Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an [Revised] 1477315926, 9781477315927

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Believing

Women in Islam Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Quraˉn ▼

Asm a Ba rl as

University of Texas Press 

 Austin

Copyright © 2002, 2019 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Revised edition, 2019 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-­7819 utpress​.utexas​.edu​/rp​-­­form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Ó library of congress cataloging-­in-­publication data Names: Barlas, Asma, author. Title: Believing women in Islam : unreading patriarchal interpretations of the Qurʾān / Asma Barlas. Description: Revised edition.   Austin : University of Texas Press, 2019.   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018012130   ISBN 978-­1-­4773-­1592-­7 (pbk. : alk. paper)    ISBN 978-­1-­4773-­1593-­4 (library e-­book)    ISBN 978-­1-­4773-­1594-­1 (non-­library e-­book) Subjects: LCSH: Women in Islam. | Women in the Qurān.   Women’s rights—Religious aspects—Islam. Classification: LCC BP173.4 .B35 2019   DDC 297.1/2283054—dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2018012130 doi:10.7560/315910

Do they not then Earnestly seek to understand The Qurān, or are Their hearts locked up? The Qurān (47:24 [Ali 1988, 1385])

With love, for Ulises Ali, who has made his journey into Islam, and for Anwar and Iqbal Barlas, who have completed theirs.

Con t e n t s

Preface to the First Edition  ix Preface to the Revised Edition  xiii Acknowledgments  xv 1. The Qurān and Muslim Women: Reading Patriarchy, Reading Liberation 1 Part I: Texts, Contexts, and Religious Meaning 31 2. Texts and Textualities: The Qurān, Tafsīr, and Ahādith 33 3. Intertextualities, Extratextual Contexts: The Sunnah, Sharīah, and the State 66 Part II: God, the Prophets, and Fathers 95 4. The Patriarchal Imaginary of Father/s: Divine Ontology and the Prophets 97 5. Abraham’s Sacrifice in the Qurān: Beyond the Body 134

Con t en ts

Part III: Unreading and Rereading Patriarchy 151 6. The Qurān, Sex/Gender, and Sexuality: Sameness, Difference, Equality 153 7. The Family and Marriage: Retrieving the Qurān’s Egalitarianism 194 8. Secular-­/Feminism and the Qurān 237 Postscript 265 Glossary 275 Notes 277 Select Bibliography 307 Index 323

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Pr e fac e t o t h e F i r s t E di t ion

The central question I have posed in this book, whether or not the Qurān is a patriarchal text, is perhaps not a meaningful one from the Qurān’s perspective since its teachings are not framed in terms of the claims made by either traditional or modern patriarchies. However, since the Qurān 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ān but also to offer a reading that confirms that Muslim women can struggle for equality from within the framework of the Qurān’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, as Abdolkarim Soroush (2000, 86) calls them. 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 “Islam­ ism” 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 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ān are going to be easy, given the control over religious knowledge of obscurantists and experts alike. Yet more and more Muslims,

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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ān. Consequently, even though I engage Western/feminist thought only circumspectly, and often to differentiate and privilege what I take to be a Qurānic 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 antipatriarchal are much too self-­referential to be applied to, or used meaningfully by, Others, especially Muslims. My use of these terms for the Qurān, as well as 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

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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 hyperseparation 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”? Despite my 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 end of this book may also be helpful to readers who are unfamiliar with Arabic.)

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Pr e fac e t o t h e R e v i se d E di t ion

In the years since the first edition’s publication, some shifts occurred in my own thinking as well as in the literature on Muslim women’s rights, Muslim family laws, Islamic feminism, Islamic mysticism, and Qurānic exegesis—notably, on verse 4:34. I cannot, of course, respond to all this research within the confines of this book’s existing structure and thematic scope but, where possible, I have incorporated new insights into my earlier arguments, and where I could not, I have mentioned the relevant scholarship in the notes and bibliography. Starting in 2002, certain readings of the Qurān, including mine, came to be labeled “Islamic feminism,” though I continue to resist this naming for the reasons I mention in chapter 1 and others I have explored over the years. Even so, I have found it necessary to engage with critics of Islamic feminism who not only re-­inscribe the Qurān as an incurably patriarchal text, but many of whom also question its own status as God’s word. A new chapter (8) offers a critique of their scholarship that I broached in an essay for a roundtable on “Feminism and Islam” some years ago (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Fall 2016). The other new chapter (5) extends my reading of Abraham’s near-­sacrifice of his son in chapter 4 into a rather different direction, one that allows me to contrast Qurānic and biblical accounts of the parable. This was published in the proceedings of a conference in Finland, Religion and the Body (2011), and is included in this volume with the permission of the Donner Institute in Helsinki. Looking back at the first edition, I am struck by the changes that have occurred since then in people’s views of the Qurān’s relationship to patriarchy. In 1999, as I was finishing the first draft, the conventional wisdom was that the Qurān is patriarchal or, at best, “neutral” toward patriarchy (Wadud 1999), though no one said what they meant by the term itself. It was partly this lack of definitional clarity that I addressed in “Believing Women.” Today, though, many Muslim feminists see their task as separating “patriarchy from Islam’s sacred texts” (Mir-­Hosseini 2015, 36); some

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even agree with me that the kind of authority men claim over women in patriarchies amounts to shirk (a derogation of God’s sovereignty). While such arguments remain marginal, I feel they signify important shifts, no matter how small at the moment. I have kept these changes in mind while revising this book and can only hope that it will continue to be part of the dialogues on how Muslim women can claim certain rights from within the framework of the Qurān’s teachings.

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Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

Many people have supported me during the process of writing and publishing Believing Women and in many different ways. I am indebted to Amina Wadud and John Esposito for their generous reviews of the first manuscript and to Andrea Stanton for her sharp commentaries on the second. My editors at the University of Texas Press—Jim Burr, Zjaleh Hajibashi, Sarah McGavick, and Amanda Frost—saw me through the trials of publishing a manuscript I once thought would never see the light of day; a special thanks to Jim for proposing a revised edition. I am also grateful to Carolyn Russ and Alexis Mills for copyediting the first and revised editions; to Elinor Aishah Holland and Lindsay Starr for their equally stunning covers for both; and to Ali Houissa for the transliterations. Zillah Eisenstein’s critiques of my approach to Western feminisms and Naeem Inayatullah’s provoking questions about key aspects of my argument pushed me toward greater clarity, while Kevin Lacey and Howard Erlich gave helpful feedback on segments of various chapters, as did Rubina Barlas Hydri and Tamina Barlas. My students—especially Brendan Cooper, Elizabeth Hanna, Carrie Kessler, and Rashaand Saas, the intrepid group that took my first tutorial on sexual/textual politics in Islam—helped me to develop my ideas by asking maddeningly difficult questions and by reading and writing creatively themselves. I also want to thank the Provost’s Office and the Center for Faculty Excellence at Ithaca College for having given me several grants during the years it took to research and (re)write this book. I am deeply grateful to both sides of my family—Barlas and Mejias— and to my son, Demir Mikail, for loving and supporting me during the many years of working on this book. Sadly, my father, Iqbal, passed away before the first edition was published, and my mother, Anwar, as well as my father-­in-­law, Manuel de Jesus Mejia Zepeda, predeceased this one’s release. As I continue to reflect on their lives and deaths, I draw continuing strength from my father’s unfailing, unshakable, and—to others— immoderate pride in my achievements which allowed me to confront life’s

Ack n owledg m en ts

challenges without pausing to think I was not up to them as a woman. Through her intellectual example and resolute ethical standards, my mother endures as the most profound and abiding presence in my life. Ongoing dialogues with my husband, Ulises Ali, and his discerning critiques of my work allow me to find new meanings in it, while his ability to embrace differences in sameness and to value sameness in differences never ceases to remind me of the possibilities of egalitarian modes of “knowing one another.” Mohammed Arkoun (1994) speaks of “the secret consciences of those who still believe.” Readers will find in this work clear signs of the consciousness of someone who believes, and not so secretly. Indeed, writing this and living with the complexities of having done so have brought me to a fuller appreciation of my faith—in particular, of why Muslims regard the pursuit of knowledge (ilm) as a form of worship (‘ibādah) and why we pray to God to “increase” us in knowledge. If this book augments my readers’ knowledge half as much as writing it has done mine, its purpose will have been well, and doubly, served. January 2001 / January 2018

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Chapter 1

The Qurān and Muslim Women Reading Patriarchy, Reading Liberation ▼

It was not God who wronged them, but they wronged their own souls. The Qurān (30:9 [Ali 1988, 1053]) 1

T

his 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ān, 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ān permit and encourage liberation for women? When I ask whether the Qurān 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 traditional2 patriarchies claim? Alternatively, does the Qurān advocate gender differentiation, dualisms, or inequalities on the basis of sexual (biological) differences between

Believin g Wom en in Isl am

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ān 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ān 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. What is less obvious— given the widespread tendency to blame Islam for oppressing Muslims rather than blaming Muslims for misreading Islam3—is the possibility that we can answer the first set of questions (Is the Qurān a patriarchal or misogynistic text?) in the negative while at the same time answering the second (Can the Qurān be a source for women’s liberation?) in the affirmative. Using an interpretive methodology, or hermeneutics,4 derived from the Qurān, 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),5 I hope to show not only that the Qurān’s episteme is inherently antipatriarchal but that it also allows us to theorize the radical equality of the sexes. (I use the concept of episteme loosely to refer to the Qurān’s foundational claims about the nature of God, human beings, and the universe, which provide the moral/ethical framework for its overall teachings.) This book, then, is as much a critique of sexual/textual6 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 countervoice 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 futures of Muslim women. This is not to say, however, that sexual inequality and discrimination are a function merely of patriarchal readings of Islam, or that one can explain the status of Muslim women “solely in terms of the Qurān and/or other Islamic sources all too often taken out of context” (El-­Sohl and Mabro 1994, 1). As

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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 also 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 have motivated my own engagement with Qurānic hermeneutics and, I believe, renders such an engagement imperative, and even unavoidable, to all projects of Muslim women’s and men’s liberation. Even though a Qurānic hermeneutics cannot, by itself, put an end to patriarchal, authoritarian, and undemocratic regimes and practices, it nonetheless remains crucial for various reasons. First, hermeneutical 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ān 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ān’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 interpretations of religious texts, few question their legitimacy, and fewer still have explored the liberatory aspects of the Qurān’s teachings.7 Yet without doing so, they cannot contest the association, falsely constructed by patriarchal readings of 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ān or accept its patriarchal exegesis unquestioningly. Arguably, though, as numerous scholars have pointed out,

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inequality and discrimination derive not from the teachings of the Qurān but from the secondary religious texts, the tafsīr (Qurānic exegesis) and the ahādith (sing. hadīth) (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 ijtihad8—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ān’s teachings provide Muslims with role models for both women and men. Since different readings of the Qurān (and of other texts) can yield what are for women “fundamentally different Islams,” it becomes crucial for them “to reinvestigate the normative religious texts”9 and even to become specialists in the sacred text, as Fatima Mernissi (1986) urged. Finally, as theorists argue in other contexts, there is “no practice without a theory,”10 and Muslims have yet to derive a theory of equality from the Qurān. 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ān, 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ān 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 this chapter, I explain my arguments regarding the reading of the Qurān; how Muslims read sexual inequality and patriarchy into it; how we can read the Qurān for liberation; my epistemology and methodology; and, finally, the plan of this book. I. Reading the Qurān Those who read Islam as a misogynistic and “uncompromising and overtly paternalistic” religion (Hussain 1994, 118) point both to the Qurān’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ān can be read in patriarchal modes (as privileging males), or that oppressive practices in many Muslim societies often stem from an uncritical adherence to what are assumed to be Islamic norms and

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strictures, or that the images of “the woman” in the Muslim unconscious are indeed misogynistic.11 Nor do I deny that “the enveloping maleness”12 of Muslim religious text engenders grave problems for women, as does the legalization of sexual inequality by classical Muslim law, the Sharīah. Rather, I argue that descriptions of Islam as a religious patriarchy that allegedly has “God on its side”13 confuse the Qurān with a specific reading of it, ignoring that all texts, including the Qurān, can be read in multiple modes, including egalitarian ones. Moreover, patriarchal readings of Islam collapse the Qurān with its exegesis (divine discourse14 with “its earthly realization”);15 God with the languages used to speak about God (the Signified with the signifier); and normative Islam with historical Islam.16 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ān and to recover the egalitarian aspects of the Qurān’s episteme. I do this on the basis of two claims whose substantiation provides the subject matter 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ān, which “has been ripped from its historical, linguistic, literary, and psychological contexts and then been continually recontextualized 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ān 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 extratextual 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ān. I address these issues, which impinge on the power and politics of reading itself, in part 1 of the book. If emphasizing the Qurān’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ān itself. And I do want to make a more specific, if also more controversial, claim (in dialogue with recent Muslim and feminist

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scholarship),17 which is that the Qurān is egalitarian and antipatriarchal. 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ān’s different treatment of women and men with respect to certain issues (marriage, divorce, giving of evidence, and so on) is seen as manifest proof of its anti-­equality stance and its patriarchal nature. I will argue against this view on two grounds: first, 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.18 Second, as my reading will show, the Qurān’s different treatment of women and men is not based in the claims about either sexual difference or sameness that theories of sexual inequality and oppression make. Another difficulty with claiming that the Qurān is egalitarian and antipatriarchal is that some of its teachings, especially those dealing with polygyny and “wife-­beating,” suggest otherwise, as does the fact that the Qurān 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ān’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. But we can only address these types of issues if, in addition to questioning the textual strategies Muslims have used to read the Qurān, we also keep in mind the historical context of its revelation in a seventh-­ century tribal Arab patriarchy, much like the erstwhile Taliban in Afghanistan.19 Contextualizing the Qurān’s teachings (that is, 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ān and also ourselves in relation to it historically. If this line of reasoning suggests that the meanings we derive from, or ascribe to, the Qurān are unfixable,20 or are fixable only in the context of a given historical period or hermeneutical method, it does not mean we can never know the Qurān’s meanings or intent, or that all the meanings we derive from it are equally legitimate. Nor does it mean that the Qurān 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

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by ours. On the contrary, I will contest each of these propositions on the basis both of a hermeneutical argument and by reading (in parts 2 and 3) the Qurān’s teachings on a wide range of issues, extending from the nature of divine self-­disclosure (how God defines God) to the Qurān’s view of prophets, parents, spouses, human creation, moral agency, sex/gender, and sexuality. My reading draws on some interpretive principles the Qurān suggests for its own interpretation, as well as on a comprehensive definition of patriarchy; it is also based in conceptual distinctions that Muslims who read the Qurān as a patriarchal text usually fail to make. Prior to specifying my own approach, however, I will discuss how Muslims and their critics read patriarchy, inequality, and even misogyny into the Qurān. II. Reading Patriarchy They treat men’s oppression As if it were the Wrath Of God! The Qurān (29:10 [Ali, 1031]) 21

Muslims read patriarchy and sexual inequality into the Qurān on the basis of specific verses (āyāt, sing. āyah; literally, “signs of God”) and of the Qurān’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 opposites, a view mirrored in the claim that in Islam the masculine and the feminine principles also are strictly separated. In the readings of conservatives,22 male superiority is both ontological, since the 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.”23 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, quoted in Khan 1983, 21). Not only do biological and mental functions and capacities differentiate the two sexes, argue Maududi and other conservatives, but they also justify a sexual division of labor in which

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women must submit to the man “who is responsible for the maintenance of this system be he her husband, father or brother” (61–62). From a conservative viewpoint, it is clear that “The Book of Nature, the sciences and the philosophers of Europe have emphatically proclaimed that though woman may try her best . . . she cannot be the equal of man in physical and intellectual powers. . . . Her natural functions oblige her to be subjected to man, by which alone she can have any meaningful identity” (Vajidi, quoted in Khan, 129). 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, quoted in Khan, 173). Such misogynistic readings of Islam derive not from the Qurān’s teachings, however, but from attempts by Muslim exegetes and Qurān commentators “to legitimise actual usage of their own day by interpreting it in great detail into the Holy Book.”24 In fact, one can trace changes in Muslim women’s status “through a comparative study of [Qurānic] interpretations such as those of Tabari (d. 923), Zamakhshari (d. 1144), Baydawi (d. 1286) . . . al-­Suyuti (d. 1505),”25 and so on, all of whose works today form part of the Sunni canon.26 This is why we need to examine not just the methods by which Qurānic 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ān are a function of the methods Muslims have used—or have failed to use—to interpret it. In particular, argue critical scholars,27 Muslims have not read the Qurān as both a “complex hermeneutic totality”28 and a “historically situated”29 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ān. With most Muslim exegetes, the basic unit of Qurān study is one or a few verses taken in isolation from the preceding and following verses.” As a result, the Qurān 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ān to itself, thematically.” Even when they do refer to the relationship of two āyāt, contends Wadud (1999, 2), they do so without

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applying any “hermeneutical principle” since a method “for linking similar Qurānic ideas, syntactical structures, principles, or themes together is almost non-­existent.” Not surprisingly, this method has failed to yield a creative synthesis of Qurānic principles30 because it does not recognize the connections between different themes in the Qurān. (As my reading will show, recognizing the Qurān’s textual and thematic holism, and thus the hermeneutic connections between seemingly disparate themes, is absolutely integral to recovering its antipatriarchal episteme.) By ignoring the fact that the Qurān is “a unified document gradually unfolding itself ”31 in time, classical exegetes have also ignored that in the Qurān, content and context possess one another32 such that one cannot grasp the significance of the Qurān’s teachings without considering the contexts of their revelation. If we need to keep in mind the historical contexts of the Qurān’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ānic exegesis but also in law and Islamic/Muslim tradition—is considered by many Muslims to have been produced during the first few centuries of Muslim history. Here it is important to note that what is nominally called “the” Islamic tradition has many, and sometimes contradictory, tendencies within it and is, moreover, “a synthetic rather than a ‘natural’ product, bearing clear signs of selective endorsement,” as al-­Ghazali argued in the twelfth century. In this context, he pointed out that traditions do not pass into the present “unprocessed and unmediated. . . . Instead, someone has to make decisions about which aspects of the past are non-­essential and thus allowed to drop out, and which elements of the present are consistent with the past and thus eligible for admission into the sanctum of tradition” (quoted in Jackson 2002, 20, 24). The reason Muslims seemed not to recognize this fact, according to al-­Ghazali, had less to do with the imitativeness of tradition itself than with “that blindness that condemns people to being led around by others (taqlid)” (Jackson, 88.) The misogyny of this period, known as the Golden Age of Islam and the Middle Ages of Europe,33 is well known, and it was assimilated34 into Islam via the commentaries and super-­commentaries on the Qurān (tafsīr), as well as the narratives detailing the life and praxis of the Prophet (ahādith) (Ahmed 1992; Spellberg 1994; Stowasser 1994). In other words, it was the secondary religious texts that enabled the “textualization of misogyny”35

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in Islam. These texts have come to eclipse the Qurān’s influence in most Muslim societies today,36 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.37 As a result, the cross-­cultural, transnational, and nondenominational ideologies on women and gender in vogue in the Middle Ages have been superimposed on the teachings of the Qurān. However, since we often do not distinguish between texts, cultures, and histories when studying Islam, we end up confusing the Qurān with its tafsīr, and 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ān “happens against a long background of patriarchal precedent”38 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ān and Qurānic 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 despite 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ān,” and both God and the Prophet assumed their “right to speak out and readily responded to their comments.” It is therefore necessary 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ān, 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 was/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). We need to realize that our understanding of the Qurān’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ān

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in liberatory and antipatriarchal 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 [E]njoin Thy people to hold fast By the best in the precepts The Qurān (7:145 [Ali, 383]) 39

Readings of Islam as a religious patriarchy rest on a number of conceptual confusions. The most endemic of these is between the Qurān as revelation (divine discourse) and as text (a discourse fixed in writing40 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 also ignores the Qurān’s warning not to confuse it with its readings (39:18 [Ali, 1241]). It is crucial to make this distinction because there are slippages between the Qurān and its tafsīr, and also within interpretations and translations of the Qurān (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ān itself and what has frequently been read into it presents . . . a serious dilemma.” This disjuncture between the Qurān and its exegesis also explains why many norms and practices that are labeled “Islamic” do not, in fact, derive from the Qurān’s teachings.41 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, 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

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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ān 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 ascribed to the Qurān, including the theme of patriarchy, do not originate in it or have been read into the text in contextually problematic ways. This only becomes clear, though, if we begin by defining patriarchy itself, which readers of the Qurān do not do, including those feminists who condemn Islam as a patriarchy. Even Wadud (1999, 9), who argues that the Qurān is neutral toward “social [and] marital patriarchy,” does not say what she means by the term. This may explain why she seems to be unaware that her own work illustrates the Qurān’s antipatriarchal 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, however, one cannot know that the Qurān’s treatment of these themes undermines the very core of patriarchal ideology. This is why I begin my own reading by defining patriarchy.

