "complex hermeneutic totality" and as a "historically situated" text. Instead, says Mustansir Mir (1986, 1), they have relied on a "linear-atomistic" method that takes a "verse-by-verse approach to the Qur'an. With most Muslim exegetes, the basic unit of Qur'an study is one or a few verses taken in isolation from the preceding and following verses." As a result, the Qur'an is not read as a text possessing both "thematic and structural nazm [coherence]" (24). As Amina Wadud (1999, 2) also argues, the exegetes of the classical period begin with the first verse of the first chapter and proceed to the second verse of the first chapter—one verse at a time—until the end of the Book. Little or no effort is made to recognize themes and to discuss the relationship of the Qur'an to itself, thematically. Even when they do refer to the relationship
of two Ayat, contends Wadud, they do so without applying any
"hermeneutical principle" since a method "for linking
similar Qur'anic ideas, syntactical structures, principles, or themes
together is almost non-existent" (Wadud 1999, 2). Not surprisingly, this method has failed to
yield a creative synthesis of Qur'anic principles, since it does not
recognize the connections between different themes in the Qur'an. (As my
reading will show, recognizing the Qur'an's textual and thematic holism,
and thus the hermeneutic connections between seemingly disparate themes,
is absolutely integral to recovering its antipatriarchal epistemology.) By
ignoring the fact that the Qur'an is "a unified document gradually
unfolding itself" in time, classical exegetes have also ignored that
in the Qur'an content and context possess one another such that one cannot
grasp the significance of the Qur'an's teachings without considering the
contexts of their revelation. If we need to keep in mind the historical
contexts of the Qur'an's revelation in order to understand its teachings,
we also need to keep in mind the historical contexts of its
interpretations in order to understand its conservative and patriarchal
exegesis. The most definitive work, not only in Qur'anic exegesis but also
in law and tradition, is considered by many Muslims to have been produced
during the first few centuries of Muslim history, the Golden Age of Islam,
which coincided with the Western Middle Ages. The misogyny of this period
is, of course, well known. It was assimilated into Islam by way of the
commentaries and super-commentaries on the Qur'an (Tafsir) and the
narratives detailing the life and praxis of the Prophet (Ahadith) (Ahmed
1992; Spellberg 1994; Stowasser 1994). In other words, it was the
secondary religious texts that enabled the "textualization of
misogyny" in Islam. These texts have come to eclipse the Qur'an's
influence in most Muslim societies today, exemplifying the triumph not
only of some texts over others in Muslim religious discourse but also of
history, politics, and culture over the sacred text, and thus also of the
cross-cultural, transnational, and nondenominational ideologies on women
and gender in vogue in the Middle Ages over the teachings of the Qur'an.
However, since we often do not distinguish between texts, cultures, and
histories when studying Islam, we tend to ignore this inversion. As a
result, we end up confusing the Qur'an with its Tafsir, and confusing
Islam with patriarchy and the practices of repressive Muslim states that
have a history of using Islam for their own political ends (Mernissi 1991,
1996; Khalidi 1994; Marlow 1997; Zaman 1997). The fact that the Qur'an "happens
against a long background of patriarchal precedent" may also explain
why its exegesis, the work entirely of men, has been influenced by their
own needs and experiences while either excluding or interpreting,
"through the male vision, perspective, desire, or needs,"
women's experiences (Wadud 1999, 2). The resulting absence of women's
voices from "the basic paradigms through which we examine and discuss
the Qur'an and Qur'anic interpretation," argues Wadud, is mistaken
"with voicelessness in the text itself"; and it is this silence
that both explains and allows the striking consensus on women's issues
among Muslims in spite of interpretive differences among them. However, we know that women participated
actively in the creation of religious knowledge in the early days of
Islam. As Ahmed (1992, 72) says, women of the Prophet's community felt
they had a right "to comment forthrightly on any topic, even the
Qur'an," and both God and the Prophet assumed their "right to
speak out and readily responded to their comments." It is necessary,
therefore, to reexamine the details of Muslim history, in particular the
processes of knowledge formation, in order to understand women's exclusion
from interpretive communities over time. In sum, in order to understand patriarchal
readings of the Qur'an, we need to study the relationship not only between
hermeneutics and history, but also between the content of knowledge and
the methods by which it is generated. It is not "enough to ask what
we know about religion, but equal attention must be paid to how we come to
know what we know" (King 1995, 20; her emphasis). We need to realize
that our understanding of the Qur'an's teachings is contingent on how we
have, or have not, read it; on the sorts of questions we have asked of it;
and the voices we have preferred to hear in response to our questions. As
such, if we want to read the Qur'an in liberatory and anti-patriarchal
modes, we will need to use a different method to read it and also to ask
different sorts of questions than we have been willing to ask thus far. III. Reading Liberation Enjoin Readings of Islam as a religious patriarchy
rest on a number of conceptual confusions. The most endemic of these is
between the Qur'an as revelation (Divine Discourse) and as text (a
discourse fixed in writing by humans and interpreted by them in
time/space, that is, historically). However, collapsing God's Words with
our interpretation of those Words not only violates the distinction Muslim
theology has always made between Divine Speech and its "earthly
realization," but it also ignores the Qur'an's warning not to confuse
it with its readings (39:18; in Ali 1988, 1241). It is crucial to make
this distinction because there are slippages between the Qur'an and its