Def i ni ng Patr i archy 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 specific mode of rule by fathers42 that, in its religious and traditional forms, assumes a real as well as symbolic continuum between the “Father/fathers”;43 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ān because the Qurān 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 a ruler over his wife and children. Since the Qurān’s teachings are universal, and since father’s rule has reconstituted itself, I also define patriarchy more broadly as a secular 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,

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90).44 Patriarchy thus conceived is based in an ideology that ascribes social/ sexual inequalities to biology; that is, it confuses sexual/biological differences with gender dualisms/inequality (in other words, differences based on sex or biology with inequality based on gender dualisms). This “culturalization of nature and the naturalization of culture”45 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ān’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ān in light of this definition of patriarchy, my aim is to see whether it endorses the concepts of sex/gender differentiation, dualisms, and inequality that are implicit in these claims. While a definition of patriarchy is fundamental to being able to establish the Qurān as an antipatriarchal (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ān’s antipatriarchal episteme has to do with the fact that we have not systematically addressed this question, particularly in light of the Qurān’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ān is not just a hermeneutical failure but also a theological one. After all, readings of scriptures are as likely to be influenced by theological considerations, especially by one’s conceptions of God, as they are by the use of specific methodological criteria. As such, 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. Yet that is how Muslims have, in fact, tended to read the Qurān historically: without making God’s self-­disclosure the theological site from which to read it. The failure to connect God to God’s speech (which has resulted in some extremely objectionable readings of the Qurān) is inexplicable in view of the fact that the organizing principle of Islam, the doctrine of God’s Unity (Tawhīd), stipulates that there is a perfect congruence between God (divine ontology) and God’s speech (divine discourse). To accept this as a truism is not to confuse God with God’s word; it is simply to recognize that,

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as God’s word, the Quran also conveys God’s will and reflects some aspects of God’s being. This is why I believe that an appropriately Islamic theology would locate the hermeneutical and theological keys for interpreting the Qurān in the nature of divine ontology—or, to put it more accurately, in the nature of divine self-­disclosure, since our knowledge of one is contingent on our understanding of the other. This, in any case, is the framework of my own theological hermeneutics.

D ef i ni ng a Qur āni c Her me n e utics Given the unity of divine ontology and divine discourse, I begin my reading of God’s word by connecting it to God. Thus, God’s self-­disclosure is intrinsic to my Qurānic hermeneutics. Here I will examine three aspects of God’s self-­disclosure that I believe have the potential to generate liberatory readings of the Qurān: the principles of divine unity, justness, and incomparability.46 The principle of God’s unity (Tawhīd) 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, Tawhīd 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 partake in God’s rule/sovereignty, or be an extension of it, or comes into conflict with it, can be considered compatible with the doctrine of Tawhīd. 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 men as intermediaries between women and God, they do come into conflict with the essential tenets of the doctrine of Tawhīd and must be rejected as theologically unsound. A reading of the Qurān that suggests even subtle parallels between God and men in their capacity as fathers or husbands must then be rejected as an insufferable heresy. (In later chapters, I show how the doctrine of Tawhīd 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ān), as Toshihiko Izutsu (1959, 152) points out, is “‘to act in such a way as to transgress the

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proper limit and encroach upon the right of some other person.’” Divine justice is thus self-­circumscribed by respect for the rights of humans as moral agents. However, if God never does zulm to anyone, then it follows that God’s speech (the Qurān) also cannot advocate zulm against anyone, at least as an expression of God’s will. To put it simply, if “God by definition, cannot be a misogynist,”47 then it is difficult to see how God’s word would by definition be misogynist or teach misogyny or injustice. Clearly, reasonable people may disagree about what constitutes zulm and also about the proper definition of human rights. However, it is harder to argue that what we ascribe to the Quran we are not also ascribing to God. It is equally hard to claim, at least with any level of honesty, that theories which assert the incomplete humanity of women or justify their physical or moral abuse and degradation do not violate their rights and therefore do not constitute zulm. In this context, it may be argued that by teaching the precept of the inherent inferiority of women and by justifying their subordination to men, patriarchies sanction sexism, misogyny, and violence against them. As such, we can consider patriarchies to be manifest cases of zulm against women, and to the extent this is so, we must be willing to rethink the Qurān’s patriarchal exegesis, which attributes this zulm to God. In fact, as I will argue in later chapters, the Qurān’s teachings challenge patriarchy and sexual inequality in concrete ways, and an exegesis that disregards, minimizes, or fails to recover such teachings cannot be taken to represent the Qurān accurately. What we may, either out of historical habit or expedience, uncritically read as its support for patriarchal theories of male privilege and sexual inequality must then be reexamined. Among the criteria for doing this would be our understanding not only of God, the totality of the Qurān’s teachings, and an ecumenical definition of zulm but also of patriarchy. This seems to me to be imperative to any discussion of the Qurān as a patriarchal or antipatriarchal text since, in the absence of a clear-­cut understanding of what patriarchy is, people are free to make all manner of unsubstantiated claims about it. A third principle of God’s self-­disclosure with both hermeneutical and theological implications is that God is incomparable, hence unrepresentable, especially in anthropomorphic terms. The Qurān’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

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thus to project sexual partisanship onto God.) Not only should we recover the radically liberatory potential of Islam’s rejection of a patriarchalized God, we should also make it the hermeneutical site from which to read the Qurān’s antipatriarchal episteme. (I make this argument more fully in chapter 4.) All three aspects of divine self-­disclosure are much more nuanced and have far richer implications than I have suggested, but even this cursory exploration reveals that the liberatory nature of the Qurān’s episteme inheres in the very nature of God’s being. In other words, it is not only in the Qurān’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ān offers us specific methodological criteria for reading it that emphasize the principles of textual holism, searching for the best meanings, and using analytical reasoning in interpretation. The Qurān’s emphasis on reading it as a textual unity emerges from its warning that “Those who break the Qurān into parts. Them, by thy Lord, We shall question, every one, Of what they used to do” (15:91–93 [Pickthall n.d., 194]). Yusuf Ali (1988) translates this verse (in which God is addressing the Prophet) as: And say: “I am indeed he That warneth openly And without ambiguity,”— (Of just such wrath) As We sent down On those who divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts),— (So also on such) As have made [the] Qurān Into shreds (as they please). Therefore, by the [Rabb],48 We will, of a surety, Call them to account, For all their deeds. The Qurān (15:89–93 [Ali, 653])

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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 [Ali, 314]). The Qurān’s warning against reading it in a decontextualized, selective, and piecemeal way also emerges 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 [Ali, 245]). And they “change the words From their (right) times And places” (5:44 [Ali, 255]). Revelation, the Qurān emphasizes, is of a continuity and is also internally clear and self-­consistent (39:23 [Ali, 1243–44]). The Qurān’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ān also confirms that some meanings, and therefore 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 [Ali, 1241]), clearly indicating that we can derive more than one set of meanings from the Qurān, 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 [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 āyah—especially given the (Sufi) view that each verse in the Qurān can be read in up to 60,000 ways—in light of our idea of a just God and of the Qurān’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ān makes this clear in different contexts. First, as noted, it criticizes readings that are decontextualized and selective. The Qurān’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 [Ali, 123]). Second, the Qurān distinguishes between readings that draw on its foundational (clear) āyāt and those that draw on its allegorical (obscure) āyāt. The Qurān criticizes those who ignore its “basic or fundamental” āyāt, with their “established meaning,” in order to focus on the “allegorical [āyāt], Seeking discord, and searching For its hidden meanings” (3:7 [Ali, 123]). While allegory has crucial didactic functions in the Qurān, it is not

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meant to obscure the Qurān’s meanings, which, says the Qurān, are clear. Third, the Qurān repeatedly states that God does not love wrongdoing and oppression. As I have argued, we can disagree on what constitutes oppression, but reading into the Qurān various forms of zulm as defined by its victims can hardly be considered legitimate. It is thus reasonable to hold that con/textually legitimate readings will cohere with the overall moral objective of the Qurān’s teachings, treat the text as a unity, privilege its clear and foundational āyāt over its allegorical ones, and seek to avoid ambiguity. In the end, of course, a reading of the Qurān is just a reading of the Qurān, no matter how good; it does not approximate the Qurān itself, which may be why the Qurān 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 [Ali, 38]). While this āyah 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ān 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 [Asad 1980, 166]). People not only fabricate false meanings, says the Qurān, but they also project their own desires into Scripture. As one āyah 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 [Ali, 38]). For all these reasons, then, we need to read the Qurān carefully and scrupulously, and without the hubris of believing that we can exhaust its meanings. Finally, the Qurān 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ān easy for them to understand and remember. The Qurān does not suggest, however, that Arabic has any unique or intrinsic merits 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ānic view of Arabic is based in the very clear cultural consciousness that each nation has its own language, and Arabic is the language of the Arabs. In this capacity, it is only one of many languages, and if God chose it, it was not because it is sacred, or even because of its intrinsic value as a language, but simply because God wished to address Arabic-­speaking people.

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Consequently, what seems significant is not so much the language in which the Qurān’s teachings are conveyed but the need for us “to discover” their meanings by exercising our own reason and intellect (Hourani 1985). Ziauddin Sardar (1985, 167) points out that, compared to 260 āyāt 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ān’s polyvalent semiotic universe. The principles found within the Qurān, then, reveal a preference for reading the text as “a cumulative, holistic process”49—that is, as “a whole, a totality.”50 Traditional Muslim views that the Qurān is “its own best interpreter”51 and that we need to “interpret the Qurān by the Qurān”52 are hermeneutic principles implicit in the Qurān itself, which suggests textual holism as the basis of “intrascriptural investigation.”53 However, the Qurān 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, therefore, would be to read the Qurān intratextually, but also with regard to the contexts of its revelation.54 Beyond these broad principles, the Qurān 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, neither does it “forbid the use of such expedients.” In sum, the Qurān 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, quoted 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 texts 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 the noted biblical scholar Hans Frei once put it, “You can revise the text to suit yourself only just so far” (quoted in Wolterstorff, 230). Moreover, even 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, quoted in Carson 1996, 76–77). At the very least, we should be willing to agree that “Theologically speaking, whatever diminishes and

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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”55 into all interpretive processes, I would now like to clarify my methodology.

On Posi ti onal i t y I read the Qurān as a “believing woman”—a Muslimah, to borrow a term from the Qurān that is gaining currency these days. This means 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ān 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ān for my understanding of sexual equality. However, while its concern with equality and rights prefigures modern, Western, and feminist theories, it is grounded in a very different ethics and episteme, 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ān as a feminist text; rather, the use of such terminology shows my own intellectual disposition and biases. It is also from the Qurān and from aspects of Muslim tradition that I draw inspiration for my critical engagement with the text itself. The Qurān’s counsel to believers to use our reason/ing and knowledge to decipher its āyāt opens the way for all believers to engage in critical inquiry. Indeed, a 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ān, which was then in the process of being revealed to him.56 Perhaps she was concerned at the number of āyāt addressed to men, or perhaps she did not take the Qurān’s

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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ān 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ān 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,”57 and that in Islam they have a direct relationship with God that 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. Even though as a woman I ask some questions of the Qurān that a man may not perhaps think of asking, and even though I would like to believe that women may be more likely than men to read the Qurān for liberation (because they may have different stakes in patriarchy and thus also in liberation from it), I do not rule out the possibility that women and men are equally capable of liberatory readings. We may not always share the same idea of liberation, of course, but I consider disagreements to be a function not of sexual but of intellectual and ideological differences. This is not to say 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 recognize that women and men can arrive at a mutually shared discourse of meanings despite 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 is certainly an unstylish view to hold at a time when we are so aware of the phallocratic nature of language and

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its role in constituting gendered subjectivities. However, the very fact that men’s exegesis influences women’s understanding of religion—as well as the fact that language allows for its own contestation—testifies to the autonomy of meanings and language from sex/gender. Moreover, the Qurān also assumes that a shared discourse of meaning and mutual care between women and men 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. 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 both biological essentialism and the crude identitarianism in vogue today.

On h er m eneuti cs I employ the hermeneutical principles the Qurān suggests for its own interpretation (as outlined above) to read the Qurān as text as well as to read behind it and in front of it. When I say I read the Qurān “as text,” I mean that I read it to discover what God may have intended (that is, for authorial intent discourse).58 This means I ascribe intention/ality to the text. And while reading necessarily involves interpretation and I make interpretive choices in reading the text, I also read to uncover what I believe may already be there in the Qurān; that is, I hold some meanings to be intrinsic to it such that anyone can retrieve them if they employ the right method and ask the right questions. This means accepting the possibility that men and women can read in similar ways, even though we may have a stake in reading differently. In contrast to some feminist traditions, I also do not read the Qurān as a dual-­gendered text that has male and female voices in it. For Muslims, the Qurān 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ān’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ān historically have been men, we can certainly hear male voices and masculinist biases in exegesis. Therefore, when I say that I believe the Qurān 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 22

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true; what I am saying is that its teachings challenge the premises of patriarchy in both its traditional and modern forms. Similarly, when I refer to the Qurān’s egalitarian “voice,” I am not referring to female voices in it. I am referring to tendencies in the Qurān that have been submerged or lost because of the patriarchal nature of its exegesis and the gendered nature of human languages. 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 phrase. For instance, the Qurān says God is unrepresentable and forbids using similitude (representations) for God. I thus take the use of the pronoun “He” to be a (bad) linguistic convention and not an ontological claim about God’s being. However, more than querying language, I focus on uncovering the connections between seemingly disparate themes in the Qurān; for example, between the nature of God’s self-­disclosure and the Qurān’s opposition to father-­right/rule as well as to theories of sexual differentiation. Exploring the nature and consequences of such connections by reading the Qurān intratextually is what allows me to recover its anti­ patriarchal episteme. In this context I concentrate not only on what the Qurān 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ān’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ān’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, quoted 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ān was revealed and read, and

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the means by which its teachings came to be overlaid by a patriarchal exegesis (part 1). 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ān’s revelation and teachings, and the second, to distill their “moral-­social” principles so as to make them applicable today. However, as Rahman argues, it is “precisely the systematic working-­out of Islam for the modern context” (85) that has not occurred, even though the Qurān 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 (1999). Parts 2 and 3 of this book are thus my way of reading in front of the text.

On Readi ng What I offer here is both a methodology for reading the Qurān and a holistic and thematically linked interpretation of its teachings. I am not offering my own translation of the Qurān. Of course, to speak of the Qurān in any language other than Arabic is to speak of its translations, and while translating the Qurān raises complex problems,59 it is unavoidable if one wishes to speak of it in a language other than Arabic. Accordingly, I rely primarily on Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation, which Muslims almost universally regard as being the best.60 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ān 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 in English, especially when translators differ in their interpretation of these words. Nevertheless, I hope to show that in all of its translations, even those by men, the Qurān remains a liberatory text. Although my choices of translations, as well as my reading, naturally involve “some kind of modulation or interpretive process”61 such that it is unrealistic to claim objectivity, this does not mean my choices or the

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reading are therefore unsound. The fact that no reading can ever be objective does not necessarily mean it is false; in other words, subjectivity does not rule out the possibility of saying something that is true. As theorists argue with respect to the hermeneutical circle (that is, 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, rather than imposing ourselves on the text, we “unrealize” ourselves in front of it, “receiving from it an enlarged self ” (143). As such, awareness of subjectivity can foster a critical hermeneutical self-­consciousness that can lead to better self-­knowledge and thus to more meaningful engagements with texts, transforming the hermeneutical circle into what D. A. Carson (1996) calls a hermeneutical 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ān, 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. (In passing, I should note that these scholars did not reflect the cultural, ethnic, or geographic diversity of Muslim communities at that time.) Belief in the “theoretical infallibility”62 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 define acceptable and unacceptable modes of reading the Qurān among conservatives. This mind-set, which allows “the burden of decision and discrimination to be taken off [our] shoulders by tradition,”63 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, though, Muslim scholars have begun querying the methods used to read the Qurān, the tafsīr these methods have generated, and the processes by which Muslim tradition itself was constructed,

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opening the way for new scholarship on, and readings of, the Qurān (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ān 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ān in terms of its own “intrinsic sense” and truth claims. At the same time, my work is also new in that I read it in light of some contemporary theories and focus on issues that exegetes generally do not examine—notably, its position on patriarchy and sexual equality. 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ān. Were I not reading the Qurān, I would not need to defend the newness of the insights that I bring to my reading or the reading itself. Yet contemporary interpretations of the Qurān, 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ān’s meanings have been fixed once and for all as immutably patriarchal. As such, 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ān is both unavoidable and justified. It is unavoidable because one always reads in, and from, the present; it is thus 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ān 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ān’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”64 for my work. However, while I draw on both

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Western and/or feminist theories to make many arguments, I do not pretend to offer a synthesis between these theories and the Qurān’s teachings. V. Plan of the Book This edition consists of three parts, each of which engages a different problematic; it therefore lends itself to a nonlinear reading. Those who are new to the subject might benefit from reading it front to back; those who are more familiar with the subjects covered in the first part might want to begin with part 2. Those who have read the first edition and are interested in the new material in this one will find it in parts 2 and 3. Part 1 includes 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ān (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ān’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 thinking on the other. Here I consider how definitions of the canon, and of knowledge itself, have shaped Qurānic 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ān today. Inasmuch as this method displaces divine speech, negates the principle of scriptural poly­semy, inhibits the development of new interpretive paradigms, and closes off the Qurān to new communities of readers (especially women), I question its sacralization as “Islamic.” Part 2 includes chapters 4 and 5. In chapter 4, I examine the nature of divine self-­disclosure in the Qurān, since sexual hierarchies and theories

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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/father/male are misguided because they ignore the Qurān’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ānic narratives of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad, which I interpret as displacing father/male rule in favor of God’s rule and sovereignty. Chapter 5, which was initially published as a paper and which I have edited for this book, contrasts four readings of the story of Abraham’s sacrifice: Ibn al-­‘Arabi’s and mine of the Qurānic account, and Søren Kier­ ke­gaard’s and Jacques Derrida’s of the biblical one. This allows me to draw out the differing lessons of the story for Muslims, as well as the differing conceptions of faith and sacrifice to which the two scriptural narratives have given rise. This broader framing is meant partly to serve as a corrective to my own earlier reading in chapter 4—in particular, the lesson I draw from this celebrated parable about the nature of faith. Part 3 is composed of three chapters. Chapter 6 analyzes the Qurān’s approach to sex/gender and sexuality, and argues that while the Qurān recognizes biological (sexual) differences, it does not espouse a view of sex/ gender differentiation or gender dualisms; that is, the Qurān 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ān 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 two-­sex models on which Western patriarchal thought draws—including institutionalized forms of Judaism and Chris­ tian­ity. My reading shows not only that the Qurān’s teachings have nothing in common with either model but also that the Qurān treats issues of sexual sameness and difference in a totally different way than the two models do. I end by discussing the Qurān’s attitude toward sexuality and show that it does not distinguish between men and women based on their sexual identities. In fact, I argue that the Qurān assumes that women and men 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 7 of the family in the Qurān. Here I consider its position on mothers and fathers and on wives and husbands, and I distinguish it from both (Western) patriarchal and

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feminist thought. Among other things, I demonstrate that the Qurān’s view of mothers and fathers and its definition of parental responsibilities are 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ān’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. Chapter 8 responds to some secular-­/feminist critics of egalitarian readings of the Qurān—that are now part of the corpus of Islamic feminism, including (the first edition of ) “Believing Women” in Islam—some of which also impugn the Qurān’s sacrality and/or authority. Here I focus on Ebrahim Moosa, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Kecia Ali, Raja Rhouni, and Aysha Hidayatullah, whose work evidences a shared intellectual genealogy. I end this work with a postscript in which I consider whether texts are responsible for their own (mis)readings; that is, contrary to what I have argued, are patriarchal readings of the Qurān simply and straightforwardly 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 arguments I make in it, I explain the concepts in the relevant chapters. I therefore hope readers will be willing to bear the burden of patience this necessarily places on them.