Tafsir, and also within interpretations and translations of the Qur'an
(inter/intratextual tensions), which present scholars with a conundrum. As
Neal Robinson (1996, 29) confesses, the "striking difference between
what can be safely inferred from the Qur'an itself and what has frequently
been read into it presents me with a serious dilemma." This
disjuncture between the Qur'an and its exegesis also explains why many
norms and practices that are labeled "Islamic" do not, in fact,
derive from the Qur'an's teachings. This is why we need to make another
equally crucial distinction that patriarchal readings of Islam do not
make: between Islam in theory and Islam in practice, thus also between
Islam and already existing patriarchies on the one hand and Islam and
Muslim history and practices on the other. Among others, W. C. Smith
(1981, 30), argues in favor of such distinctions. "To reduce what
Islam is, conceptually, to what Islam has been, historically, or is in the
process of becoming," he says, "would be to fail to recognise
its religious quality: the relationship to the divine; the transcendent
element. Indeed, Islamic truth must necessarily transcend Islamic
actuality." (As Smith notes, even the ideal of Islam has had a
complex history and "has in some measure been different things in
different centuries, in different countries, among different
strata.") Although it is not always easy to make these
distinctions—between Islam's actuality and its transcendent truth,
between the Qur'an and its exegesis, and between Islam and Muslim
practices (thus between texts, cultures, and histories)—they nonetheless
allow us to see that many ideas and practices, including the theme of
patriarchy, ascribed to the Qur'an do not originate in it or have been
read into the text in contextually problematic ways. This only becomes clear, however, if we
begin by defining patriarchy itself, which no reader of the Qur'an seems
ever to have done, including those feminists who condemn Islam as a
patriarchy. Even Wadud (1999, 9), who argues that the Qur'an is neutral
toward "social [and] marital patriarchy," does not say what she
means by the term. This may explain why she remains unaware that her own
work helps to establish the Qur'an's anti-patriarchal episteme by showing
that it does not privilege males as males (sex is irrelevant to its
definition of moral agency), it does not use males as a paradigm to define
women, and it does not even use the concept of gender to speak about
humans. In the absence of a definition of patriarchy, one cannot know that
the Qur'an's treatment of these themes undermines the very core of
patriarchal ideology. This is why I begin my own reading by defining
patriarchy. Defining Patriarchy I define patriarchy in both a narrow
(specific) and a broad (universal) sense in order to make the definition
as comprehensive as possible. Narrowly defined, patriarchy is a
historically specific mode of rule by fathers that, in its religious and
traditional forms, assumes a real as well as symbolic continuum between
the "Father/fathers"; that is, between a patriarchalized view of
God as Father/male, and a theory of father-right, extending to the
husband's claim to rule over his wife and children. I apply this
definition in reading the Qur'an because the Qur'an was revealed in the
context of a traditional patriarchy, and my aim is to see if it endorsed
this mode of patriarchy by representing God as Father or by representing
the father or husband as ruler over his wife and children. Since the Qur'an's teachings are universal
and since father's rule has reconstituted itself, I also define patriarchy
more broadly, as a politics of sexual differentiation that privileges
males by "transforming biological sex into politicized gender, which
prioritizes the male while making the woman different (unequal), less
than, or the 'Other'" (Eisenstein 1984, 90). Patriarchy, broadly
conceived, is based in an ideology that ascribes social/sexual
inequalities to biology; that is, it confuses sexual/biological
differences with gender dualisms/inequality (differences based on sex or
biology with inequality based on gender dualisms). This "culturalization
of nature and the naturalization of culture" manifests itself in
three claims (as the conservative Muslim position summarized above
reveals): that there are essential ontological and ethical-moral
differences between women and men, that these differences are a function
of nature/biology, and that the Qur'an's different, hence unequal,
treatment of women and men affirms their inherent inequality (in a series
of steps, difference is thus transformed into inequality). In reading the
Qur'an in light of this definition of patriarchy, my aim is to see whether
it endorses the ideas of sex/gender differentiation, dualisms, and
inequalities that are implicit in these claims. While a definition of patriarchy is
fundamental to being able to establish the Qur'an as an anti-patriarchal
(or, for that matter, as a patriarchal) text, and also for explaining
issues of con/textuality (the relationship between texts and the contexts
of their reading), it does not address the problem of con/textual
legitimacy or the question of what constitutes a proper reading of a text.
In fact, I am convinced that one of the primary reasons Muslims have
failed to recover the Qur'an's anti-patriarchal epistemology has to do
with the fact that we have not systematically addressed this question,
particularly in light of the Qur'an's own recommended modes of reading it.
Indeed, I believe that the failure to consider the criteria for generating
a contextually legitimate reading of the Qur'an is not just a hermeneutic
failure, but also a theological one. Inasmuch as readings of Scriptures
are as likely to be influenced by theological considerations, especially
by one's conception of God, as they are by the use of specific
methodological criteria, focusing only on the latter to the exclusion of
how a Scripture is experienced within the context of a distinctive image
of, and relationship to God, whose Speech it is, cannot be the best way to
generate contextually appropriate readings of it. Yet, that is how Muslims
have, in fact, tended to read the Qur'an historically: without making
God's Self-Disclosure the hermeneutic site from which to read the Qur'an.
The failure to connect God to God's Speech (which has resulted in some
extremely objectionable readings of the Qur'an) is inexplicable in view of
the fact that the organizing principle of Islam, the doctrine of God's
Unity (Tawhid), stipulates that there is a perfect congruence between God
(Divine Ontology) and God's Speech (Divine Discourse). This means that
Muslims should seek the hermeneutic keys for interpreting the Qur'an in
the nature of Divine Ontology or, more appropriately, in the nature of
Divine Self-Disclosure, since our knowledge of one is contingent on our
understanding of the other. That is where I locate my own hermeneutics. Defining a Qur'anic Hermeneutics Given the
unity of Divine Ontology and Divine Discourse, we need to begin our
reading of God's Speech by connecting it to God. Thus, God's
Self-Disclosure needs to become intrinsic to any project of Qur'anic
hermeneutics. Here I examine three aspects of God's Self-Disclosure that
generate liberatory readings of the Qur'an: the principles of Divine
Unity, Justness, and Incomparability. The
principle of God's Unity (Tawhid) has the most far-reaching implications
for how we understand God and God's Speech. Here, I wish to note only its
implications for a theory of male rule/privilege that underpins
traditional patriarchies. In its simplest form, Tawhid symbolizes the idea
of God's Indivisibility, hence also the indivisibility of God's
Sovereignty; thus, no theory of male (or popular) sovereignty that
pretends to be an extension of God's Rule/Sovereignty, or comes into
conflict with it, can be considered compatible with the doctrine of Tawhid.
In fact, this is the axiomatic meaning of the term: that God is absolute
Sovereign and no one can partake in God's Sovereignty. To the extent that
theories of male rule over women and children amount to asserting
sovereignty over both and also misrepresent males as intermediaries
between women and God, they do come into conflict with the essential
tenets of the doctrine of Tawhid and must be rejected as theologically
unsound. A reading of the Qur'an that suggests even subtle parallels
between God and males, in their capacity as fathers or husbands, must then
be rejected as an insufferable heresy. (In later chapters, I show how the
doctrine of Tawhid directly undermines theories of father-rule/right.) A second
foundational principle of God's Self-Disclosure is that although
"severe, strict and unrelenting [in] justice," God "never
does any zulm to anybody" (Izutsu 1964, 77, 129). To do Zulm (in the
Qur'an), Toshihiko Izutsu (1959, 152) points out, is "'to act in such
a way as to transgress the proper limit and encroach upon the right of
some other person.'" Divine Justice thus is self-circumscribed by
respect for the rights of humans as moral agents. However, if God never
does Zulm to anyone, then God's Speech (the Qur'an) also cannot teach Zulm
against anyone. That is, if "God by definition, cannot be a
misogynist," then God's Speech also cannot by definition be
misogynist, or teach misogyny or injustice. Clearly, reasonable people may disagree
about what constitutes Zulm, as also about the proper definition of human
rights. However, it is harder to argue that theories asserting the
incomplete humanity of any group of people or justifying their physical or
moral abuse and degradation do not violate the rights of that group and
therefore do not constitute Zulm. In this context, it may be argued that
by teaching the precept of the inherent inferiority of women, which breeds
misogyny, and by justifying women's subordination to men, patriarchies
violate women's rights by denying them agency and dignity, principles that
the Qur'an says are intrinsic to human nature itself. As such, we can
think of patriarchies as being manifest cases of Zulm, and to the extent
that that is so, we must be willing to assume, again as a hermeneutic
principle, that the Qur'an cannot condone them. (As I will argue, the
Qur'an's teachings challenge inequality and patriarchy in more concrete
ways as well.) An exegesis that reads oppression, inequality, and
patriarchy into the Qur'an should be seen as a misreading, a failure in
reading, since it attributes to God Zulm against women. What we may, out
of either historical habit or expedience, read as Qur'anic support for
women's subordination to men must then be reexamined in light of a more
ecumenical definition of Zulm that coheres with the totality of the
Qur'an's teachings about the equality of the sexes. (I consider these
issues in detail in Chapters 4-6.) A third principle of God's Self-Disclosure
with hermeneutic implications is that God is Incomparable, hence
Unrepresentable, especially in anthropomorphic terms. The Qur'an's
tireless and emphatic rejections of God's sexualization/engenderment—as
Father (male)—confirm that God is not a male, or like one. However, if
God is not male or like one, there also is no reason to hold that God has
any special affinity with males (the positing of such an affinity allows
men to claim God as their own and thus to project onto God sexual
partisanship). Not only should we recover the liberatory potential of
Islam's rejection of a patriarchalized God, we should also make it the
hermeneutic site from which to read the Qur'an's anti-patriarchal
epistemology. (I make this argument more fully in Chapter 4.) All three aspects of Divine Ontology are
far more nuanced and have far richer implications than I have explored
here. However, even a cursory exploration reveals that the liberatory
nature of Qur'anic epistemology inheres in the very nature of God's Being.
In other words, it is not only in the Qur'an's teachings about human
creation, ontology, and relationships that we can find liberatory
potential but also in the very nature of Divine Ontology itself. In addition to these theological
principles, the Qur'an also offers us specific methodological criteria for
reading it that emphasize the principles of textual holism, reading for
the best meanings, and using analytical reasoning in interpretation. The
Qur'an's emphasis on reading it as a textual unity emerges from its
warning that "Those who break the Qur'an into parts. Them, by thy
Lord, We shall question, every one, Of what they used to do"
(15:91-93; in Pickthall n.d., 194). Yusuf Ali (1988) translates this verse
(in which God is addressing the Prophet) as: And say: "I am indeed he Similarly, in a reference to the Book given
to Moses, God condemns those who make "it into (Separate) sheets for
show, While ye conceal much (Of its contents)" (6:91; in Ali, 314).