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Pa rt I

Texts, Contexts, and Religious Meaning

They change the words From their (right) places And forget a good part Of the Message that was Sent them The Qurān (5:14 [Ali 1988, 250])

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Chapter 2

Texts and Textualities The Qurān, Tafsīr, and Ahādith ▼

T

o understand how Muslims produce religious meaning, and Qurānic exegesis in particular, we need to know something about the primary religious texts of Islam, how they have been read, and their relationships to one another and to social, legal, and state practices as these developed during the first few centuries of Islam, before the door of ijtihād, or critical hermeneutics, was considered closed1 in the fourth/tenth century.2 I begin therefore by examining the nature of texts, textualities, and inter-­and extratextuality in Muslim religious discourse. By “texts” I mean “any discourse fixed by writing”;3 by “textualities,” how a text is read (modes of reading);4 by “intertextuality,” the internal relationships of texts to one another;5 and by “extratextuality,” the social/historical/political contexts in which texts are read. In my discussion I aim first to identify the methodology Muslims have traditionally used to read the Qurān. I then show how this methodology leads to confusing the Qurān with the secondary religious texts, thereby

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marginalizing it in Muslim religious discourse despite its unique status as Islam’s Scripture. Second, in my analysis of textualities, I examine two conceptualizations of the relationship between divine speech and time, the conservative and the critical, and their implications for Qurānic exegesis, taking as an example conservative tafsīr of the verses on “the veil.” Finally, I give an overview of some historical trends in the formation of religious knowledge, method, and meaning as a way to highlight the role of the state and interpretive communities in these processes. In this chapter, I examine the nature of texts (section 1) and textualities (section 2), and in the next chapter, intertextuality and the extratextual contexts of knowledge and canon production and formation. I. Texts At the heart of each of the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is a sacred text or set of texts that its adherents regard as (the embodiment of ) divine discourse. In Islam, this text is the Qurān. Access to its teachings is, however, mediated by other religious (and literary)6 texts—specifically, tafsīr (exegesis) and the ahādith (narratives of the Prophet’s life and praxis, or Sunnah). Access to the Qurān’s teachings is also mediated by customary, state, and legal practices, which is why we need to know the extratextual contexts in which Muslims have read the Qurān. Figure 1 shows the fields of inter-­and extratextuality in Muslim religious discourse.7

Th e Qur ān For Muslims, the Qurān is both the source of truth and the means of realizing it in action;8 it is thus the “quintessential source and language of the faith.”9 While Muslims treat the Qurān as “the methodology of ascent to God” (Taha 1987, 148), it is not a “mere devotional or personal pietistic text” (Rahman 1982, 2). It has had “a practical and political application” from the time of its revelation, since its teachings are concerned with “socioeconomic justice and essential egalitarianism” and are “undoubtedly for action in this world” (19, 14; italics in the original). The Qurān not only provides a “unifying framework”10 for Muslim praxis; it is also the source11 of classical Muslim law (the Sharīah), viewed as the “most decisive expression of Islamic thinking [and the] essential

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Figure 1

nucleus of Islam in general.”12 The Qurān’s importance for women is magnified by the fact that Muslims believe that the legalization of sexual inequality found in the Sharīah is in conformity with the Qurān’s teachings even though the Sharīah as conceived departs from these teachings in significant ways (see chapter 3). Revealed through divine inspiration to the Prophet Muhammad over a twenty-­three-­year period in the seventh century CE in Arabia, first in the city of Mecca and then in Madina,13 the Qurān is the text of the revelation in its original form; hence, it is inimitable. It has 114 su¯rahs (chapters), each consisting of several āyāt (verses or “signs” of God; sing. āyah). In the text, the su¯rahs are generally arranged by length, with the longest first.14 Although this arrangement “does not reflect either chronological or rational, formal criteria,” argues Mohammed Arkoun (1994, 38), it “conceals a profound semiotic order and points up the need to distinguish the types of discourses utilized in the Quran,” of which he discerns five. In the Prophet’s lifetime, the Qurān was memorized by his Companions and had not been compiled in the form of a book at the time of his death in AD 632, a mushaf, or official recension, being completed only under Uthman.15 Although the Qurān refers to itself as the fairest divine discourse sent down as a book,16 it also clarifies that the real, or archetypal, Qurān remains with God, thus rendering problematic, according to Arkoun

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(1994, 36), the confusion of the mushaf with divine speech and the archetypal Qurān.17 Due to this confusion, he says, the “written Quran . . . has become identified with the Quranic discourse or the Quran as it was recited, which is itself the direct emanation of the Archetype of the Book” (36). It is the omnipresence of the mushaf, continues Arkoun, that “has sanctified the written word in the collective consciousness, which in turn has been an effective instrument of power.” As divine discourse,18 the Qurān is inimitable, inviolate, inerrant, and incontrovertible; however, our understanding of it is not, which is why Muslim theology distinguishes between “divine speech and its earthly realization” (van Ess 1996, 189). Figure 2 conveys some sense of this relationship.19 This distinction, which emerged from the doctrine of the uncreatedness of God’s speech, recognizes not only the limitations of human understanding but also the interpretive nature of “sacred writings” (Holm 1994). It thus entertains the possibility that interpreting God’s words means adapting “in varying degrees, [God’s] message” (Abu Layla 1992, 229). As Talal Asad (1993, 236) puts it, “divine texts may be unalterable but the ingenuities of human interpretation are endless.” It is the interpretive process, both imprecise and incomplete, that is open to critique and historicization, not revelation itself. Thus, while Muslims understand revelation within history, because they regard it to be sacred and true, they consider it beyond historicization. Although in some of its formulations this view raises complications for exegesis (see section 2 of this chapter), it is not necessarily contradictory. As theorists argue in other contexts, “in so far as truth is apprehended by persons, it is apprehended within history; yet in so far as it is true, it transcends history” (Smith 1981, 190). As such, belief “in the suprahistoricity of the Quran . . . does not preclude its role as a historical Scripture” (Esack 1993, 126). In fact, “[the Qurānic] phrase ‘every term has a book’ . . . so controversial in both traditional and modern theology,” argues Abdelwahab Bouhdiba (1985, 3), “certainly allows a historicizing understanding of the Word of God.” Yet Muslim tradition, as he points out, firmly rejects this idea. Like other texts, the Qurān is also open to variant readings since each āyah can be interpreted differently. In fact, even the single phrase bismillah ar-­rahman ar-­rahim, which occurs at the beginning of every su¯rah except one, has been rendered in six different ways by six exegetes (Haq 1989). The Prophet’s Companions also are said to have had different understandings of some āyāt, a fact the Prophet is reputed to have known (Rahman 1982, 144). Not only does “[c]ollective human hearing [impose] its own

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Figure 2

necessities of awareness and interpretation”20 on revelation, but as Paul Ricoeur (1981, 109) says of texts in general, “Plurivocity is typical of the text considered as a whole.” Hence, a “key hypothesis of hermeneutical philosophy is that interpretation is an open process which no single vision can conclude” (212). In spite of prior exegetical successes, then, interpretive communities assume by their very practice that “additional discernment is always possible; the activity of discerning the divine discourse is forever incomplete” (Wolterstorff 1995, 185). One reason that a primary sacred text like the Qurān cannot be expected “to deliver a single authoritative usage”21 is the difficulty of reading

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it conclusively. Conclusive readings are made difficult by the fact that there are some āyāt whose meaning is clear (as noted earlier, the Qurān itself refers to its clear āyāt and its allegorical āyāt),22 some whose meaning has been settled but on which persons may hesitate, and some on which there is no consensus.23 Interpretive differences also reflect the fact that a text “can be read differently according to the different conditioning and cultures of authors and readers, not to mention differences in education, prejudice and a vast variety of other areas” (Netton 1996, 132). It is also difficult to generate a conclusive reading because of the “multiplicity and subjectivity of shades of meanings in the original Arabic text” (Taha 1987, 28). (This makes it even more crucial to ask why exegesis relating to women’s rights is considered immutable.) Multiplicity and subjectivity of meanings are a function of the presence in Arabic of natural and artificial homographs (words and phrases with many meanings), as well as of the conflicting etymology of many words that have roots that can mean opposite things. When to such linguistic complexities is added the fact that some āyāt are said to have abrogated others (the theory of naskh),24 it should not be difficult to see why there are variant readings of the Qurān. Polyvalent readings are not unique to the Qurān, of course, and a commitment to polysemy, which “simply states that the literal meaning never exhausts Scripture as a source,”25 is common to all religious traditions. Many Western theorists ascribe variant readings of the Qurān to the need to accommodate the “practical needs of the believers” (Versteegh 1993, 65), copyists’ errors, or attempts by exegetes to “correct” the Qurān’s language (al-­Suyuti, quoted in Haddad 1992, 27). To Muslims, however, the doctrine of the Qurān’s inviolability rules out the possibility that it was altered or is alterable. Instead, they view variant readings as being of “exegetical, rather than textual, origin” (al-­Suyuti, quoted in Brockett 1988, 31); that is, they view the variations as “alternative ways of reading the text” (Versteegh 1993, 79). Thus, Muslims point to the well-­known fact that before the Qurān was written down, “Quran reciters and scholars differed substantially in their readings of certain words, phrases, and even verses” (Ayoub 1984, 2). If it is difficult to “fix” the Qurān’s meanings in Arabic, it is even harder to fix them in its translations, which is why many Muslims generally view “the Quran translated [as] not however the Quran” (Forward 1994, 105). As Ian Netton (1996, 5) warns in this context, there is a “danger, inherent in every translation, of extrapolating from a single surface ‘meaning,’” that ignores the text’s semiotic polyvalence. Moreover, as Toshihiko Izutsu

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(1964, 12) has shown, concepts and words in the Qurān “are closely interdependent and derive their concrete meanings [from the] conceptual system” at work in it; they cannot therefore be “taken separately and considered in themselves apart from the general structure, or Gestalt . . . into which they have been integrated.” Even preexisting key words, he says, acquired very different connotations when employed in the Islamic semantic and conceptual systems, and it is difficult to reflect these systems in translations because of the inability of even “apparently nearest equivalents [to do] full justice to the original words” (Izutsu 1959, 20). As an example, Izutsu (1964, 14) takes the key word Allah, the name of one of the gods in Jāhilī (pre-­Islamic) society, and shows how, by pronouncing Allah to be supreme God not in a hierarchy but absolutely supreme and unique, and other gods false, the Islamic system effected a “drastic and radical change of the whole conceptual system” of the Arabs, thereby also profoundly affecting “the whole structure of the vision of the universe” (15). In addition to the difficulty of finding equivalents for original words, interpreting them “in a variety of different ways” can obscure the “structural unity of individual su¯rahs and of the Quran as a whole” (Robinson 1996, 4). This is because the Qurān’s unity is a function not only of a specific conceptual system but also of an organic relationship between “structure, sound and meaning,” as Neal Robinson argues. To the extent that it is assonance and rhyme that give su¯rahs part of their meaning, and to the extent that both are lost in translations, so too are aspects of meaning itself. Yet the fact that no reading of the Qurān “can be absolutely monolithic” or conclusive should not be cause for concern, argues Rahman (1982, 144). In fact, insisting on “absolute uniformity of interpretation is neither possible nor desirable,” since it is in its ability to yield new meanings to new generations of Muslims that the Qurān remains a living and universal force. Not only have variant readings enriched our understanding of its teachings, but they also reveal tolerant and democratic tendencies in Muslim religious discourse that open up a pluralism of meanings. (If this democratic promise remains unfulfilled due largely to the repressive practices of states, it must not lead us to ignore the liberatory, even subversive, potential of textual pluralism itself.) A pluralism of readings, the multiplicity of interpretive interests, and the Qurān’s own polysemy do not mean, however, that the Qurān itself is variant. What changes, says Wadud (1999, 5), is not the Qurān, but “the capacity and particularity of the understanding and reflection of the

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principles of the text within a community of people.” This is why in Islam, hermeneutics aspires not to erase the distinction between the Qurān and its exegesis, but to bridge it ever more scrupulously. It is on the basis of this distinction that Muslims regard the Qurān as the “primary arbiter” of its own meanings and also criticize the use of “extra-­Quranic sources” for interpreting it, which they believe need “to be subjected to critical scrutiny” (Mir 1993, 218). Such an inquiry is crucial for women since even though exegeses and translations of the Qurān by men are not free of biases, the sexism and misogyny that have found a niche in Islam derive mostly from extra-­Qurānic sources, notably the tafsīr and ahādith, both of which are used to interpret the Qurān.

Tafsīr The necessity for exegesis arose because of the Qurān’s polysemy and the lack of transparency of some āyāt. It also arose because of the need to govern—if not strictly in consonance with the Qurān’s principles, then at least formally in the name of Islam—the increasingly multicultural communities drawn into its fold following its expansion outward from Arabia after the Prophet’s death. The modes of exegesis thus reflected not only the “training, religious affiliation, and interest” of scholars and jurists (Ayoub 1984, 3) but also the political goals and ambitions of the early Muslim states, especially the Umayyad and Abbasid (see chapter 3). Tafsīr means “general elucidation of a verse with the view to discovering its exoteric meaning and application” and is to be distinguished from tawīl, an allegorical-­symbolic explanation of “the general as well as particular meanings of the words of the Quran” (Ayoub 1984, 21), a mode of interpretation most favored by the Sufis. Tawīl assumes that the Qurān has at least two levels of meaning: an apparent meaning (zāhir) and an interior truth (batin) (Taha 1987, 147). Indeed, according to Taha, “the whole of the Quran is of dual meanings.” Muslims also distinguish between tafsīr mathu¯r (interpretation in accordance with ahādith and Sunnah) and tafsīr bi al-­ray (interpretation by means of critical reasoning). In all its forms, however, tafsīr remains an “abstract, theoretical, intellectual” and essentially literary activity (Burton 1993, 269) that is based in, and also enables, “polyvalent” readings of the Qurān (Calder 1993). Initially, argues Mahmoud Ayoub (1984, 3), tafsīr began “as an oral tradition of hadith transmission” founded on the opinions of exegetes.