The Qur'an's warning against reading it in a de-contextualized, selective,
and piecemeal way emerges also from its criticism of the Israelites who
broke their covenant with God: "They change the words From their
(right) places And forget a good part Of the Message that was Sent
them" (5:14; in Ali, 245). And, again, they "change the words
From their (right) times And places" (5:44; in Ali, 255). Revelation,
the Qur'an emphasizes, is of a continuity and is also internally clear and
self-consistent (39:23; in Ali, 1243-44). The Qur'an's internal coherence and
consistency do not, however, preclude us from deriving multiple meanings
from it, including ones that may not be appropriate. Thus, while noting
its own polysemy, the Qur'an also confirms that some meanings, thus some
readings, are better than others. For instance, it praises "Those who
listen To the Word And follow The best (meaning) in it" (39:18; in
Ali, 1241), clearly indicating that we can derive more than one set of
meanings from the Qur'an, not all of which may be equally good. Similarly,
God tells Moses to "enjoin Thy people to hold fast By the best in the
precepts [i.e., the Tablets given to him]" (7:145; in Ali, 383). (God
also tells the Prophet and all believers to reason with unbelievers in the
best possible way.) While it may not be easy to say what would be the best
meaning of every ayah—especially given the (sufi) view that each verse
in the Qur'an can be read in up to 60,000 ways—in light of our idea of a
Just God and of the Qur'an's concern for justice, it is reasonable to hold
that the best meanings would recover justice (fairness, impartiality)
broadly conceived. However, even if one cannot agree on what the best
meanings in every case may be, it is less easy to feign ignorance of what
is not appropriate inasmuch as the Qur'an makes this clear in different
contexts. First, as noted, it criticizes readings that are
decontextualized and selective. The Qur'an's emphasis on reading it
holistically, hence intratextually, also emerges from its praise for those
who say "'We believe In the Book; the whole of it Is from our
Lord'" (3:7; in Ali, 123). Second, the Qur'an distinguishes between
readings that draw on its foundational (clear) ayat and those that draw on
its allegorical (obscure) ayat. The Qur'an criticizes those who ignore its
"basic or fundamental" ayat, with their "established
meaning," in order to focus on the "allegorical [ayat], Seeking
discord, and searching for its hidden meanings" (3:17; in Ali, 123).
While allegory has crucial didactic functions in the Qur'an, it is not
meant to obscure the Qur'an's meanings, which, says the Qur'an, are clear.
Third, the Qur'an states repeatedly that God does not love wrongdoing and
oppression. As I have asserted, we can disagree on what constitutes
oppression, but reading into the Qur'an various forms of Zulm as defined
by its victims cannot be considered legitimate. It is thus reasonable to
hold that con/textually legitimate readings will cohere with the overall
moral objective of the Qur'an's teachings, treat the text as a unity,
privilege its clear and foundational ayat over its allegorical ones, and
seek to avoid ambiguity. In the end, of course, a reading of the
Qur'an is just a reading of the Qur'an, no matter how good; it does not
approximate the Qur'an itself, which may be why the Qur'an distinguishes
between itself and its exegesis. Thus, it condemns those "who write
The Book with their own hands, And then say: 'This is from God'"
(2:79; in Ali, 38). While the ayah was a warning to those among the People
of the Book (Jews and Christians) of the Prophet's time who were engaged
in forgeries, it serves also as a warning against confusing Divine
Discourse with its interpretations. In this context, the Qur'an is clear
that "those who are bent on denying the truth attribute their own
lying inventions to God. And most of them never use their reason"
(5:105; in Asad 1980, 166). People not only fabricate false meanings, says
the Qur'an, but they also project into Scripture their own desires. As one
ayah says, "And there are among them Illiterates, who know not the
Book, But (see therein their own) desires, And they do nothing but
conjecture" (2:78; in Ali, 38). For all these reasons, then, we need
to read the Qur'an carefully and scrupulously and without the hubris of
believing that we can exhaust its meanings. Finally, the Qur'an also comments on its
own revelation in Arabic and clarifies that it is in Arabic because the
Prophet was an Arab; God wanted the Arabs, to whom no "warner"
had been sent before, to understand and heed God's teachings, and God
wanted to make the Qur'an easy for them to understand and remember. The
Qur'an does not suggest, however, that Arabic has any unique or intrinsic
merit as a language of revelation, or that it is the only language in
which we can understand revelation. Rather, argues Izutsu (1964, 189), the
Qur'anic view of the Arabic language is based in the very clear cultural
consciousness that each nation has its own language, and Arabic is the
language of the Arabs, and it is, in this capacity, only one of many
languages. If God chose this language, it was not for its intrinsic value
as a language but simply for its usefulness, that is because the message
was addressed primarily to the Arabic speaking people. What seems significant is not so much the
language in which the Qur'an's teachings are conveyed as the need for us
"to discover" its meanings by exercising our own reason and
intellect (Hourani 1985; his emphasis). Ziauddin Sardar (1985, 167) points
out that, compared to 260 ayat on legislative issues, there are some 750
that instruct believers to "reflect [and] make the best use of
reason" in trying to decipher the Qur'an's polyvalent semiotic
universe. The principles found within the Qur'an
reveal a preference for reading the text as "a cumulative, holistic
process," that is, as "a whole, a totality." Traditional
Muslim views that the Qur'an is "its own best interpreter" and
that we need to "interpret the Qur'an by the Qur'an" are
hermeneutic principles implicit in the Qur'an itself, which suggests
textual holism as the basis of "intrascriptural investigation."