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Varying opinions acquired legitimacy, he says, because of the “need to make the Quran relevant to every time and situation” (24). However, while the need to deal with diverse social contexts facilitated tafsīr, in time these social contexts came to shape its content; eventually, too, from being viewed as ancillary to the Qurān and as specific to a particular historical context, tafsīr came to be confused with the Qurān and thus also to be given a suprahistorical status. As John Burton (1977, 271) argues, over time “ancient tafsir became itself part of that past actuality now attached to the contents of the Quran, with the consequence that [it] came to be regarded as beyond question or doubt,” thereby bestowing on it “a creative license to participate in the building of the sacred law [Sharīah] of Islam.” As an interpretive activity, tafsīr reflects not only the training, concerns, and religious affiliations of the exegetes but also their “knowledge . . . skills, sensitivity, imagination, even humour [as well as] their literary and sectarian loyalties,” all of which also influenced the relationship between tafsīr and the study of Arabic and disciplines like “law, theology and prophetic narrative” (Calder 1993, 105–6). These disciplines, notes Wadud (1999, xx), generated a literature that “began to play a role so central in Islamic scholarship that it over-­shadowed the text upon which it was originally based.” Not surprisingly, tafsīr also became the peg on which “sectarian and scholastic theologians were able to hang their own doctrines” (Poonawala 1993, 235). The confusion of the Qurān with its tafsīr dates from the classical period, when exegetes, naturally being unaware of “modern textual linguistics and interpretive theory” (Arkoun 1994, 41), assumed a correspondence between the two. For instance, al-­Tabari could “naively introduce each of his commentaries with the formula ‘God says . . .’ postulating implicitly the perfect equation of exegesis with the intended meaning and, of course, with the semantic content of the words in each verse.” As a result, exegesis came to be confused with “the contents of the mushaf, that is to say, with the ‘Quran’ understood as that space where the levels distinguished in figure [3] come together” (37) (see figure 3). According to Arkoun, by a sequence of confusions that are peculiar to both the religious imaginary and the political realm that is inseparable from it, “the values and irreducible functions characteristic of (1) the Archetype of the Book, (2) Qurānic discourse, (3) the Closed Official Corpus and (4) the body of interpretative work were projected into the mushaf ” (37). The Qurān as mushaf thus became enmeshed in a double confusion, with

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Figure 3

divine discourse, on the one hand, and with its own tafsīr, on the other, creating enduring problems for how we understand its teachings. Arguably, however, one could also conceptualize these levels of signification differently than Arkoun does. For instance, it is also possible to think of the relationship between the mushaf and its Archetype in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the Real. In brief, as Ulises Mejias (2013) describes it, Deleuze considers “the ontological building blocks of reality” to be the virtual and the actual, which he describes as existing in a nonhierarchical relationship with one another (83–84); that is, “virtuality does not represent a purer or higher state from which the actual is derived as a by-­ product. The fact is that the virtual could not exist without the actual and vice versa; each owes its existence to the other” (85). One could thus think of “the actual as specific and the virtual as universal . . . one thing’s way of being real is the same as another thing’s way of being real, even when we are talking about two completely different things”; moreover, the “balance of virtual and actual is the same in all things” (85). From such a viewpoint, “Differences in being are conceptual (a result of how we interpret them), not existential.” This is because “being can be said of everything in the same way, all actualities necessarily refer to the same reality, to the same whole” (86). In terms of such an argument, one could consider the Archetype as the virtual, and the mushaf as the actual. Since the two together comprise the Real, it does not matter that they are not the same or that we cannot know the exact nature of their relationship to one another. In this case, there would be no need to try to reconcile the tensions between the Archetype

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that resides with God and the mushaf that resides with us. More importantly, such tensions could not be taken to mean that the mushaf is not God’s word, as some contemporary Muslim scholars have begun to argue (see chapter 8). Then, too, the confusions Arkoun (1994) identifies could also have resulted from the very nature of intertextuality—that is, from the ability of the signifying process to pass from one sign system to another; in Julia Kristeva’s words, the “transposition of one (or several) sign system(s) onto another” (quoted in Netton 1996, 116). This transposition makes reading itself an intertextual exercise, especially of Scriptures that describe “a world in which one does not already live”—as such, getting a sense of “a strange text, of one that is other than one’s own narrative requires intertextual interpretation” (Tilley 1995, 103). That such transpositions between the Qurān and its exegesis were at work is confirmed by “the number of occasions on which what is signalled as Quranic material diverges from the text of the Quran in remarkable and interesting ways” (Hawting 1993, 260). Among the themes introduced into Qurānic material (partly by Jewish and Christian converts to Islam) that diverge from its teachings is the name “Eve” for Adam’s spouse, the assertion that she was created from his rib, and the claim that she brought about the Fall, for which all women were punished by painful childbirth and menstruation. The Muslim denials of “female rationality and female moral responsibility” also derive from “Bible-­related traditions” (Stowasser 1994, 28, 41), as do Muslim depictions of such women figures in the Qurān as the Queen of Sheba26 and Potiphar’s wife, known by the popular name of Zuleikha.27 Conversely, transpositions from the Qurān to other texts are suggested by the fact that the status reserved for the Qurān was extended not only to its tafsīr, the ahādith, and the Prophet’s Sunnah but, eventually, also to Muslim customary practices that were absorbed into narratives about the Prophet’s Sunnah (see chapter 3). As a result, problems arose as early as “the second century of Islam,” when the ahādith (a source of tafsīr), which “had come to be regarded as of equal authority with the [Qurān], contradicted some of its provisions.”28 Al-­Shafi, an influential Arab jurist and founder of one of the four legal schools in Sunni Islam, resolved these tensions by decreeing in favor not of the Qurān, but of the ahādith, and thus of the tafsīr. He did this by making ijmā (consensus, in which the ahādith were said to be based) into a source of Sharīah and interpretive tradition on the grounds that it manifested God’s will. Narratives of the

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Prophet’s life and praxis, reconstructed centuries after his death, thus not only came to provide conceptual access to the Qurān’s teachings—as they well might—but also to be privileged over the Qurān itself. And while al-­ Shafi was able to establish ijmā as a source of law and tradition, he came to his own ruling by means not of consensus but of independent reasoning (ijtihād), against which he then decreed in the interest of protecting religious knowledge in the future.29 By canonizing the ijmā of the classical/medieval period, al-­Shafi’s ruling also canonized the tafsīr (and religious knowledge) produced during this era. Rethinking was deemed innovation, or bid a, and henceforth discouraged by tradition, binding Muslims to the works of about half a dozen men, which, despite their individual merits, were produced during an era known for its sexism and misogyny. More damaging, the doctrine of consensus also legitimized the tendency in religious discourse to elevate some texts (the tafsīr, ahādith) over others (the Qurān), as well as consensus (ijmā) over revelation and critical reasoning (ijtihād). Since the means by which these reversals were brought about were declared closed to further inquiry,30 the choices and sensibilities of medieval jurists, scholars, and exegetes became institutionalized in ways that proved damaging to the pluralism and egalitarianism of the Qurān’s teachings, and also that of Muslim tradition. It therefore becomes important to ask why Muslims continue to believe that communal harmony and unity depend on a set of events and choices that have been long overtaken by time, and that not only discourage new readings of the Qurān but also undercut the doctrine of its plurivocity, a cardinal tenet of Muslim theology from the earliest days of Islam. Classical tafsīr, says Hasan Hanafi (1996), did more to provide insights into its own social, historical, and linguistic contexts than it did into the Qurān. As he points out, most commentaries fail to treat the Qurān as a textual unity or thematically, or they are longitudinal in nature and focus on “accumulating meanings” rather than on developing a holistic exegesis (196). The inconsistency of the tafsīr is a drawback, as is its sheer size: in addition to commentaries on the Qurān, there are commentaries on the commentaries that engage each other more than they do the Qurān. Finally, argues Hanafi, classical tafsīr not only confuses information with knowledge but is also distanced “from the needs of the soul and of present-­ day society” (196). Despite such problems, however, Muslims have made few attempts to clarify the lineage of tafsīr, the processes of its diversification, or the framework within which Islamic reason was exercised. Yet

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these are all crucial for explaining “how the theological, historical, and linguistic postulates of this reasoning have led to confusion about levels of signification in the Quran” (Arkoun 1994, 41). Part of the reason for the Muslim reluctance to critique classical tafsīr is its formidable hold on their consciousness. Muslims view it as an integral element of the process by which a “tradition [was] formed and then embedded in sacred history and religious writing.”31 Therefore, for Muslims, classical tafsīr is not only a commentary on the Qurān; it is also a historical record of the circumstances in which a community, or ummah, and a state claiming to have lawful authority over it emerged and developed. Communal identities are thus inextricably bound up with the role of tafsīr in reconstructing history in ways that allow Muslims to experience psychically the unity they may lack at an existential level.32 The intertextual nature of knowledge construction also means that opening up the tafsīr to inquiry will mean having to open up to similar critique reconstructions of the Prophet’s Sunnah (praxis) by the ahādith, on which classical tafsīr relies for its authority. And opening up the ahādith is risky because its record of the Prophet’s Sunnah is usually confused with his real Sunnah, a confusion that leads to problems in exegesis as well.33

Ahādith The word hadīth (pl. ahādith), meaning “tale” or “communication,” customarily refers to a narrative of the Prophet’s life and practices (Sunnah). These records began to be compiled over a century after his death and were not completed until three hundred or more years later. About six works are taken as canonical by various Muslim sects, and as a corpus they are “part of the official history of Islam and of the literature that established the normative practices of Islamic society” (Ahmed 1992, 47). Structurally, a hadīth has two parts: the silsilah, or chain of narrators (a chain being called a sanad [pl. isnād ]) and a matn, or narrative. Ahādith are classified according to the quality of the isnād (narrators) into three groups: (1) Sahīh, reliable, due to the scrupulousness of their transmitters and the historical authenticity of their content; (2) Hasan, less reliable, due to the “forgetfulness” of some of the narrators; and (3) Da’īf, weak, because they do not fulfill either the criteria of integrity of the narrators or the authenticity of the content. Ahādith are also classified quantitatively, based on the number of isnād, into two groups: (1) Mutawātir, those that have so many

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isnād that fabrication is considered inconceivable, hence their postulated authenticity. Such ahādith, however, are few and there are hardly any on legal issues; and (2) Ahad, those that have only one or a few isnād. Finally, ahādith are divided into three categories on the basis of their matn: those that record the Prophet’s Sunnah amalīya, or praxis; those that recount his Sunnah qawlīyah, or sayings on ethical issues; and those that record his Sunnah al-­taqrīrīyah, or tacit approval of deeds he reputedly knew about.34 Hadīth compilation most clearly demonstrates the relationship between texts (ahādith) and their extratextual contexts (Sunnah, which provides their content and context). While hadīth is an oral report derived from, or ascribed to, the Prophet, the Sunnah is a compendium of practical religious or legal rules regardless of “whether or not there exists an oral tradition for it” (Goldziher 1971, 24). As such, a norm contained in a hadīth is regarded as a Sunnah, but a Sunnah may not have a corresponding hadīth. That is, Sunnah is practice, and hadith, theory; knowledge of both is rooted in trad­ i­tion, hence the power of tradition. While theorists are unclear about the oldest original materials, they view most of the collection as resulting from “the religious, historical and social development of Islam during the first two centuries” (Goldziher, 19). This is why they consider the ahādith “a mirror in which the growth and development of Islam as a way of life and of the larger Islamic community are most truly reflected” (Esposito 1982, 116). Some of the same circumstances that occasioned the tafsīr also generated the ahādith, and in this area, too, the religious and political needs of believers were intertwined. On the one hand, the ahādith served an irreducibly religious function in allowing for the interpretation and historicization of the Qurān (Khalidi 1994). It was also the ahādith that gave some Qurānic teachings specificity (for example, the number and content of daily prayers). The ahādith also reflected a genuine desire to learn about the life of the Prophet (which the Qurān defines as exemplary) and the methods and principles of reasoning he employed so as to be able to follow his example more closely, especially after his death. In fact, the further the Prophet has been distanced in real time from Muslims, the more they have wanted to draw him closer in narrative time through the medium of the ahādith. At the same time, the ahādith also performed a political function in the governing of lands with differing structures and conditions for which the Qurān offered no precedents.35 For instance, the Qurān does not specify the nature of institutions for governance,36 though it challenges modes of rule based on kinship and lineage (the two most common forms of

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governance to which Muslims eventually reverted after the Prophet’s death). Nor is there a church structure or a priestly class in Islam. Thus, jurists, exegetes, and political rulers came to decide how best to govern people in keeping with their understanding of Islam. Since the Prophet’s words “carried an ontological guarantee” (Arkoun 1994, 45), recourse to them through the ahādith became critical both to debates about governance and to settling competing historical and legal claims. Competition for the “control of the tradition, itself a conditioning factor for the legitimacy of caliphal authority” (45), thus became imminent, and its objective was leadership of the community. (It is this struggle that explains variations in works that are considered canonical by different Muslim sects, says Arkoun.) The very political schisms that gave rise to conflicts, then, were also conducive for the growth of the ahādith, conceived of as a way to “stabilize a social structure consisting of the most diverse elements” (Walther 1981, 23). Significantly, scholars and political rulers tried to achieve this goal not by imposing on the people a uniform or monolithic reading of Islam or the Prophet’s Sunnah, but by incorporating into the rubric of Islam existing ideas, discourses, and practices, including some that were in tension with, and even contradicted, the Qurān’s teachings. The ahādith and tafsīr made possible the textual and religious eclecticism necessary for accommodating cultural pluralism, and when conflicts arose between their authority and that of the Qurān, scholars like al-­Shafi resolved them in favor of the ahādith and tafsīr. An outcome of this strategy, so far as women are concerned, was that interpretations of the Qurān’s “women parables” were formulated in keeping “with existing social norms and values,” as Barbara Stowasser (1994, 23) has shown; as she says, Muslim “scholars’ consensus, of need, embraced and canonized preexisting traditions in scripturalist language.” Even the Sharīah was formulated not by adhering strictly to the Qurān or by imposing a uniform legal code on diverse cultures, but by absorbing into the principles of jurisprudence (fiqh) doctrines on which there was communal accord but which were sometimes irreconcilable with the Qurān’s precepts. In effect, compliance with Muslim rule was acquired hegemonically; that is, not through force but through a reliance on both coercion and consensus.37 If the liberality of this embrace of Others speaks to the openness and pluralism of Muslim tradition in its early years, it also disguises the fact that for women this was a “repressive pluralism.”38 There already was a theological-­legal paradigm in place based on the idea of sexual inequality,

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and it was not very conducive to change. Indeed, women’s position “in law and society formed part of the traditional structures and coherences that firmly underlay the medieval Muslim worldview and provided for its trans­ regional solidarities” (Stowasser 1994, 7). The very pluralism of tradition worked against women’s interests as “ideas and customs of the earlier civilization penetrated more deeply” into Sharīah “by being formulated as hadith” (von Grunebaum 1976, 25). Many of these ideas and customs, which were associated with Arab and Mediterranean cultures as well as with Judaism and Christianity, embodied a deep-­seated misogyny that became part of the Islamic discourses on women (Ahmed 1992). In particular, “Bible-­ related traditions, including their symbolic images of the female’s defective nature, were seamlessly integrated into an Islamic framework” (Stowasser 1994, 23); thus, it was the ahādith that introduced into Islam images of women as “morally and religiously defective,” “evil temptresses, the greatest Fitna [temptation] for men,” “unclean over and above menstruation,” “the larger part of the inhabitants of Hell, because of their unfaithfulness and ingratitude toward their husbands,” and as having “weaker intellectual powers,” therefore being unfit for political rule (32). Ironically, the legacy of the Prophet, a man renowned for his equitable treatment of women, was evoked by those who claimed to follow him the most closely, the Ahl-­i-­ Sunnah (followers of the Prophet’s praxis), on behalf of themes that cannot be inferred either from the Qurān’s teachings or from the Prophet’s treatment of women (see chapter 4). It is not just the anti-­woman content of the ahādith that is troubling; it is also the fact that many misogynist ahādith were introduced into the so-­ called “Official Corpus” in the fifth/eleventh century, a full hundred years after its alleged closure. Yet it is these ahādith, embodying the “prevalent medieval Islamic model of women as dangerous and destructive to political order” (Spellberg 1994, 143), that continue to shape present-­day attitudes toward women. As Stowasser (1994, 6) argues, “Until fairly recently, modern [Muslim] conservatism continued to evoke the medieval theme of women’s innate physical and mental deficiency as proof of the justice of [its] paradigm.” The development of the ahādith along misogynistic lines is also ironic in that, as Ahmed (1992, 73) points out, Islam is the only major living religion to include women’s accounts in its central religious texts. Women’s testimony has also been crucial to the correct reading of the Qurān, especially the testimony of Ayesha, the Prophet’s wife, who, the Sunni Muslims note, contributed more ahādith than his cousin and

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son-­in-­law, Ali, the fourth Caliph. In fact, contends Mernissi (1996, 93), Ayesha’s ahādith transmission accounts for “15 percent of the bases of the Sharia.” One of the six volumes compiled by Ibn Hanbal is ascribed to women. (Women’s participation in communal life is also manifest from the fact that the Prophet had over 1,500 women as disciples according to Mernissi.) And even though ahādith transmission “had to do with the centrality of memory as the essential component in the process” (Spellberg 1994, 57), many Muslims continue to view women’s memory as defective because of their misreading of one āyah (see Wadud 1999 for an explanation of this āyah on evidence). Finally, it is ironic that even though there are only about six misogynistic ahādith accepted as sahīh (reliable) out of a collection of 70,000, it is these six that men trot out when they want to argue against sexual equality, while perversely ignoring dozens of positive ahādith. Among the latter are ahādith that emphasize women’s full humanity; counsel husbands to deal kindly and justly with their wives; confirm the right of women to acquire knowledge; elevate mothers over fathers; proclaim that women will be in heaven, ahead even of the Prophet; record women’s attendance at prayers in the mosque during the Prophet’s lifetime, including an incident where a girl played in front of him as he led the prayer; affirm that many women (including some from the Prophet’s family) went unveiled in the later years of Islam; and record that the Prophet accepted the evidence of one woman over that of a man (Mernissi 1994; Siddique 1990). When Muslims do refer to these ahādith, they do so to emphasize Islam’s egalitarianism, but they rarely question why the ahādith have been erased so wholly from communal memory as to preclude the possibility of evolving a counter­heg­ e­monic discourse on sexual equality based on them. The lack of importance attached to the positive ahādith is, I believe, a function both of Muslim history and historical memory—in particular, “the tendency of public” and religious discourse in Muslim states “to make some forms of experience readily available to consciousness while ignoring or suppressing others.”39 Both functions derive in part from the way in which religious knowledge and political/state power were configured in Muslim societies from the earliest days of their history. Thus, while the tafsīr, the ahādith, and the Sharīah have allowed states to legitimize their own practices, it is equally true that the state also influenced the development of the tafsīr, ahādith, and Sharīah along conservative and patriarchal lines. Of the early stages of the relationship between state/political power

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and religious ilm (knowledge), scholars note that when opponents of the Umayyads advanced the theory of resistance to rulers, it was “the pious theologians with their hadith” who removed “religious scruples” against rebellion by advocating the principle of obedience, even to corrupt rulers (Goldziher 1971, 93). The ahādith were also used in the service of more “trivial purposes,” such as altering the Khutba (the address at the Friday congregational prayer) so as to “divest it of its ancient democratic character” (49–50). Toward rather different political ends, but in much the same way, exegetes also brought the ahādith to bear on the Shii-­Sunni conflict, with the Shii claiming that the Prophet had backed Ali’s claim to the caliphate, and the Sunnis that he had condemned Ali’s father to hell. As Ali puts it: The vast flood of tradition soon formed a chaotic sea. Truth, error, fact and fable mingled together in an undistinguishable confusion. Every religious, social, and political system was defended when necessary, to please a Khalif or an Ameer [state ruler] to serve his purpose, by an appeal to some oral tradition. The name of Mohammad was abused to support all manner of lies and absurdities or to satisfy the passion, caprice, or arbitrary will of the despots. (quoted in Hassan 1999, 338)

Although the ahādith “are closely linked with the political and social circumstances of the time and grew out of them” (Goldziher 1971, 121), this does not mean that state rulers and religious scholars during the early years welcomed the use of religion for political ends. The first four caliphs and some of the Prophet’s Companions are said to have discouraged the prodigal reporting of ahādith because they realized “the danger of contradictions and inconsistencies” (Junyboll 1969, 5). Despite such opposition, ahādith were “eagerly invented, collected, and transmitted by the early Muslims, and later on the process developed into an academic discipline [with] thousands of people [being] engaged in it” (Bellamy 1979, 25). In view of the vast numbers of persons occupied in inventing traditions, by the time al-­Bukhari (whose collection is regarded as sahīh) began his compilation, he had “reputedly accumulated 600,000” ahādith (Peters 1994, 222). Inevitably, “Every stream and counter-­stream of thought in Islam [found] expression in the form of a hadith” (Goldziher 1971, 126). Thus, there is a hadīth on virtually every topic, even an anti-­hadīth hadīth! Many “contain a very wide range of views, some of which are even contradictory” ­(Walther 1981, 22); many incorporate pre-­Islamic (Jāhilī) concepts,