However, the Qur'an also "clearly enjoins an understanding of itself
which makes 'contextuality' central and fundamental, both to its existence
and its relevance" (Cragg 1994, 113). The best method, then, would be
to read the Qur'an intratextually but also with regard to the contexts of
its revelation. Beyond these broad principles, the Qur'an does not "authorise
recourse to methods of explanation or logical deduction for the purpose of
better understanding" it, observes Faruq Sherif (1985, 42); however,
as he notes, it does not "forbid the use of such expedients,"
either. In sum, the Qur'an itself offers criteria
by which we can judge between readings, which is important to do because
even though "multiple readings are not per se mutually exclusive, not
all interpretations are thereby equal" (Trible in West 1995, 149). A
commitment to textual polysemy thus does not mean having to embrace moral
relativism. In this context, scholars maintain that "an
interpretation must not only be probable, but more probable than
another," and that reading the text as a unity enhances this
probability inasmuch as a text is "a limited field of possible
constructions" (Ricoeur 1981, 213). In fact, texts themselves can
"resist imposed interpretations" in their details (Wolterstorff
1995, 202); as a noted biblical scholar once put it, "You can revise
the text to suit yourself only just so far" (Frei in ibid., 230).
Moreover, if we cannot agree on which is the best interpretation, we
should be able to "agree on the fact that certain interpretations are
not contextually legitimated" (Eco in Carson 1996, 76-77). At the
very least, we should be willing to agree that "[t]heologically
speaking, whatever diminishes and denies the full humanity of women must
be presumed not to reflect the divine or an authentic relation to the
divine" (West 1995, 110). IV. Entering the Hermeneutic Circle/Spiral Since we always bring what Martin Heidegger
called "pre-understanding" into all interpretive processes, I
would like to clarify my epistemology, methodology, and reading practices
here. I also speculate on how some readers are likely to respond to my
work partly in the hope of encouraging them to move beyond their
preconceptions and biases. On Epistemology I read the Qur'an as a "believing
woman," to borrow a term from the Qur'an itself. This means that I do
not question its ontological status as Divine Speech or the claim that God
Speaks, both of which Muslims hold to be true. I do, however, question the
legitimacy of its patriarchal readings, and I do this on the basis of a
distinction in Muslim theology between what God says and what we
understand God to be saying. In the latter context, I am especially
interested in querying the claim, implicit in confusing the Qur'an with
its patriarchal exegesis, that only males, and conservative males at that,
know what God really means. It is this claim that I believe underwrites
sexual oppression in Muslim societies and therefore needs to be contested. As a believer, I also look to the Qur'an,
rather than to Western texts and theories, for my understanding of
concepts like sexual equality. However, while the Qur'an's concern with
equality and rights prefigures modern, Western, and feminist discourses,
it is grounded in a very different ethics and epistemology and is conveyed
by means of a very different language than the latter. In using terms like
patriarchy, hermeneutics, and sexual/textual, I do not wish to
misrepresent the Qur'an as a feminist text; rather, the use of such
terminology shows my own intellectual disposition and biases. It also is from the Qur'an and from Muslim
tradition that I draw inspiration for my critical engagement with the text
itself. The Qur'an's counsel to believers to use our reason/ing and
knowledge to decipher its ayat (literally, Signs of God) opens the way for
all believers to engage in critical inquiry. Indeed, Muslim tradition
records that this is a legacy we inherited from a woman at the start of
our history. Thus, some fourteen centuries ago Umm Salama is said to have
asked her husband, the Prophet Muhammad, why God was not addressing women
directly in the Qur'an, then in the process of being revealed to him.
Perhaps she was concerned at the number of ayat addressed to men, or
perhaps she did not take the Qur'an's references to men to be inclusive of
women, even though in Arabic that is often the case. In any event, that is
how—says tradition—the Qur'an became the only Scripture to address
women as women. As a believer, I interpret this incident to mean not that
a woman corrected God, but rather that, by God's Grace, Umm Salama's
critique became the way for God to correct an entire community. I draw several lessons from this incident.