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reflected in the “conflicting utterances attributed to the Prophet or to his Companions” (Kister 1988, 3). Some exhibit traces not only of Jewish and Christian thought but also of Greek, Zoroastrian, Sabian, and Indian ideas, and many ascribe to the Prophet aphorisms that contradict the Qurān’s teachings (al-­Alousi 1985; Rahman 1965). Eventually, hadīth compilers themselves reacted to forgeries by investigating the character of the narrators “on whom the claim of authenticity for each hadith was based” (Goldziher 1971, 134). They also began to focus on the inner consistency of the isnād to see, for example, if it was chronologically possible for two narrators to have shared information with one another. While they did uncover many forgeries, they were able to exclude only some of the most egregious because of their view that if the isnād was sound, so too was the matn. As Ignaz Goldziher puts it, one could not say that “because the matn contains a logical or historical absurdity I doubt the correctness of the isnad ” (141). (Of course, such an objection would also amount to confusing the veracity of the chain of transmitters with the capacity for correct remembering.) As a result of focusing on the narrator’s integrity rather than on the historical consistency of the narrative, critics let pass “even the loudest anachronisms provided that the isnad [was] correct” (145). Moreover, since what was disparaged was not the invention of tradition, but invention for the wrong reasons, “communal sentiment differentiated between various grades in the ethical judgment of the invention of traditions accepting as bona fide those ahādith that were invented ‘for good ends’” (147). Indeed, it was thought that any moral maxim could be ascribed to the Prophet, whatever its accuracy (Rahman 1965, 40). Thus, in spite of knowledge about “the existence of a great body of forged ‘traditions,’ hadith grew into a valid source or ‘root’” of Muslim law (Levy 1962, 172). The “canonical authority” of the ahādith, including those of the Sahīhs, has less, then, to do with the accuracy of their content (which has been subjected to criticism from the earliest times) than with “the unanimous collective consciousness of the Islamic community . . . which elevated these works to the heights which they have attained” (Goldziher 1971, 236). Scholars have explained “tendentiousness” in ahādith with reference to various factors, including the aspiration of “the pious condemned to live in an age of social and moral decay . . . to locate precedents for their own desires . . . in a setting that would not be doubted or gainsaid” (von Grunebaum 1976, 156). They also have explained it in terms of the assumed desirability of investing new ideas with the Prophet’s authority. However, no

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matter how commendable their intent, the ahādith represent “not so much history-­writing [as] history-­making” (Rahman 1965, 47); or, as Denise Spellberg (1994, 14) says of tafsīr, a “politically inspired reshaping of the past” in which the real and imaginary became fused. This is why many Muslims today favor undertaking a critique of ahādith as a way to remove “a big mental block [and to] promote fresh thinking about Islam.” However, as they well recognize, the “greatest sensitivity surrounds the Hadith, although it is generally accepted that, except for the Quran, all else is liable to the corrupting hand of history” (Rahman 1982, 147). Despite resistance to such an exercise by conservatives, debates have emerged in states like Egypt and Pakistan about the grounds on which to rethink the ahādith. One concern is the long time it took to transcribe them; that is, the objection has to do with the role of memory, even the famous memory of the Arabs, which, it is held, could not have transmitted “so much material for so long a time without making mistakes or suffering lapses.”40 Another concern has to do with the reliability of the narratives, as well as of narrators like Abu Huraira, the “‘Achilles’ heel’ of the tradition literature,” who relayed most of the misogynistic ahādith, and finally, the influence of Isrā’īlīyāt, or Jewish traditions, on many ahādith.41 Notwithstanding such problems, few reformists advocate the whole­ scale rejection of ahādith since that would result also in abandoning the Sunnah, which believing Muslims would not want to do. Instead, scholars like Muhammad Abduh suggest ascribing only the Qurān and “a small part of the sunna amaliya [the Prophet’s actions]” to the Sunnah, which means keeping only some ahādith.42 Similarly, Rahman (1965) wants to limit the ahādith to the Prophet’s Sunnah as it is understood by critical scholars; he has called for a “historical-­critical” approach to the ahādith that can bring out “their true functional significance in historical context” (78). Indeed, says Rahman, since “God speaks and the Prophet acts in . . . a given historical context,” and since what gives Qurānic teachings their coherence “is the actual life of the Prophet and the milieu in which he moved,” Muslims must study not just the ahādith but also revelation and the Sunnah historically (19). As he says, “If it is historically true, then it is fraught with meaning for us now, and, indeed, for ever” (177; italics in the original). Hence, by refusing to take an historical approach to the ahādith, Muslims are ruling out this possibility and propagating a “thousand-­year-­ old sacred folly” (152). However, as Arkoun argues, it is “always impossible to think the historicity of the Quran, of the hadith, of the Sharia, since one

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would be touching on the foundations of actual powers” (quoted in Watt 1988, 1). Not only would one be touching on the foundations of real powers, but one would also be opening up to question the framework within which “Islamic” reason was defined and exercised historically. I make this point now by analyzing the nature of textualities in Islam. II. Textualities: Texts, History, and Method Despite the inherently interpretive nature of reading, argues Ahmed (1992, 94), the fact that “its central texts do embody acts of interpretation is precisely what orthodoxy is most concerned to conceal and erase” from Muslim consciousness. And it is precisely in the nature of this interpretive process, in the methods that generate Qurānic exegesis, that we can find reasons for why some readings of the Qurān are unfavorable to women. A common practice that yields unfavorable readings is the tendency to generalize the specific, argues Wadud (1999). Some “of the greatest restrictions on women causing them much harm,” she says, result from “interpreting Quranic solutions for particular problems as if they were universal principles” (99). The reluctance to distinguish the universal from the particular within the Qurān stems, I believe, from how exegetes theorize the relationship between revelation (sacred/universal) and its human interpretations (specific/historical). Indeed, at the heart of textualities in Islam is the challenge of how best to define and delimit the relationship between the universal (God, revelation) and the particular (the specificity of our lives, our historicized and limited understanding of divine discourse). This is particularly true of Qurānic exegesis and the framework within which “Islamic reason” has been exercised historically. Here I examine two views of this relationship, the conservative and the critical, with the intent of exploring the exegetical methods they generate and the implications of these methods for Qurānic exegesis.

Co n s ervat i ve Th eor i es: Gener alizin g the Pa rticul a r The tendency to generalize the particular is associated mainly with conservatives, but it arises in a doctrine all believing Muslims accept: the Qurān’s universalism—that is, the belief that the Qurān, as the embodiment of divine speech, is universal, hence relevant to all times and places, not just to the time or place of its revelation. Although all believing Muslims accept

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this doctrine, they define and defend it rather differently. Conservatives theorize the Qurān’s universalism (transhistoricity) by dehistoricizing the Qurān itself and/or by viewing its teachings ahistorically. This is because they believe that historicizing the Qurān’s contexts means also historicizing its contents, thereby undermining its sacred and universal character. In this view, time becomes either incidental or irrelevant to explaining or understanding the Qurān, which is why conservatives often do not contextualize its teachings. On the other hand, conservatives draw on a view of time-­as-­history to defend the theory of naskh (the view that some Qurānic āyāt abrogate others), thereby confirming the historicity of the Qurān’s teachings. The history-­as-­sacred model is also pivotal to the conservatives’ defense of classical exegesis on which they draw for their own interpretive authority and practices. Thus, what renders classical exegesis, and the religious knowledge produced by early Muslim scholars, sacrosanct to conservatives is their belief that these scholars were able to replicate the Prophet’s own methodology because of their proximity in real time to him and to the first Muslim community. Time thus becomes integral to their advocacy of a specific communal model, and the passage of time signals a “retreat, a gradual moving away from the original Model” (Bouhdiba 1985, 4). In this way, they are led back to the very historicity they reject, but by a different route. (This view of time-­as-­decay borrows from biblical temporalizations of the rift between God and humans represented by the doctrine of the Fall, which epitomizes the moment of human rupture with God; time-­as-­ history then represents alienation and degeneration.43 However, as I argue in chapter 6, Islam does not espouse the idea of the Fall or of a rupture between God and humans, making conservative views of time incompatible with the Qurān’s teachings.) This is why I call the conservative position the universalizing, and even sacralizing, of the particular. In the rest of this section, I clarify how and why they come to this position, and its implications for their exegesis of the Qurān. The conservative position originates in a distinctive view of the relationship between divine speech and time. Specifically, it arises in the idea that since time is created, viewing divine discourse as occurring in time also means viewing it as being created; however, since God is not created, God’s speech (which they regard as an attribute)44 cannot be created. This view extends into the claim that the Qurān is uncreated (outside time, hence

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history),45 which then explains why conservatives believe that time and history are irrelevant or incidental to (understanding) its teachings. Thus, while conservatives believe that revelation occurred on specific occasions, they refer to such occasions as azbāb al-­nuzul—or occasions of revelation, and not occasions for revelation—since the latter suggests a connection between revelation and its spatiotemporal contexts, which they reject. In their view, God speaks in time, but God’s speech exists outside time, in timeless time and in contextless space, implying that the contexts of this speech/revelation are immaterial to its contents. This view has its (theo)logical parallel in a view of “the Quran’s noncontextual eternity” (Stowasser 1994, 123); that is, the idea that the Qurān’s contents and contexts are coincidental. Hence the conservative belief that contextualizing one will undermine the other’s universality. Conservatives (and the classical tafsīr on which they draw) thus focus on textual/logical time (sequence of words and meanings) within the Qurān, rather than the Qurān as a totality revealed over time. Insofar as this method deemphasizes the contexts of the Qurān’s revelation, and thus of many of its teachings, it also fails to distinguish the general from the specific within the Qurān, generating the restrictive readings that Wadud refers to, as I illustrate below. If conservatives rely on a view of sacred time to interpret God’s speech, they rely on a view of secular (historical) time to elevate some Qurānic āyāt over others and also to declare the Prophet’s community paradigmatic. Ignoring the doctrine of the Qurān’s universalism and transhistoricity, which they themselves profess, conservatives want the text to adhere to the contexts and “unicultural perspective” of the Prophet’s community, a view that “severely limits its application and contradicts the stated universal purpose of the Book itself ” (Wadud 1999, 6). Moreover, instead of conceptualizing the Qurān’s universalism in terms of its ability to be read anew by each new generation of Muslims in every historical period (recontextualized), conservatives canonize readings of it generated over a thousand years ago in the name of sacred history and historical precedent (as represented by classical tafsīr, the ahādith, and ijmā). They thus end up with a historical defense of the sacred/universal even as they refuse to accept (at least, formally) a historicizing understanding of the sacred/universal. It thus follows that conservatives think Muslim history should strive to recreate and reproduce the model of the first community. They expect Muslim tradition to enable and ensure this process of replication by adhering

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to and protecting the canon and by avoiding innovation. To look back in time/history, then, is to look forward to a redemptive future (hence the criticism directed against conservatives that they want to regress in time). However, looking back in time in an attempt to revive or reproduce the practices of the first Muslim community amounts to sacralizing and universalizing both the community and its practices. From a view of revelation as non-­historical and eternal, conservatives progress to a view of the first Muslim community and its practices as also non-­historical and eternal. (Eventually this view culminates in regarding their own interpretative practices as non-­historical and eternal, and in conflating these with revelation itself; see chapter 3.) Such a view of divine discourse and its relationship to time engenders specific textual/reading practices. The most obvious is that despite their familiarity with the occasions of the revelation of specific āyāt, conservatives usually do not read behind the Qurān in order to contextualize its teachings. Nor, for that matter, do they read in front of the Qurān in the sense of recontextualizing its teachings in light of the present historical needs of Muslims themselves. Indeed, by refusing to contextualize the Qurān, they also render the process of its recontextualization problematic since “one cannot proceed to the abidingness of the Quran, in word and meaning, unless one intelligently proceeds from its historical ground and circumstance” (Cragg 1994, 114). Not only do conservatives not follow this method, they also want Muslims to read the Qurān as the first Muslims are said to have read it. Since they claim to do so themselves, they view their own reading practices as privileged over those of others and feel they should be binding on all Muslims. This overview, though insufficiently attentive to the theological and philosophical complexities of the conservative position, is meant only to illustrate my claim that what leads them to downplay the significance of the spatiotemporal contexts of the Qurān’s teachings, and thus to universalize the particular, is a specific view of time and revelation and the relationship between them. This results in readings of the Qurān that are restrictive for women, a point I illustrate below by examining conservative interpretations of the Qurān’s teachings on “the veil.” (I use quotes since the words veil and hijāb do not occur in the Qurān in relation to women’s dress.) Essentially, there are two sets of āyāt on the basis of which conservatives legitimize a generalized model of veiling for all Muslim women:

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O Prophet! Tell Thy wives and daughters, And the believing women, That they should cast Their [jilbāb] over Their persons (when abroad): That is most convenient, That they should be known (As such) and not molested . . . Truly, if the Hypocrites, And those in whose hearts is a disease . . . Desist not, We shall certainly Stir thee up against them. The Qurān (33:59–60 [Ali, 1126–27])

And, Say to the believing men That they should lower Their gaze and guard Their modesty: that will make For greater purity for them: . . . And say to the believing women That they should lower Their gaze and guard Their modesty; that they Should not display their Beauty and ornaments except What (must ordinarily) appear Thereof; that they should Draw their [khumu¯r] over Their bosoms and not display Their beauty except to . . .46 The Qurān (24:30–31 [Ali, 904–5)

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Conservatives read these āyāt as giving Muslim men the right to force women to don everything from the hijāb (a head veil that leaves the face uncovered) to the burqa (a head-­to-­toe shroud that hides even the feet; some models even mandate wearing gloves so as to hide the hands). They justify such forms of veiling on the grounds that women’s bodies are pudendal, hence sexually corrupting to those who see them; it is thus necessary to shield Muslim men from viewing women’s bodies by concealing them. This claim draws on classical exegesis, in which such a view of women’s bodies developed only gradually. Whereas al-­Tabari (d. 923 CE) held that both women and men could show those parts of the body that were not pudendal, al-­Baydawi (d. 1285 CE) ruled that the entire body of a free woman was pudendal,47 the gaze itself being a “messenger of fornication.” By the seventeenth century, al-­Khafafi had decreed “even face and hands” pudendal (quoted in Stowasser 1984, 27). In time, such claims led not only to forms of veiling that involved covering the head, face, hands, and feet but also to domestic segregation. While none of the ideas espoused by these exegetes about female bodies derives from the Qurān’s teachings (see chapter 6), the fact that conservatives continue to cling to them demonstrates their tendency to sacralize works by early Muslim commentators and to universalize what in the Qurān can be shown to be specific. Thus, I believe there are two models of the notion of the veil in the Qurān—one specific and the other general—and the first set of āyāt suggests the specific model, and the second, the general. (I consider the latter in chapter 6.) However, not only do conservatives not distinguish between the two sets of āyāt—and thus between the two forms of “veiling”—but by generalizing and dehistoricizing the first set of āyāt, they also subvert their openly stated intent and purpose. In this context it is important to note, first, that both sets of āyāt are addressed only to the Prophet; that is, they are not a universal mandate for all Muslim men to force women to comply with them. As I argue in later chapters, not only can one not force moral praxis upon a person— as the Qurān (2:256 [Ali, 103]) says, “Let there be no compulsion in religion”—but also no one, not even the Prophet, was given the right to force his wives to comply with any of the Qurān’s injunctions. Second, and more to the point, the form, purpose, and content of “the veil” in these two āyāt is not the same, and its function is also completely different from the one suggested by conservatives. To begin with, the Qurān uses the words jilbāb (cloak) and khumür (shawl), both of which, in ordinary 58

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usage, cover the bosom (juyu¯b) and neck, not the face, head, hands, or feet. The Qurān does not mandate such a form of veiling in any āyāt. Women prayed unveiled in mosques until the third/ninth century, and they perform the Haj, the holiest ritual in Islam, with faces uncovered. Even more significantly, the purposes of the covering in these two sets of āyāt are different. In the first set, the jilbāb is meant not to hide free Muslim women from Muslim men but to render them visible, hence recognizable, by Jāhilī men as a way to protect the women. This form of “recognition/protection” took its meaning from the social structure of a slave-­owning society in which sexual abuse, especially of slaves, was rampant.48 While odious, such practices were not specific to the Arabs, nor were they aberrant. As some feminists have noted, in ancient societies women in the public arena were considered to be prostitutes; in such societies, therefore, the law of the veil distinguished “which women were under male protection and which were fair game” (Lerner, quoted in Ahmed 1992, 15). In mandating the jilbāb, then, the Qurān explicitly connects it to a slave-­owning society in which sexual abuse by non-­Muslim men was normative, and its purpose was to distinguish free, believing women from slaves, who were presumed by Jāhilī men to be nonbelievers and thus fair game. Therefore, only in a slave-­ owning Jāhilī society does the jilbāb signify sexual nonavailability, and only if Jāhilī men were willing to invest it with such a meaning. Consequently, even though worn by Muslim women, the jilbāb served as a marker of Jāhilī male sexual promiscuity and abuse at a time when women had no legal recourse against such abuse and had to rely on themselves for their own protection. Further, as the āyāt clearly state, at the time of their revelation some Jāhilī men were involved in a campaign of sedition against the Muslims (which included an attempt to slander the Prophet’s wife Ayesha by impugning her integrity).49 Thus, Muslim women had a double reason to fear abuse at the hands of non-­Muslim men. Finally, neither this set of āyāt nor the second, as my reading in chapter 6 shows, frames the issue of veiling in terms of women’s sexually corrupt/ing bodies or nature. Thus, the Qurān’s treatment of the public and private display of the human body, male and female, is not premised on a view (shared also by some Jews and Christians) of the body itself as corrupt and corrupting. Conservative exegesis of these āyāt, however, inverts their intent inasmuch as the exegesis displaces their focus from the sexual misconduct of Jāhilī men to the bodies of female believers, and its intent from the need to protect Muslim women from Jāhilī men to the need to shield them

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from Muslim men or, alternatively, to shield the latter from viewing potentially corrupt/ing female bodies. These reversals indicate that conservatives accept Jāhilī views of not only a dangerous and depraved female nature but also of an aberrant male sexuality that can only be kept in check by “disappearing” women from view—themes that are missing from the Qurān itself. Even the second set of āyāt—which generalizes the “veil” or, to be more precise, mandates the covering of private parts by both the sexes—is not based in such assumptions. In fact, as these āyāt make clear, the “veil” is not so much a piece of clothing as it is a sexually moral and modest praxis on the part of both the sexes in contrast to “their allegedly flaunting manners in the Jahiliya” (Levy 1962, 195). People who regard the veil (and polygyny) as proof that for a woman “there is only slavery, and know it well that she cannot be emancipated from this bondage,”50 or who believe that the veil is the means to guard women’s sexual chastity in a Muslim society or, conversely, to keep Muslim men at bay—in other words, who view the veil as the hallmark of an Islamic society—ignore the Qurānic link between the jilbāb and Jāhilī society in one set of āyāt, and its definition of sexual modesty in the other, which extends to both women and men. Hence, Muslim men who feel they have the right to assault or kill unveiled women in some so-­called Islamic societies are living by Jāhilī precepts, not by Qurānic ethics, which enjoin modesty and restraint on both sexes. Indeed, it is remarkable that women should have to fend off sexual abuse in a society that claims to be Islamic, given that the rule of Islam, by ordaining sexual modesty for men and women, runs counter to the rule of the veil, brought on by Jāhilī male promiscuity. Yet the Islamization of the veil has made it synonymous with the rule of Islam today. I do not ignore the fact that the meanings of the veil have become so overdetermined that one cannot speak of it in any simple way; nor do I believe that unveiling women liberates them. Rather, I am disturbed by the fact that the manner in which the issue of veiling is being framed misrepresents the Qurān’s purpose in articulating a specific dress code. If the veil’s persistence in its most un-­Qurānic forms (the covering of the face, hands, and feet) in some Muslim societies raises troubling questions about how Muslims read the Qurān, so too does its observance in non-­Muslim societies, where it has become even more of a Muslim cultural icon. Even if one were to concede that a Jāhilī ethos persists in Western societies in the normalization of sexual promiscuity, there also are laws against sexual harassment in Western societies, which Muslim states have

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yet to promulgate. Veiling is therefore not women’s only defense against sexual harassment and abuse; their rights in law are. It is ironic that while secular laws give women such protection, laws formulated by many Muslim states often do not because of their embrace of Jāhilī views of women as sexually depraved, and because of their sexist belief that males are easily provoked, licentious, and out of control. Such views are both a cause and a consequence of redefining and universalizing the jilbāb. Initially a symbol of Jāhilī corruption in the Qurān, it has come to be seen as proof of female immorality and inferiority. This perversion of the Qurān’s teachings results also in ignoring the critical issue of what constitutes sexually appropriate behavior for men. Muslim states are thereby freed from the obligation of having to create public spheres in which women do not need to fear Jāhilī-­type misbehavior on the part of Muslim men. Instead, by defining women’s morality and safety in terms only of their own dress codes, conservatives are legitimizing the kinds of pathologies that are leading men to murder unveiled women in the name of Islam. And nowhere are the really fundamental issues being debated by the so-­called “fundamentalists”: How can Muslim men, if they are living by the Qurān’s injunctions, feel free to kill or assault women? And how can we reconcile religious vigilantism with the irreducibly voluntary nature of faith and of moral responsibility in Islam? (See chapter 4 on this point.)

C r i t i c a l Th eor i es: Hi stor i ci zin g the Pa rticul a r Critical scholars reverse all three assumptions that conservatives make about divine speech: that it does not occur in historical time, that it can be understood best only at the time of its occurrence, and that it is the same as its interpretation. On the contrary, argue critical theorists, not only does divine discourse occur within time, but history, “like Scripture, provides clear ‘signs’ and lessons of God’s sovereignty and . . . intervention in human development” (Stowasser 1994, 14). Divine intervention not only reveals that there is a coherence between the contents and contexts of God’s words, but it is also what renders these words relevant; it is therefore precisely the location of the sacred within history that is crucial to understanding its universal nature. The Qurān’s location in history also allows us to understand what is unique about Islam itself since the “Quran’s ‘descent’ (nuzul) into the world is an occurrence which interests the earthly order, creating a new historical

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era where truth . . . can finally and manifestly be distinguished from falsehood” (Khalidi 1994, 8). The contrast between truth and falsehood in the Qurān allows a comparison not just between Islam and paganism but also between Islam and prior revelation (Judaism and Christianity), with which the Qurān suggests both scriptural and historical continuity and also rupture. Thus, on the one hand, revelation to the Prophet confirms both textual and historical continuity with the past in the Qurān’s restatement of certain teachings of Jewish and Christian scriptures—notably, the idea of God’s unity—and also prophetic narratives and lineages. On the other hand, Islam also entailed a break with Jewish and Christian teachings, especially with their patriarchalization of God as Father. In its very continuity and discontinuity, then, Islam reveals an engagement with history (the context for human life and praxis), which remains subject to God’s rule. These views extend into the claim that the Qurān “occurred in the light of history and against a social-­historical background” and is a “response” to it (Rahman 1982, 5). In fact, it is “God’s response through Muhammad’s mind (this latter factor has been radically underplayed by the Islamic orthodoxy) to a historical situation (a factor likewise drastically restricted by the Islamic orthodoxy in a real understanding of the Quran)” (8). This explains why the Qurān is couched in semiotic, linguistic, and ethical-­moral terms that were specific to Arab society. As Faruq Sherif (1985, 3) argues, many āyāt “relate to a particular time and place and to circumstances which had only a temporary” importance, such as crises in the Prophet’s life and practices like slavery or the arbitrary repudiation of wives, which were routine in Arabia at that time. This is clear from the fact that most Qurānic penal provisions are addressed to “the social conditions that were characteristic of the Arabian tribes fourteen centuries ago,” which is why treating them as “binding today would in many cases be a lamentable anachronism” (4). Consequently, as Kenneth Cragg (1994, 114) argues, to make the Qurān “immune from history is to make its own history irrelevant.” This idea, he says, “emerges indisputably from the Quranic text itself. There are several important passages which underline the necessarily periodic and contextual nature of its contents.” He also points out that its “gradualism, spread over 23 years,” means that the Qurān’s su¯rahs “impinge upon a succession of temporal events” (115). The Muslim failure “to reckon with moving time,” however, transforms the “‘incidentalism’ of the days of the Quran [into] the ‘fundamentalism’ of the centuries,” an approach that

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does a disservice to Islam (121–22). Thus, argues Cragg, the tendency of “Traditional Tradition [to suppose] a passive role for ongoing time in its obedience to the paragon time, a care for strict memory not for creative repossession,” makes such a repossession impossible, even if it “remains the plainest argument for taking the Quran historically” (123). Recognizing the historical contexts and specificity of the Qurān’s teachings does not mean assuming that their moral purpose was limited to Arab society, or that we cannot derive universal norms or laws from these teachings. Indeed, the Qurān itself “provides, either explicitly or implicitly, the rationales behind [its] solutions and rulings, from which one can deduce general principles” (Rahman 1982, 20). This is why critical scholars who argue in favor of historicizing revelation are not rejecting the doctrine of its universalism. On the contrary, they are rejecting the opposite view: that the sacred can only be grasped within a specific historical context. They believe this is what happens when we privilege the religious knowledge that was produced in the first few centuries of Islam for no other reason than that it was closer in real time to the Prophet’s community and therefore to revelation itself. For critical theorists, the Qurān’s universalism is also undermined by attempts to fix its meanings by interpretive fiat since they believe this universalism lies in the ability of new generations of believers to derive new meanings from it by relying on their own aql (intellect) and ilm (knowledge), as the Qurān itself asks us to do. This necessarily involves a process of recontextualizing the Qurān through new modes of reading, none of which, of course, can exhaust its meanings. New methods and readings are not only desirable but also essential because our knowledge of the Qurān is always evolving, which is why ijtihād (critical thinking) is a better hermeneutical method than a blind reliance on consensus or tradition. And while no one can claim “a monopoly” over what God means (Nayed 1992), critical scholars argue that taking a thematic-­historical approach to the Qurān—in addition to analyzing the semiotic, semantic, and linguistic systems at work in it—can yield better readings than a (conservative) methodology which does not take such an approach. Critical scholars also favor a thematic-­historical method because only such a method can help us to distinguish the general from the specific within the Qurān. However, they disagree on what this method entails. For some, the distinction between the general and the specific is internal to the Qurān itself and can be retrieved by differentiating between the

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two phases of its revelation, Meccan and Madinan. For instance, Mahmud Mohamed Taha (1987) finds differences between the Meccan and Madinan su¯rahs and urges Muslims to evolve a praxis based on the Meccan su¯rahs, which embody the revolutionary and egalitarian aspects of Islam’s message (the first message). On the other hand, Taha (who was executed for “sedition” in his native Sudan) argues that the Madinan phase circumscribes some of the principles revealed in Mecca because of the unreadiness of the Madinan community to live by the standards of moral freedom necessary for transforming the first message into practice. He noted that not only is the Madinan stage focused on events specific to the lives and problems of the Madinans (125), but as a result, revelation in this phase focuses more on regulation and control. In effect, differences in the two groups of su¯rahs result not from “the time and place of their revelation, but essentially [from] the audience to whom they are addressed” (134). Though it is the first message of Islam that is egalitarian, continues Taha, it is from the “texts of the second stage” that the Sharīah is derived (21). This is because classical exegetes held that the Meccan su¯rahs had been abrogated by the Madinan su¯rahs, although they remained “operative at a moral/persuasive level.” However, the “historical Sharia,” which draws on the Madinan su¯rahs, “is merely the level of Islamic law that suited the previous stage of human development.” To bring it closer to Islam’s first message, Taha believes that we need to shift some of its aspects “from one class of texts to another.” We can do this by “examining the rationale of abrogation (naskh) in the sense of selecting which texts of the Qurān and Sunnah are to be made legally binding, as opposed to being merely morally persuasive” (23–24). What is required, in essence, is a second message of Islam that can revive the Prophet’s Sunnah and transform it into law through fresh ijtihād (critical reasoning) and ijmā (consensus). For Taha, therefore, the issue of what is universal and what is specific in the Qurān can only be resolved by distinguishing between the Meccan (universal) and Madinan (particular) su¯rahs, and thus between different historical contexts of revelation. For Rahman (1980), though, such a distinction is problematic because it suggests discontinuities and tensions within revelation itself. He thus criticizes the tendency to view the “career of the Prophet and the Quran in two neatly discrete and separate ‘periods’—the Madinan and the Meccan—to which most modern scholars have become addicted” (133). Moreover, as Wadud (1999, 30) also argues, not all the Meccan su¯rahs are general in nature, nor are all the Madinan su¯rahs specific.

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According to her, the best solution is to formulate a “hermeneutical model which derives basic ethical principles for further developments and legal considerations by giving precedence to general statements rather than particulars.” If for Wadud the solution is a hermeneutical and not a historical one, for Rahman it is both; while favoring the formulation of hermeneutical principles, he also points out that since “all interpretations are historically and geographically contextualized, Muslims must exert every effort to understand those contexts in order to be able to distinguish the essential from the contingent” (quoted in Sonn 1996, 65). In sum, to critical scholars, the undecidability of the universal and the particular can only be resolved by undertaking several steps. First, it is necessary to study the Qurān historically (contextually, not chronologically) and hermeneutically so as to replace the contexts of the first centuries of Islam with those of the fifteenth/twenty-­first century. This is a process that involves reading in front of the Qurān by first reading behind it. Second, it is necessary to disentangle the Qurān from its tafsīr and from reconstructions of the Sunnah by the ahādith. This requires separating normative from historical Islam, in part by reexamining the relationship between inter-­and extratextuality. Third, it is necessary to revise the Sharīah by rethinking the principles of jurisprudence. Fourth, we must undertake a critical ijtihād that makes new readings of the Qurān possible. This is a process that will call into question not only the nature and role of Muslim intellectuals but also those of the state. From textualities one has then progressed to issues having to do with inter-­and extratextuality; that is, from the question of who reads the Qurān and how, to the contexts in which the Qurān is read. Historically, the Qurān has been read by exegetes and communities within discursive frameworks in whose formation the state played a central role. As such, intertextuality has an extratextual dimension as Muslim states, acting in the name of Islam, have sought to define, limit, or normalize certain reading and textual practices. It is therefore time to shift to the contexts of reading, which I discuss in the following chapter.

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Chapter 3

Intertextualities, Extratextual Contexts The Sunnah, Sharīah, and the State ▼

T

he Qurān, marvels Mohammed Arkoun (1994, 39), “never ceases to produce . . . secondary, integrating texts where all the cultures of ‘Islam’ exert their influence.” And this, he says, provides “another fascinating, but as yet scarcely touched, field of investigation: the Quranic text taken as part of a very tangled intertextuality.” As noted in chapter 2, intertextuality refers to the transposition of sign systems from one text to another and to the ensuing relationship between them. While it results from the very act of reading, intertextuality is also a function of the extratextual contexts within which reading occurs. For instance, how Muslims have read the Qurān historically or have defined its relationship to other texts (the tafsīr, the ahādith) or practices (the Prophet’s Sunnah, the Sharīah) is a function not only of the transposition of sign systems between texts but also of the contexts within which religious knowledge, method, and meaning were produced. Accordingly, in this chapter I analyze the nature of inter-­and extratextuality in Muslim

I nt ert extua lities, Extr at ex tual Contexts

religious discourse and the connections between them. I focus in particular on the role of the Sunnah (the Prophet’s praxis), the Sharīah (law), the state, and interpretive communities in shaping Qurānic exegesis as well as Islamic epistemology and methodology during the early years of Muslim history.1 My discussion aims to explain why Muslims have traditionally read the Qurān in restrictive and patriarchal modes, and why it is difficult to read it in liberatory and antipatriarchal ones today. I. Texts, Contexts, Practice(s) A patriarchal exegesis of the Qurān, as I argue in chapter 2, often results from applying the ahādith (narratives of the Prophet’s life and praxis) to interpret it. Such readings are also a function of how Muslims conceptualize the Prophet’s life and praxis (Sunnah), which is the primary source of exegesis and the second source—besides the Qurān—for deriving the Sharīah. I begin therefore by discussing the Sunnah; in particular, I focus on the processes by which jurists in classical/medieval times came to reverse the relationship between the Qurān and the Sunnah, since this reversal continues to pose problems for how Muslims read the Qurān today.

Th e Sunnah / sunnah The word sunnah derives “from a root meaning of the verb sanna, ‘to form, fashion, or shape’ and by extension, ‘to institute, establish or prescribe.’”2 “The Sunnah” refers to the Prophet’s praxis, including his sayings, actions, or tacit approval of behavior he knew about. As such, the Sunnah establishes the framework for Muslim praxis and also for reading the Qurān since the Prophet’s life is considered the best exegesis of its teachings; hence the aphorism that “the Quran has more need of the sunna than the sunna has of the Quran.”3 Although Muslims view the Prophet’s Sunnah as paradigmatic and therefore generalizable,4 it is difficult to replicate inasmuch as it was specific to the Prophet. The sunnah (with a lowercase “s”), on the other hand, will be used in this text to refer to customary practices in general that may be, and usually are, unrelated to the Prophet’s Sunnah or to the Qurān’s teachings. For reasons I will consider below, many of the customary practices, especially of the Arabs, were incorporated into the ahādith and therefore into the Prophet’s Sunnah, details of which are recorded in the ahādith. (This is

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why one cannot speak of the Sunnah without referring to the ahādith.) However, notwithstanding its textualization in/by the ahādith, the Sunnah is also seen as practice that occurred prior to and independently of its textualization; it is in the role of practice that the Sunnah enjoys its “authority [and] legitimacy.”5 (This is why the Sunnah functions as both text and as an extratextual context of Qurānic exegesis.) Among the many confusions in Muslim religious discourse, two of the most endemic and detrimental are between the Qurān and the Prophet’s Sunnah, on the one hand, and between the Prophet’s Sunnah and (a) the ahādith and (b) Muslim customary practices on the other. This is because while Muslims venerate the principle of “imitatio Muhammadi” (Brown 1996), most of the content of the Sunnah is not a reflection of the Prophet’s praxis. Rather, it is a reflection of “the free thinking activity of the early le­gists of Islam who had made deductions from the existing Sunna or practice and—most important of all—had incorporated” into it Byzantine, Arab, Jewish, and Persian elements (Rahman 1965, 5).6 Annals of prophetic praxis thus became a repository of many pre-­Islamic ideas, including abidingly misogynistic ones. Despite its problematic content, however, the Sunnah was ascribed to the Prophet in the second and third Islamic (eighth and ninth CE) centuries. As a result, existing practices, especially of the Arabs, were absorbed into Islam and came “to be equated with the Sunnah of the Prophet [thus being] given an unwarranted, elevated religious status” (Esposito 1982, 103). In turn, when the Prophet’s Sunnah was elevated over the Qurān, thus becoming decisive in its exegesis and in the drafting of the Sharīah, so too were Arab practices such as female genital-­cutting and stoning to death for adultery, for example. It was partly this blurring of boundaries between the two sunnahs that put an Islamic stamp on pre-­Islamic misogyny. Boundary problems of a different sort arose between the Qurān and the Sunnah when scholars in the classical/medieval period attempted to standardize the sources of religious authority. These efforts culminated in reversing the authority of the Qurān and the Sunnah vis-­à-­vis one another, thereby also influencing Muslim exegeses of the Qurān.

Reve r s i n g th e Au th or i t y of Religio us So urce s In the early years of their history, argues Daniel Brown (1996), Muslims did not discriminate between different sources of religious authority. However, the growing complexity of religious and political life and the emergence of

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dissent in the second and third Islamic centuries led some jurists to set up “a hierarchy of revealed material whereby the evidence one liked could be justified and the evidence of one’s opponents . . . dismissed” (13). According to scholars, these hierarchical impulses resulted from incorporating Middle Eastern ideologies and cultures into Islam.7 In turn, this process undermined not only the doctrine of the Qurān’s self-­sufficiency but also its unique status as revelation (wahy). Thus, jurists began by equating the Qurān’s authority with that of the Sunnah, then began to accord the Sunnah the status of wahy, and then took the Sunnah to “abrogate the Quran” itself (Lokhandwalla 1992, 45). From being an exemplar of wahy, the Sunnah came to be regarded as wahy, and then as being even more consequential than Qurānic wahy! The principle that “passed into Muslim orthodoxy . . . that the Quran could be abrogated by both the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet”8 was defended both by the “orthodox” al-­Shafi and by al-­Ghazali, one of the greatest Sufis and reformers of the “Islamic Middle Ages.” It was al-­Shafi, however, who established the status of the Sunnah as wahy by ruling that “the command of the Prophet is the command of God,” and that the Prophet’s behavior was also wahy but of a different sort than the Qurān (quoted in Brown 1996, 8). Only after the third/ninth century did the maxim “[The] sunna rules on the Quran, but the Quran does not rule on the sunna” gain acceptance among Muslims, being preserved for posterity in the theory “of consensus (ijma)” (Brown, 20). However, despite having assented to the authority of the Sunnah, and thus also to that of the ahādith, the legal schools resisted applying it strictly because of the unreliability of many ahādith. Sacralizing the Sunnah therefore did little to resolve the issue of its own authenticity or that of the ahādith; if anything, it created a number of other problems. First, as Tamara Sonn (1996, 65) argues, not only was the Prophet’s behavior “itself interpretive of Islamic principles but . . . reports [hadīths] of that behavior are themselves interpretations. We are therefore at least two interpretations removed from the essential teachings of revelation [the Qurān].” However, Muslim scholars not only ignored the Sunnah’s double distancing from wahy and the unreliability of many of the ahādith but also disregarded the tensions between the Qurān and the Sunnah, and between the two sunnahs. In fact, they introduced a lasting anomaly into religious discourse by maintaining, alongside the doctrine of the Qurān’s unique status, that the Sunnah was “also a product of divine revelation” and “equal to [the Qurān] in status” (Sonn, 15–16). Al-­Shafi’s method, in particular, 69