First, I learn that long before we came to define the term
"critical," and long before we came to study the relationship
between language and forms of human subjectivity, some premodern,
illiterate Muslim women were thinking critically about the role of
language in shaping their sense of self. Were that not true, I assume Umm
Salama would not have asked her question, and I assume God would not have
responded to her by making women the subjects, rather than the objects, of
Divine Discourse. In fact, as the Qur'an makes clear, God shaped not only
the language of Divine Discourse but also its content in light of women's
concerns as they themselves expressed these during the process of its
revelation. More importantly, I learn that "women too are among those
oppressed whom God comes to vindicate and liberate," and that, in
Islam, they have a direct relationship with God which is not dependent
upon the mediation of male authority. Finally, and most significantly, I
learn that for Divine Speech to be responsive to us, we should be willing
to engage it critically by asking the right sorts of questions of it. Even though as a woman I ask some questions
of the Qur'an that a man may not perhaps think of asking, and even though
I believe that women are more likely than men to read the Qur'an for
liberation (because women and men have different stakes in patriarchy and
thus also in liberation from it), I do not rule out the possibility that
both women and men are equally capable of liberatory readings. We may not
always share the same idea of liberation, of course, but I would like to
believe that disagreements are a function not of sexual but of
intellectual and ideological differences. This is not to say that
different experiences of sex/gender play no role in structuring our ideas;
nor does it mean that sex/gender is not a site for creating, subverting,
and critiquing meaning. It is merely to affirm the possibility for women
and men to arrive at a mutually shared discourse of meanings in spite of
sex/gender differences. Thus, I do not adhere to a deterministic view of
the relationship between sex/gender and reading. This may sound
counterintuitive, given the example of Umm Salama I have just cited, and
it certainly is an unstylish view to hold at a time when we are becoming
ever more aware of the phallocratic nature of language and its role in
constituting gendered subjectivities. However, the very fact that men's
exegesis influences women's understanding of religion, as also the fact
that language allows for its own contestation, testifies to the autonomy
of meanings and language from sex/gender. Moreover, the Qur'an also
assumes that a shared discourse of meaning and mutual care is not only
possible but also necessary for the development of moral individualities
and communities. I do not therefore valorize communities of women readers
as the sine qua non of liberatory readings, as feminists do. To me, the
fact that both men and women can produce patriarchal readings or
liberatory ones is an acknowledgment of the relationship between texts and
the contexts of their reading (or between discourses and materiality) and
an argument against biological essentialism. On Methodology I employ the hermeneutic principles the
Qur'an suggests for its own interpretation as outlined above, to read the
Qur'an as text, as well as to read behind it and in front of it. When I
say I read the Qur'an as text, I mean that I read it to discover what God
may have intended (that is, for Authorial intent discourse). This means
that I ascribe intention/ality to the text. I also read to uncover what I
believe already is there in the Qur'an; that is, I hold that certain
meanings are intrinsic to the text such that anyone can retrieve them if
they employ the right method and ask the right questions. This means, of
course, that I accept the possibility that men and women can read in
similar ways, even though we may have a stake in reading differently. Breaking with another feminist tradition, I
also do not read the Qur'an as a dual-gendered text, that is, a text that
has both male and female voices in it. For Muslims, the Qur'an is God's
Speech and not the work of human authors, and God is beyond sex/gender.
(It could well be, of course, that men and women tend to interpret the
Qur'an's message differently. Also, since access to Divine Discourse is
mediated by humans and in gendered languages, and since the humans who
have interpreted the Qur'an historically have been men, we can certainly
hear male voices and masculinist biases in exegesis.) When I say,
therefore, that the Qur'an is not a patriarchal text, I am not saying that
it is not the work of men, since I hold that to be a priori true; what I
am saying is that its teachings challenge the premises that sustain
patriarchy in both its traditional and modern forms. Similarly, when I
refer to the Qur'an's egalitarian "voice," I am not referring to
female voices in it that only I can hear as a woman. I am referring to
tendencies in the Qur'an that have been submerged or lost because of the
patriarchal nature of its exegesis and the gendered nature of human
language. Given the limitations of language, I
occasionally question the translation of a specific word, or the use of a
phrase by means of which a crucial idea is conveyed, since much can rest
on a word or a turn of the phrase. For instance, the Qur'an states that
God is Unrepresentable and that we should not use similitudes
(representations) for God. I thus take the use of the pronoun
"He" to be a bad linguistic convention and not an
epistemological claim about God's Being. However, more than querying
language use, I focus on uncovering the hermeneutic connections between
seemingly disparate themes in the Qur'an (e.g., between the nature of
God's Self-Disclosure and the Qur'an's opposition to ideas of
father-right/rule as well as to theories of sexual differentiation) that
allow me to recover its antipatriarchal epistemology. In this context, I concentrate not only on
what the Qur'an says but also on what it does not say; that is, I view
silence as symbolically suggestive since the "unsaid, the assumed,
and the silences in any discourse provide...the backdrop against which
meaning is established" (Denzin 1997, 38). Of course, what one makes
of the Qur'an's silences depends on what one makes of silence itself; in
law, we treat silence as consent, but it can be rather more complex and
can convey opposition, resistance, neutrality, indifference, and so on,
depending on the context. Thus, I interpret the Qur'an's silences in light
of its expressed teachings. To read behind the text means to
reconstruct the historical "context from which the text emerged"
(West 1995, 113). This is important because, as scholars maintain with
respect to the Bible, patriarchalization was "not inherent in
Christian revelation and community, but progressed slowly and with
difficulty." Furthermore, "definitions of sexual roles and
gender dimorphism are the outcome of the social economic interactions
between men and women [and were] not ordained either by nature or by
God" (Schussler-Fiorenza in West, 143, 144). This is equally true of
Muslim attitudes toward women, which is why I begin by examining the
historical contexts in which the Qur'an was revealed and read and the
means by which its teachings came to be overlaid by a patriarchal exegesis
(discussed in Part I). To read in front of the text, on the other
hand, means to recontextualize it in the light of present needs, something
that requires a double movement, as Rahman (1982, 5) calls it, from the
present to the past and back to the present. The first half of the
movement allows one to specify the contexts of the Qur'an's revelation and
teachings, and the second to distill their "moral-social"
principles so as to make them applicable today. However, as Rahman (85)
says, it is "precisely the systematic working-out of Islam for the
modern context" that has not occurred even though the Qur'an can be
adapted to such contexts, including those of women. In fact, interpreting
it with them in mind would confirm its universality, according to Wadud.