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papered over and, indeed, institutionalized the tensions between these two sources of religious authority in Islam. Second, using the Sunnah to read the Qurān undercut the doctrine of revelation’s self-­sufficiency and the interpretive flexibility inherent in it, putting a methodological closure on how the Qurān could “legitimately” be read. Since the Sunnah “serves to ‘close’ the text of the revelation by making it pertinent to the definition of certain practices,” says Brannon Wheeler (1996, 11), canonizing it made the “meaning and the authority of the Quran dependent upon how the [Prophet] was reported to have understood and applied certain portions.” Since the Sunnah’s content came to be fixed by interpreters, the Qurān’s “applicability and thus authority [came to be] fixed by the sunnah, the sunnah by [their] opinions, and the opinions by subsequent scholarship” (13). By linking their own authority with that of the Sunnah, and the Sunnah’s authority with that of the Qurān, interpreters of sacred knowledge became its architects instead, reducing, by a series of mediations, divine discourse to their own interpretations of it. Clearly, as an illustration of the Qurān’s teachings, which enjoin obedience to the Prophet,9 the Sunnah provides an invaluable context for both Qurānic exegesis (tafsīr) and Muslim praxis; hence, its elevation to authoritative status is understandable from a religious perspective. However, its elevation over revelation seems to have resulted less from jurists’ efforts to define Islamic knowledge (ilm) in an authoritative way than from their attempts to define their own interpretive authority, a process in which the state also became involved. Thus, the privileging of the Sunnah over the Qurān resulted in part from the very nature of Islamic epistemology and in part from the state’s role in shaping this during the early years of Muslim history. At the core of this epistemology, argues Tarif Khalidi (1994, 20), were the ahādith, which “afforded their possessors a nucleus of early Islamic ilm,” seen to derive from the Prophet and his Companions. Expertise in ahādith thus became a determinant of the personal or political power of their possessors, whether religious scholars (ulama) or state elites. A tradition grew up based in an “increasingly unrelenting advocacy” of the ahādith and in a “firm (but . . . not always consistent) commitment to the righteousness of the early Muslim community and the rectitude of the Prophet’s first successors” (Zaman 1997, 1). When this oral tradition grew into a “text-­ based epistemology,” mastery of a more elaborate method was needed to define religious knowledge and to sustain interpretive authority. Although

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this method originated in the desire to protect the Qurān’s integrity—by using the Sunnah to regulate the strategies for reading it—over time it instead allowed interpretive communities to entrench their own authority and privileges (Wheeler 1996; see also section 2 of this chapter). The problems resulting from the inversion of the relationship between the Qurān and the Sunnah have led Muslims periodically to resurrect the doctrine of the Qurān’s self-­sufficiency so as to free up exegesis from its reliance on the Sunnah and ahādith. Such efforts, however, have been opposed by conservatives, ostensibly the staunchest supporters of a return to the Qurān’s teachings. In spite of opposition, however, many scholars have emphasized the need to disentangle the Sunnah from the ahādith by differentiating between the Prophet’s praxis and the “problem of the historical authenticity of hadith” (Brown 1996, 101). While separating the Sunnah from the ahādith is difficult, it is necessary for greater interpretive freedom and also for reading the Qurān by the Qurān (intratextually), a methodology the Qurān itself recommends.10

Ijtihād and Ijmā : Dem ocr atizin g Tra d itio n Despite the problematic nature of the Sunnah’s context, says Fazlur Rahman (1965, 2), the manner of its construction illustrates the democratic nature of Muslim tradition in its early years. While Rahman admits that the Sunnah’s content is not a scrupulous record of the Prophet’s praxis or of Islam’s teachings, he believes the concept itself is emblematic of the importance Muslims once attached to the role of critical reasoning (ijtihād) and societal consensus (ijmā) in the creation of religious meaning. Ijtihād refers to a mode of reasoning that allows for “the interpolation of meaning” by enabling one to determine “the meaning of the revealed text in its own historical context” and therefore also “how to act in accordance with that meaning in changed circumstances” (Sonn 1996, 24). Such a method enables “historical objectivity” in studying tradition by allowing one to distinguish it from both the present and from its own precedents (Rahman 1982, 8). Ijmā, on the other hand, can refer either to the unanimous consent “of the jurists of a particular age on a specific issue” (Ijmā al-­immah) or to the consensus of the whole community (Ijmā al-­ummah) (Esposito 1982, 7). In the early years, argues Rahman (1965, 19), ijtihād and ijmā functioned in symbiosis, providing a democratic balance between critical

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reasoning and communal and juristic consensus. Thus, the Sunnah’s formulation resulted from ijtihād, which grew into ijmā, a fact that showed the community’s ability to assume “the necessary prerogative of creating and recreating the content of the Prophetic Sunna” through a method that ensured “the working infallibility . . . of the new content” (italics in the original). To Rahman, the aphorism “the Sunnah decides upon the Quran; the Quran does not decide upon the Sunnah” means that “the Community, under the direction of the spirit (not the absolute letter) in which the Prophet acted in a given historical situation, shall authoritatively interpret and assign meaning to Revelation” (20; italics in the original). That is, meaning was created by the community itself. This democratic practice—which sought to accommodate interpretive differences—was undercut, however, by attempts at “standardization and uniformity throughout the Muslim world,” a goal attained by replacing ijtihād and ijmā with the ahādith (21).11 Instead of continuing to rely on reason, deliberation, and consensus in defining religious meaning, Muslims began to refer all issues back to the ahādith. This move was consummated in al-­Shafi’s work, and it originated, ironically, in his attempts to protect the Sunnah’s authority by establishing that of the ahādith on the grounds that the latter represented communal consensus, hence God’s will. Yet his ruling had the effect of reversing the relationship between ijtihād and ijmā by a priori privileging ijmā. As the outcome of critical thinking (ijtihād), consensus (ijmā) could be progressive; however, as the means for proscribing it, consensus could only foster a tradition based in “theological censorship” (Moazzam 1992). By declaring against ijtihād, al-­Shafi also declared against a democratically evolving ijmā, even while criticizing an uncritical adherence to precedent (taqlīd)12 as “conducive to ignorance” (quoted in Khalidi 1994, 137). In contrast, says Rahman (1965, 23), other schools realized that ijmā was “not an imposed or manufactured static fact but an ongoing democratic process . . . [which] must live not only with but also upon a certain amount of disagreement.” In al-­Shafi’s hands, however, ijmā became “an agreement that left no room for disagreement” (12). Rahman starkly sums up the contrast between al-­Shafi’s position and that of other legal schools as: “Here a freely flowing situational treatment of the Prophetic activity, there a once-­and-­for-­all positing of immobile rules; here a ceaseless search for what the Prophet intended to achieve, there a rigid system, definite and defined, cast like a hard shell” (29). Thus, it was the Sunnah’s authorization in such rigid and fixed terms and the closing of

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the gate of ijtihād, argues Rahman, that robbed Muslim tradition of its democratic character. Significantly, however, even though Muslim scholars are familiar with the saying that the gate of ijtihād is closed, Rahman (1965, 149) notes that nobody “quite knows when . . . or who exactly closed it.” There is “no statement to be found anywhere by anyone about the desirability of the necessity of such a closure, or of the fact of actually closing the gate,” even though there are rulings by later writers to this effect. From then on, interpretive communities and states began to employ the theory of ijmā to promote taqlīd in the methodological realm (fostering a scholarship based on imitativeness, or naql, rather than on critical reasoning or innovative thinking) and to mandate obedience to rulers in the political realm, transforming the Sunnis “forever [into] the king’s party, almost any king” (89). Although these developments gave Sunni Islam a content and an orthodoxy of sorts, continues Rahman, the ensuing cohesion, equilibrium, and creativity proved brief because “the content of this structure was invested with a halo of sacredness and unchangeability since it came to be looked upon as uniquely deducible from the Quran and [Sunnah]” (87). As a result, creativity was stifled from the start as the “‘living sunna’ ceased to be a living sunna, i.e., an ongoing process and came to be regarded as the unique incarnation of the Will of God”; by transforming the sunnah into an “immutable [article] of Faith,” then, Muslim scholars sacrificed originality to stability (87). Since sunnah refers to practice, and no two practices can be identical, concludes Rahman (1965), this necessarily allows for change. However, creative renewals of tradition and culture also presume “a reawakening of communicative action,”13 which means that in order to rethink the Sunnah and tradition, Muslims must also revive ijtihād-­ijmā. This is both because ijtihād is the “central hermeneutic” of Islamic reasoning and jurisprudence (Sonn 1996) and because the ijmā inherited from the past rests on an outmoded and thin consensus of jurists, not a consensus of the whole community, and certainly not of the women in the communities of Islam. Adhering to this medieval ijmā also ignores that the system inherited from the past obscures “the Quran and the real performance of the Prophet” from both laypeople and ulama alike and gives rise to “mechanical and semantic rather than interpretative or scientific” scholarship (Rahman 1982, 86, vii). Just as importantly, clinging to a centuries’ old consensus also allows states and conservative interpretive communities to continue

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defining Islam in ways that complement their own particular vision. And since states and conservative clerics derive their authority from managing this system, it is this very process of rethinking that they most fear and discourage, typically and falsely by branding it a heresy.

T h e Sh ar ī ah : Def i ni ng P ractice Sharīah is usually taken to mean classical Muslim law, though the term itself simply means “definition of practice.” The Sharīah determines “how certain aspects of everyday life are to be practiced according to the model provided by the canon” (Wheeler 1996, 2). The contents of this model are supplied by the Qurān and the Prophet’s Sunnah; that is, the “revelation contained in the text of the Quran is interpreted through the medium of the sunnah to indicate the contents of the Shariah.” (See figure 4.) In effect, the principles of jurisprudence (usu¯l al-­fiqh) are derived by way of the Sunnah—hence by limiting the Qurān’s canonical authority (10). Among other methodologies for deriving the Sharīah are consensus (ijmā), critical reasoning (ijtihād), and analogical reasoning (qiyas). However, as noted above, ijtihād was considered closed fairly early in Muslim history. At the outset, I should mention that Muslims confuse the Sharīah and fiqh, the science of jurisprudence. As Ziba Mir-­Hosseini (2006, 633) points out, the former refers to “the totality of God’s will as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad,” while the latter reflects “the process of human endeavor to discern and extract legal rules from the sacred sources of Islam. . . . In other words, while the sharia is sacred, universal, and eternal, fiqh is human and—like any other system of jurisprudence—subject to change.” She says problems arise when what Muslims “assert to be a sharia mandate (hence divine and infallible) is the result of fiqh, juristic speculation and extrapolation (hence human and fallible).” Because fiqh texts “are patriarchal in both spirit and form,” appealing to them in the name of adhering to the Sharīah then silences and frustrates “Muslims’ search for legal justice and equality, which are intrinsic to this-­worldly justice.” (This slippage between Sharīah and fiqh is evident in this chapter because not all legal scholars treat the distinction as scrupulously as Mir-­Hosseini does. Partly because of this fact, I also use the word Sharīah inappropriately on occasion.) Although many Muslims view the Qurān and the Sunnah as “co-­equal sources” of the Sharīah,14 as I noted above, there are tensions between them. An integral feature of the Sharīah, as conceptualized, is thus its

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Figure 4 (Reproduced from Wheeler [1996:55].)

eclecticism deriving from conflicts between its sources and also from the growth of four legal schools in Sunni Islam “founded by and named after early masters of Islamic jurisprudence”—the Shafi, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbali (Peters 1994, 239)—who “agreed to differ . . . and, more importantly, to accept each other’s orthodoxy” (241). Far from being a “single, logical whole,” the Sharīah reveals a “diversity of opinion” not only across the schools, but within them as well (An-­Naim 1990, 33). Despite their differences, however, all schools concur that women and men are not to be treated equally “in the administration of criminal justice” (90). Thus, even though Islam “is probably the most uncompromising of the world’s religions in its insistence on the equality of all believers before God,”15 to Muslim “jurists it did not follow from the equality of ‘all believers’ before God that men and women should be equal before the law” (41). Two legal schools, the Maliki and Hanafi, developed independently of, or in opposition to, the Abbasid state. The legal principle they sought to uphold was that of “the common good,” a position that generated inconsistencies and eventually provoked a reaction from the tradition-­bound Shafi and Hanbali schools (Sourdel 1979, 60). Ibn Hanbal, in particular, adopted an antirationalist stance by affirming the “harmful character of controversy16 and reasoning in matters of faith,”17 favoring instead uniformity in the development of law and a restriction on “the continued growth of different schools of legal interpretation” (Peters 1994, 239). In spite of the differences dividing medieval Muslims, by the sixth/twelfth century the Sunni schools had agreed “that these four ways of looking at

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the Quran and Sunna were sufficient to meet the needs of the community and guide them to fulfill the will of God for the rest of human history” (Sonn 1996, 29). Law, which had been “elaborated slowly and not without contradictions,” thus came to be authorized and has remained so ever since (Sourdel 1979, 61). This development owed itself in no small measure to al-­Shafi, who linked the Qurān, the Sunnah, ijmā, and ijtihād “into a coherent system of jurisprudence by effectively championing the adoption of his method as the only legitimate approach to sunna” (Brown 1996, 7). (According to Zaman [1997], however, al-­Shafi did not intend this fourfold schema.) The fact that his method gained legitimacy had much to do with the growing emphasis the state came to place on scholarly consensus as a way to safeguard its own power. This process aided in the closure of ijtihād, also foreclosing new legal developments. Although the closure institutionalized the authority of four competing legal schools, and thus the conflicts between them, the ensuing “uniformity [in] legal judgments” turned out to be helpful to the state’s rulers (Khalidi 1994, 45). Involved in a process of administrative reform, they found the “practice of determining issues on the basis of regional consensus—and the inevitable differences of consensual opinion among the various regions—problematic” (Sonn 1996, 27); some legal uniformity therefore made the task of ruling easier. Both the Umayyad and the Abbasid states inherited a legacy of rapid conquests, external threats, and civil wars, all of which “had a devastating effect on the loyalties and beliefs of early Islamic society” (Khalidi 1994, 19). In such a milieu, doctrinal conflict threatened not only “religious beliefs, but . . . the social order” as well (Zaman 1997, 63). Consensus was therefore seen as pivotal to ensuring both social stability and the state’s authority. This is why it seems likely that the “initiative in the direction of evolving the concept of a consensus of scholars came from the ruling circles” (Khalidi, 45). In any event, ijmā was to become the “logical foundation, although not the formal basis, for the whole system of Islamic law” (Brown 1996, 20). The state’s involvement in development of the law does not mean, however, that it was committed to implementing the Sharīah itself. In fact, on some accounts it was the state’s “lawlessness and despotism” that encouraged jurists to “assert the independence of Islamic legal and constitutional principles from the abuses of temporal power” (Kerr 1966, 14). Thus, legal and constitutional theories “were elaborated as storm shelters: if ignored

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or abused in practice, they would be at least preserved in doctrinal purity” (14). Moreover, even though the Abbasid challenge to the Umayyads was based in the allegation that the latter had “failed to pursue rigorous Islamization . . . in due course political expediency caused Abbasid practice to depart from the theory of Sharia” (An-­Naim 1990, 15). Indeed, the Abbasids—like the Umayyads—were committed to reconciling “the ideals of Islam with the demands and constraints of secular government” (Kennedy 1981, 17). Nonetheless, it was their support that enabled the formulation of the Sharīah, and it is “the four surviving Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence” established during that period that Muslims follow today (An-­Naim, 15–16). Thus, while not always adhering to the law itself, the state aided in its growth along lines that after the fourth/tenth century made for growing conservatism, as did the Ashari defeat of the Mutazilah,18 the “growing political fragmentation and decay, assimilated customs contrary to the Quranic spirit, and finally, the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century” (Esposito 1982, 10). Like the ahādith, the principles of jurisprudence (fiqh) also derive partly from extratextual precedent, reflecting the tendency in Muslim religious discourse to allow necessity to overrule texts. Indeed, some theorists hold that exegetical and legal readings are “most likely not to have been textual in origin, that is, not to have been literally there in the text, written or oral” (Brockett 1988, 43). Among the Sharīah’s extratextual sources are Istihān, the principle of juristic preference that comes into play when analogical reasoning seems too rigid to ensure equity; Istislāh, the principle of public interest that comes into play in cases where public interest is not “textually specified”; and Istishāb, the principle of presumed continuity that bases rulings on antecedents deemed valid unless proven otherwise (Esposito 1982, 9). Although the Qurān is not a law book,19 legal principles need to be derived from it, and the two primary methods Muslims use for deducing these—critical reasoning (Ashāb al-­Ray) and a reliance on texts and traditions (Ashāb al-­Hadīth)—seem appropriate, at least on the surface. Unfortunately, however, they have not had auspicious results, especially for women. The first method, which arose from the insufficiency of the ahādith, allowed for the assimilation into the Sharīah of precepts from Roman law, Oriental Christianity, and Byzantine legal doctrines and methods, many of which were anti-­women. Reliance on the ahādith—which, as noted in chapter 2, are the source of most Muslim misogyny—proved

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equally harmful. There was no fixed practice for most legal issues, and jurists ended up drawing on contradictory ahādith whose authenticity was not verified until after thousands of ahādith were in circulation (see Goldziher 1971; Levy 1962). Among others, Abdullahi An-­Naim (1990, xiv) points out that despite its “assumed religious authority and inviolability,” the Sharīah is “not the whole of Islam” but “an interpretation of its fundamental sources as understood in a particular historical context.” Not only was the method for deriving it a “product of the intellectual, social, and political processes of Muslim history” (14), but the “Sharia was constructed by its founding jurists” (xiv). In the process, some jurists tried to reconcile it with what they perceived to be the community’s best interests at that time; others “simply disregarded reality and addressed themselves to an ideal situation in theorizing on what ought to be the case” (5). As a result, legal norms often came to be based on the opinions of the Prophet’s Companions, even when these opinions were not based on his Sunnah. Not only does the Sharīah not always adhere to the Sunnah, then, but it embodies “medieval principles of reason and objects of public good [that] may no longer be valid today” (An-­Naim 1990, 71). For instance, its restrictive stance on human rights may have been “justified by the historical context, [but] it ceases to be so justified in the present drastically different context” (170). Also, implementing the Sharīah can curtail the rights not only of women under secular law but also those of men due to the extensive power given to political and state rulers (9). We therefore need to rethink the Sharīah, says An-­Naim, a process that is of special concern to women because its hold is “strongest in family law [due to] the greater degree of detailed regulation of these fields in the Quran and Sunnah” (32).20 Rethinking the Sharīah requires clarifying the “Islamicity” of certain principles, and one way to do so is to make sure that they are “consistent with the totality of the Quran and Sunnah”; the problem, however, is that there are inconsistencies between “certain verses of the Quran and Sunnah” (45). Mahmud Mohamed Taha,21 as An-­Naim argues, believed that the tensions can be resolved by drawing on the Meccan su¯rahs, which embody “the fundamental values of justice and the equality and inherent dignity of all human beings” (Taha 1987, 54). According to Taha, it was only in the aftermath of the Prophet’s migration to Madina that the Qurān and Sunnah “began to distinguish between men and women,” and it is in this period that the Qurān’s “discriminatory verses” were revealed.