Part II of this book is thus my way of reading in front of the text. On Reading What I offer here is both a hermeneutic
method for reading the Qur'an and a holistic and thematically linked
interpretation of its teachings. I am not offering my own translation of
the Qur'an. To speak of the Qur'an in any language other than Arabic is,
of course, to speak of it in its translations, and while translating the
Qur'an raises complex problems, it is unavoidable if one wishes to speak
of it in a different language, as I do. Accordingly, I rely primarily on Abdullah
Yusuf Ali's translation, which Muslims almost universally regard as being
the best. Occasionally, where I believe they serve as useful correctives
to Ali, I also draw on Muhammad Asad, A. J. Arberry, and M. M. Pickthall,
all of whose works Muslims consider to be among the finest in English. The
only change I make on occasion to these translations is to use the Arabic
word "Rabb" for God (which the Qur'an itself uses) instead of
the English "He/His" since I wish to retain sex/gender-neutral
references to God for reasons I will explain in Chapter 4. Less
frequently, I give some words in their original Arabic instead of their
English translations, especially when translators differ in their
interpretation of these words. Nevertheless, I hope to show that in all of
its translations, even by men, the Qur'an remains a liberatory text. Although my choices of translation, as well
as my reading, involve "some kind of modulation or interpretive
process" such that it is unrealistic to claim total objectivity, this
does not mean that the choices or the reading are entirely biased or
illusory. The fact that a reading can never be wholly objective does not,
in itself, render it false; in other words, subjectivity does not rule out
the possibility of saying something that also is true. As theorists argue
with respect to the hermeneutic circle (i.e., the problem of
pre-understanding in structuring our encounter with a text), the reader's
aim should not be to avoid getting into it, but to get "into it
properly," recognizing the role of the forestructure of understanding
in interpretation (Bleicher 1980, 103). In terms of this argument,
subjectivity "is not so much what initiates understanding as what
terminates it" (Ricoeur 1981, 113). (In other words, it is the
limitations of my reading that most clearly reveal the influence of
subjective factors.) Ideally, argues Paul Ricoeur (143), rather than
imposing ourselves on the text, we "unrealize" ourselves in
front of it, "receiving from it an enlarged self." As such,
awareness of subjectivity can foster a critical hermeneutic
self-consciousness that can lead to better self-knowledge and thus to more
meaningful engagements with texts, transforming the hermeneutic circle
into what D. A. Carson (1996) calls a hermeneutic spiral. Many Muslims, however, are of two views
with regard to the role of subjectivity. On the one hand, they hold that
modern readings of the Qur'an, especially by women, are tainted by biases,
while on the other they embrace the religious knowledge produced by a
small number of male scholars in the classical period as the only
objective and authentic knowledge of Islam. Belief in the
"theoretical infallibility" of these male scholars and the idea
that the knowledge they produced transcends its own historicity arises in,
and also gives rise to, a view of imaginary time that serves to draw
Muslims close to what is distant from us in real time and to distance us
from that which, in real time, is close to us. As such, the denial of
historicity in one case and its affirmation in the other defines
acceptable and unacceptable modes of reading the Qur'an among
conservatives. This mindset, which allows "the burden of decision and
discrimination to be taken off [our] shoulders by tradition,"
encourages Muslims to adhere to exegetical practices designed to find out
how texts "were read when they were new" (Jackson 1989, 3).
Hence we have the Muslim emphasis on tradition, especially in exegesis.
Lately, however, Muslim scholars have begun querying the methods used to
read the Qur'an, the Tafsir these methods have generated, and the
processes by which Muslim tradition itself was constructed, opening the
way for new scholarship on, and readings of, the Qur'an (Mir 1986; Rahman
1965, 1980; Wadud 1999). My work is situated within these new revisions of
Muslim tradition and attempts to synthesize the old with the new. My work
remains traditional in its view of the Qur'an as an egalitarian text, a
view I share with some Muslim exegetes of the classical period and
certainly with many Muslims today. It also is traditional in that I read
the Qur'an in terms of its own "intrinsic sense" and truth
claims. However, my work is new in that I apply new insights to read the
Qur'an on issues that exegetes have not examined (its position on
patriarchy and sexual equality as we define them today). Thus, the way in
which I frame the reading itself is novel from the perspective of Muslim
tradition. And, of course, what is new is the temporality of the site from
which I read the Qur'an. Were I not reading the Qur'an, I would not
need to defend, in this heyday of postmodernism, the newness of the
insights that I apply to read it, or the reading itself. Yet, contemporary
readings of the Qur'an, especially liberatory ones, run the risk of being
dismissed a priori because of the belief (shared by conservative Muslims,
many non-Muslims, feminists, and unreconstructed Orientalists) that the
Qur'an's meanings have been fixed once and for all as immutably
patriarchal and that one cannot develop a new way of reading it that
incorporates theories and insights that have matured twelve or so
centuries after its own advent. However, applying new insights to read the
Qur'an is both unavoidable and justified. It is unavoidable because one
always reads in and from the present; it thus is impossible not to bring
to one's reading sensibilities shaped by existing ideas, debates,
concerns, and anxieties. Indeed, if we are to read before the text (recontextualize
it for each new generation of Muslims), we must bring new insights to our
reading. Interpreting the Qur'an in light of new insights is also
legitimate inasmuch as Islam is not bound by space, time, or context; it
should thus be possible to ask if, and how, the Qur'an's teachings address
or accommodate ideas we find to be true or compelling today. Even if we do
not agree with these ideas, we need to take them seriously if we wish to
argue against them. This is another way of saying that dissent, to be
meaningful, must contend seriously with the discursive and moral-ethical
frameworks it seeks to challenge in order to demonstrate its own value.
That is partly what has prompted my own engagement with Western/feminist
theories, many of which serve as helpful points of departure, that is, as
"a starting point and an act of divergence, of moving away"65
for my work. However, while I draw on both Western and Muslim theories to
make my argument, I do not pretend that it is possible, or even desirable,
to attempt a synthesis between Qur'anic and Western epistemology. V. Plan of the Book This book consists of two parts, each of
which engages a different problematic; it therefore lends itself to a
nonlinear reading. Those new to the subject might benefit from reading
from front to back; those more familiar with the subject might want to
begin with Part II. Part I consists of Chapters 2 and 3, which
together explain the nature of texts, textualities, and inter/extratextuality
in Muslim religious discourse. In Chapter 2 I discuss the primary
religious texts of Islam, the relationship between specific interpretive
practices (method) and specific readings of the Qur'an (meaning), and
different conceptualizations of the relationship between texts, time, and
method. In particular, I focus on differing views of sacred and secular
time and explain how these shape our understanding of the Qur'an's
teachings, taking as an example conservative exegesis of the verses on
"the veil." In Chapter 3, I extend my exploration of
textualities to an analysis of the relationship within and between texts (intertextuality)
on the one hand, and the role of extratextual contexts (the state, law,
and tradition) in shaping Muslim religious discourse, on the other. Here I
consider how definitions of the canon, and of knowledge itself, shaped
Qur'anic exegesis. I also examine the roles of the state and of
interpretive communities in the early stages of Muslim history in
influencing the processes by which method, meaning, and memory were
constructed. In this context, I focus in particular on how exegetical
communities came to link their own commentarial practices to those
ascribed to the Prophet and, in time, to elevate their commentaries over
revelation itself, a method that has put a closure on how Muslims can
"legitimately" read the Qur'an today. Inasmuch as this method
displaces Divine Discourse, negates the principle of scriptural polysemy,
inhibits the development of new interpretive paradigms, and closes off the
Qur'an to new communities of readers (especially women), I question its
sacralization as "Islamic." Part II comprises Chapters 4 through 6. In
Chapter 4, I examine the nature of Divine Self-Disclosure in the Qur'an,
since sexual hierarchies and theories of father/husband rule in religious
patriarchies derive from representations of God as Father/male. My aim is
to show that characterizations of Islam as a religion of the
Father/fathers are misguided inasmuch as they ignore the Qur'an's
unyielding rejection of the patriarchal imaginary of God-the-Father and
the prophets-as-fathers, as well as its sustained critique of the history
of rule by fathers. I illustrate this claim by rereading the Qur'anic
narratives of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad, which I interpret as dis-placing
father/male rule in favor of God's Rule and Sovereignty. Chapter 5 analyzes the Qur'an's approach to
sex/gender and sexuality and argues that while the Qur'an recognizes
biological (sexual) differences, it does not espouse a view of sex/gender
differentiation, or gender dualisms. That is, the Qur'an does not endow
sex (biology), or difference itself, with symbolic meaning. As such, it is
difficult to derive a theory of gender, much less of gender inequality,
from its teachings. To the contrary, the Qur'an establishes the principle
of the ontic equality of the sexes and it does so in a manner that is
distinctive from both the one-sex and the two-sex models on which Western
patriarchal thought draws. My reading shows that not only do the Qur'an's
teachings have nothing in common with either model but also that the
Qur'an treats issues of sexual sameness and difference in a totally
different way than the two models do. I end by discussing the Qur'an's
attitude to sexuality and show that it does not distinguish between men
and women based on their sexual identities. In fact, I argue that the
Qur'an assumes that men and women have similar sexual natures and needs
and that its precepts about sexual modesty and morality apply equally to
both. This argument extends into my analysis, in
Chapter 6, of the family in the Qur'an. Here I consider its position on
mothers and fathers and on wives and husbands, and I distinguish it from
both (Western) patriarchal and feminist thought. Among other things, I
demonstrate that the Qur'an's view of mothers and fathers and its
definition of parental responsibilities is completely at odds with
patriarchal theories. Similarly, its definition of spousal relationships
differs markedly from their conceptualization in and by patriarchies
inasmuch as it confirms the principle of the equality, equivalence,
sameness, or similarity (depending on the context) of the spouses,
notwithstanding specific verses on polygyny, divorce, and "wife
beating." In sum, these chapters aim to emphasize those aspects of
the Qur'an's teachings that are conducive to theorizing sexual equality. I
feel this is important to do in view of the fact that Muslim women today
find it hard to struggle for equality from within an Islamic framework
because of the assumption that equality is a Western, not an Islamic,
value. I end this work by means of a postscript in
which I consider whether texts are responsible for their own (mis)reading;
that is, contrary to what I have argued, are patriarchal readings of the
Qur'an a function of the text itself? This is my way of reflecting on the
appropriateness of my entire project. Since each chapter employs concepts specific to the argument I make in it, I explain the concepts in the relevant chapters. This necessarily places on readers the burden of patience and a willingness to read an argument in its entirety before evaluating it.
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