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This is why he wanted Muslims to implement the Meccan su¯rahs, which jurists view as having been abrogated. An-­Naim (1990, 61–62) also points out that orthodoxies are the strongest defenders of the Sharīah, and the strongest defense against them is that Sunni Islam does not distinguish between “‘clergy’ and ‘lay’ Muslims.” Hence there is no reason for Muslims to “concede authority . . . to the ulama and the proponents of Sharia.” In fact, by doing so, “secularist intellectuals are conceding defeat without a fight.” What we need, he argues, is to confront the Sharīah’s advocates on their own ground and not to assume that the Sharīah is Islam. In this context, since the “primary area of concern in the relationship between the Quran and legal reform” is exegesis, what is needed is a hermeneutics that can recover the “motive, intent, or purpose”22 behind Qurānic āyāt. In An-­Naim’s view, this would provide new contexts for deriving juristic principles as the first step in reframing the Sharīah. One can get some sense of the complex relationship between texts, textualities, and extratextuality from the fact that in order to reformulate the Sharīah—or, more appropriately, fiqh—it is necessary not only to rethink the Islamicity of certain provisions but also to undertake a critique of the Sunnah. This means, in effect, reassessing the authenticity of the ahādith. Such a reassessment, however, can threaten the very foundations of Muslim tradition. As Barbara Stowasser (1992, 1) represents this conundrum, inasmuch as the “sharia rests on the authenticity of the sunna as formulated in the medieval Hadith, large-­scale and substantive criticism of the Hadith would mean to strip the sunna of its importance which, in turn, would deal taqlid (unquestioning adoption of established legal decisions) a deadly blow.” Rethinking any part of tradition, then, raises formidable problems since it can also unravel the fabric of religious authority as it is structured in Muslim societies and, to the extent that the state depends on this structure for its own legitimacy, the latter’s hegemony as well. This is why states seek to obstruct reform and also why they became invested in the creation of religious meaning from the early years of Muslim history. Yet if we want the Sharīah “to adapt and adjust to the circumstances and needs of contemporary life within the context of Islam as a whole,” argues An-­Naim (1990, 2), we will need to undertake just such an endeavor, challenging both conservative constructions of religious meaning and the state’s role in underwriting these meanings.

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II. Method, Meaning, and Memory: States and Interpretive Communities Many contemporary Muslim scholars ascribe the conservatism of Islamic epistemology and methodology to Islam’s own “orthodox” nature (e.g., Bouhdiba 1985). Yet the construction of method and knowledge along conservative-­orthodox lines resulted from the manner in which interpretive communities and a state claiming to have political and religious authority over the ummah, the community of Muslims, emerged and eventually instituted their own hegemonies. Both processes shaped not only how Muslims came to read the Qurān but also how they came to define method, meaning, and even historical memory itself.

I n t e rt ex tual i t y and Rel i gi ous Me a n in g If what we know (the content of knowledge) depends on how we come to know it (the methods by which we generate knowledge), then we must look to the modes of knowledge creation among Muslims in order to understand conservative-­patriarchal readings of the Qurān. In chapter 2, I examined the conservative tendency to decontextualize the Qurān’s teachings by dehistoricizing the Qurān itself because of a particular view of time. Here I analyze the intertextual and accumulative nature of knowledge construction that serves both to restrict and to normalize the methodological framework within which religious meaning, including exegesis, is produced. Though labeled “Islamic,” such a method does not in fact arise in a Qurānic episteme and, as I will argue, even contradicts it. An entry point into the accumulative and intertextual modes of knowledge construction is provided by John Burton’s (1977, 67) analysis of the ahādith. Of these he maintains that since “nothing once called into existence in Islam ever quite perished, such reports having been added to the general stock of Muslim learning were sooner or later used by Muslim scholars.” As a result, “the exegetical musings of one age generated hadiths which became the Tradition of a later age.” Later generations, he says, unsuspecting that parts of the “Tradition had originated in older scholastic disputes[,] solemnly eyed the added material as part of the Fiqh [rules of legal jurisprudence] and proceeded to construct [their] own new analyses,” thereby unintentionally adding “to the fund of the general Tradition.”

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Although Burton’s analysis of the nature of Muslim methodology is correct, his suggestion that it developed more or less accidentally and was a function of Islam itself is questionable. As Wheeler’s (1996) study of the Hanafi legal school shows, it was the attempt by the ulama from the second/eighth centuries onward to define a religious canon and, more to the point, to institute their own interpretive authority in the process that resulted in a methodology in which—to use Burton’s happy phrase— nothing ever perished. Thus, the tendency to accumulate meanings, says Wheeler, was a result of reading “‘backward’ through the scholarship of previous generations” (14) in an attempt initially to access information about the Prophet’s Sunnah (seen as the best tafsīr of the Qurān) and his methodology for interpreting the Qurān. Since his Sunnah and interpretive method existed in their most authentic forms in the Prophet’s own lifetime, it was assumed that the closer one got to him (or to his Companions) in real time, the greater the likelihood of interpretive accuracy. It is thus an essentially “historicist conception” of the Sunnah’s relation to its interpretations that explains the accumulative nature of Muslim methodology and commentarial practices, not happenstance. In this mode of knowledge creation, notes Wheeler (1996, 88), the opinions of the second century authorities are interpretations of the third generation’s practice, which is an interpretation of the second generation’s practice, which is an interpretation of the companions’ practice, which is an interpretation of the [Prophet’s] practice, which is an interpretation of the revelation contained in the Quran.

Each generation thus links its interpretation of revelation to that of its predecessors and successors. In such a system, interpretive authority derives not from closing the canon, or even from fixing its contents, but from certain ways of interpreting them. In other words, what this system restricts is not interpretive consensus, or even the canon, but the method of interpretation. Since an opinion “to be authoritative needs to be derived from principles that are logically consistent with those known principles from which derived opinions already are established as authoritative,” argues Wheeler (1996, 92), the canon’s contents remain open, but there is a closure to how they can be interpreted. What then becomes “canonical about the Quran” is not the text itself, but the principles that can be induced from it, and these principles can be derived by ana/logical reasoning. That is why

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the Hanafi school specifies a “method rather than certain conclusions” for identifying opinions as authoritative (227). On its part, “future scholarship is authoritative not because it does not deviate from the conclusions of previous generations, but because it accepts and puts to its own uses what previous scholarship established as authoritative” (228). Such a method is not necessarily restrictive, according to Wheeler, in that “later generations have more examples, due to the proliferation of specific cases with each successive generation” from which to infer the Prophet’s methodology (93). Also, in theory, every generation is free to establish its own consensus (ijmā). In reality, however, only a handful of jurists or religious scholars have a voice in the process, and the desire to ensure “continuity with the past” (239), as well as the presumed closure of ijtihād, not only renders this interpretive freedom nominal but also eliminates the need for new methodological paradigms. This is what explains the extraordinary textual and historical continuity in religious meaning from the time of Islam’s advent over fourteen centuries ago to the present. Apart from predetermining the framework for Qurānic exegesis, this methodology also allows interpretive communities to link their own commentarial practices to those ascribed to the Prophet and even to equate them with revelation itself. This conflation involves three steps, as Wheeler (1996) details them. The first is to recognize the plurivocal nature of the Sunnah; that is, the fact that the Prophet’s praxis does not “provide a single, definitive interpretation of revelation”; second, that “expertise in the use of interpretive reasoning, more than knowledge of the revelation itself is integral to the definition of practice”; and, finally, “that the authority of the practice defined by later generations [is equivalent to] the authority of revelation” (68, 88). There are problems with this line of thinking, however. First, there are no methodological, or logical, connections between the three steps. Certainly, it is difficult to see how the third step follows from the first two. Second, to assume that scholars can interpret revelation without any knowledge of it not only sounds counterintuitive but effectively nullifies the importance of the Sunnah, which, after all, is said to offer knowledge about revelation. In terms of this method, what is important is not the Qurān or the Sunnah but knowledge of the method itself! Most disturbing of all, however, is the assumption that Muslim commentarial practices have the same authority as revelation, which puts the Qurān on the same footing as its exegesis. Indeed, this method erases the distinction between

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the Qurān and its exegesis, which the Qurān itself establishes as being critical to safeguarding its integrity as divine speech.23 However, no human interpretation of God’s words can possibly be accepted as having the same authority as these words since that would amount to putting humans on par with God.24 In effect, the method Muslims sacralize as Islamic nullifies the distinction Muslim theology has always made between “divine speech and its earthly realization.”25 This so-­called Islamic method collapses the Qurān with its male-­authored exegesis, displacing the Qurān’s authority by the authority of (conservative) male exegetes. In this way, it confuses God’s authority with the authority of interpreters of sacred knowledge, thus infringing on the cardinal tenet of God’s absolute sovereignty, a function of God’s indivisible unity (Tawhīd). Ironically, like other aspects of religious knowledge, this method of interpreting the Qurān began as the opposite of what it eventually became. It originated in attempts—by the ubiquitous al-­Shafi in the second/eighth century—to make the Sunnah paradigmatic, but it ended up generating a paradigm that enabled its users to further their own hegemony instead. For al-­Shafi, the problem was how to authorize interpretive variations within an Islamic framework. His solution was to link variations to the same textual sources: the Qurān and the Sunnah. However, the use of this intertextual method in the hands of various schools in the following centuries came to preclude variations, for reasons that Wheeler (1996) considers in detail but which are too complex to condense meaningfully here. The point is that a method devised to protect the integrity of the Qurān and the Sunnah instead enabled its users to extend “authority from a posited [canonical text]” to themselves thus permitting them to install “a paradigm that authorizes [their] own interpretive privilege” (237, 226). This method has developed into a system of scholarly lineage, or nasab, in which one’s authority derives not so much from knowledge of the subject matter or the merits of one’s work as from one’s association with a specific interpretive community and one’s acceptance of a thin consensus of medieval jurists. It also rests on an epistemology that, by confusing divine speech with its human interpretations, undermines the doctrine of Tawhīd and enables and legitimizes the displacement of misogyny onto the divine. The fact that the developing structure of “Islamic” method “made for nothing but conservatism” (Rahman 1965, 141) is hardly surprising, then, although conservatism was also a product of the manner in which debates 83

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among the ulama about the merits of philosophy versus dogmatic theology were resolved. Conservative ulama opposed philosophy and the use of reason in religious inquiry on both epistemological and theological grounds. The famous Muslim Sufi al-­Ghazali held that real knowledge comes only through unmediated religious experiences and intuition, not through rational or philosophical inquiry, and it was his way of thinking that won the day. Their victory, says Rahman, allowed orthodoxies (in his terminology) to proscribe rational thought when they assumed control over educational institutions and processes in the state. As a result, ilm, or knowledge, came to be confused with knowledge of tradition—in particular, of the Prophet’s Sunnah—and Islam was gradually disassociated not only from philosophy and reason, but from science and culture as well. By reducing Islam simply to theology, Muslim scholars also transformed a “culture of knowledge . . . into a culture of theological censorship” (Moazzam 1992, 72–73). The dismissal of rationalism and a growing interest in disciplines like rhetoric also added to the conservatism of Muslim methodology, eventually fostering a milieu in which “a vibrant and revolutionary religious document like the Quran was buried under the debris of grammar and rhetoric” and displaced by “commentaries and supercommentaries” (Rahman 1982, 37, 36). This does not mean, however, that later scholars did not contest these developments. Ibn Rushd (Averroes), for example, undertook a major critique of al-­Ghazali; also, “religious curiosity remained great, and in certain places and periods of time even Muslim orthodox authors remained quite openminded” (Lazarus-­Yafeh 1992, 133). However, according to Rahman, radical ideas did not leave a trace on the community, which he says only changes “when the cumulative process has reached a stage of outburst that literally re-­forms orthodoxy” (146). Such an outburst, unfortunately, did not come to pass. Arguably, an additive mode of knowledge construction is not unusual, nor is it without merit since its cumulative aspects also reflect an accommodative and plural strain in religious discourse. (Of course, textual and discursive pluralism is also a function of interpretive differences and not only accommodation.) For instance, the ahādith “and other compilations from medieval Islam often preserve multiple accounts of the same episode, with little or no effort to privilege one over the other” (Zaman 1997, 15); even the theory of ijmā did little to eliminate these variations. The very tradition of pluralism and the pluralism of tradition provide materials for a critique of religious knowledge and allows Muslims to rethink

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it by drawing on its different aspects. That is why even progressive Muslims can continue to revision Islam in the light of tradition today (Brown 1996, 1). At the same time, however, the tendency to accumulate meanings by reading backward has resulted in canonizing the religious knowledge generated over a thousand years ago, including an exegesis that fails to treat the Qurān as a textual and thematic unity. It is therefore unable to recover general principles from its teachings. Nor can this method recover the Qurān’s egalitarian and antipatriarchal episteme which, as I argued in chapter 1, can only be retrieved by recognizing the hermeneutical connections between different themes in the text. The tendency to accumulate meanings rather than to (re)create them and the growth of a self-­referential and self-­reproducing methodological paradigm can be explained not only in terms of the activity of conservative interpretive communities and the workings of intertextuality but also in terms of the state’s active participation in the processes of knowledge creation.

T he State and Knowl edge Cre atio n Several historians suggest that the early Muslim state became a purveyor of processes ranging from the way in which interpretive communities came to define religious ilm to the consolidation of their own authority within the state. Khalidi (1994), for instance, argues that it may have been the Umayyad state’s reliance on religious ilm that permitted the transition from an oral to a written tradition. As he says, the advocacy “of religious knowledge in a manner which would make it available to state or faction use was soon to lead to a situation where the transmission of texts without direct oral authorization was more practicable” (22). This transition, as noted above, would lead ultimately to the creation of a hierarchy of religious materials in which the Qurān’s authority would be subordinated to that of the Sunnah, and the Sunnah’s authority to that of interpretive communities. Similarly, the Abbasid state helped to foster, though perhaps neither intentionally nor always consistently, the rise of a “proto-­Sunni elite” and a legacy of collaboration between the state and religious scholars, according to Muhammad Qasim Zaman (1997). In distinction to those who adhere to the theory of a separation of religion and the state under the Abbasids, Zaman maintains that, despite the fact that Abbasid “commitment to Islamic norms [and] their Realpolitik (not to mention their personal conduct) . . . fell short

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of these norms [and also] frequently violated them” (135), there also was collaboration “between the caliphs and the ulama” (12). This collaboration survived not only periodic conflicts but also the so-­called “inquisition”26 launched by the caliph al-­Mamun in the third/ninth century against the ulama in an attempt to establish his own religious clout as imām (leader of a religious community). Indeed, according to Goldziher (1971, 66), the less the caliphs were true kings, the more they sought to represent themselves as imāms. Conversely, the more the diminution in the power of the caliphal court in Baghdad, “the more did the theologians ponder on the canonical law of the state, which so beautifully delineated the powers of the Caliph in a theoretically definitive way at a time when the caliphate in fact had only the ideal character of imam” (71). This nexus between religion and politics was perhaps inescapable. In “a state where the caliph constantly reiterated that he was ‘God’s deputy,’” says Khalid Blankinship (1994, 101), “political dialogue necessarily had to take a religious course.” By the same token, many religious initiatives were overtly political in nature. For instance, Sunnah supporters (Ahl-­i-­ Sunnah) initially developed in opposition to the Abbasids and envisaged using the Sunnah to curb the caliphs’ religious authority, even as the latter were trying to institute their own hegemony over society by their “deep involvement . . . in the religious life of the times” (Zaman 1997, 11). Only gradually and as a result of numerous factors did political collusion between the ulama and the state—and in some cases, the ulama’s co-­ optation by the state—become prevalent. As “recipients of state largesse or beneficiaries of private endowments, as frequent employees on state business . . . as public preachers,” and even as temporary rulers in some places, the ulama increasingly became “propagandists for the state” (Khalidi 1994, 200). In their capacity as propagandists (or, organic intellectuals) for the state,27 the ulama drew on the theory of ijmā to advocate loyalty to rulers, even if corrupt, a position that divested the Qurān and Muslim tradition of their subversive elements. Not only did the ulama progressively dilute “the egalitarian impulse in various parts of tradition,” argues Louise Marlow (1997, 93), but they also justified hierarchical “models of kingship” in a society whose Scripture extolled the virtues of egalitarianism (66). Thus, the ulama, who had “gained incontestable possession of the moral high ground” by the second/eighth century, refused to “translate the antihierarchical and antiauthoritarian moral at the heart of their scholarly tradition into an active

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social and political opposition” (116). Instead, they sought to justify not only hierarchies but quietism as well, even though some of them “still felt obliged to defend their quietism, since it was activism that had been suggested most strongly by early Muslim experience” (40). By the third/ninth century, even Qurānic exegesis showed that the egalitarianism once associated with the Qurān had lost its “subversive connotation” (49). This conservatism aided state rulers in representing themselves as the “true heirs of Islam’s earliest saints and scholars” (Khalidi 1994, 43) in their attempt to underwrite their own hegemony,28 a mode of rule based as much on coercion as on consent. In fact, it was the attempt by the Abbasids to acquire hegemony that had the most far-­reaching consequences for the construction of both religious and secular knowledge. Faced with the prospect of ruling a multicultural and multiethnic empire in the face of chronic rebellions, state elites often turned to compromise rather than to force. Thus, while ruling through an “absolute monarchy” that concentrated unprecedented power in their own hands,29 the Abbasids nonetheless showed “sympathy to their loyal constituencies; they also anticipated and then catered to their requirements” (Lassner 1980, 244), ending revolts “as much by compromise as by repression” (Kennedy 1981, 15). On the religious front, not only did the Abbasids collaborate with sections of the ulama—enabling the emergence of a “proto-­Sunni elite” (Zaman 1997)—but they also supported the theory of ijmā in an effort to preserve communal solidarities. This goal was also shared by the “community of consensus-­minded scholars in the first two Islamic centuries” who, writes Khalidi (1994, 70), did not wish to espouse ideas that could be used to “fuel civil and religious discord.” The problem was that “once the unity of the community was accepted as the highest politico-­juristic value and took shape in the theory of consensus” (226), it became difficult to contest the religious (and secular) interpretations of knowledge preserved in it. In fact, over time, the objective of ijmā—to protect communal solidarities— became secondary to protecting its own authority, which was done by elevating it over ijtihād, the “central hermeneutic” of law (Sonn 1996, 7). As noted above, it was this reversal that quashed the democratic potential of a tradition once based in critical thinking and in civil society. The theory of ijmā and the state’s role in its construction allowed states and the ulama an increasing role in the creation of religious meaning, while the use of ijmā to discourage critical thinking (ijtihād ) tended to foster a self-­perpetuating and basically conservative paradigm that continues to

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persist, with some modifications, in Muslim societies even today. Thus, the emphasis on ijmā and the closure of ijtihād limited the right of later scholars to interpret Islam and heralded “the advent of scholasticism” instead. Scholars were obliged to fashion their works “on an established body of masters, in this case the developed doctrine of the canonical schools” (Peters 1994, 242). By the fourth/tenth century, they had been reduced to little more than “copyists,” as one Ibn Zuhayra lamented. “Authorship nowadays,” he observed, “is but collecting what is scattered and gluing together what has crumbled” (quoted in Goldziher 1971, 245). The usefulness of the theory of ijmā to the state does not mean, however, that the theory itself was merely instrumentalist; nor is it proof of Islam’s fixation with authority, as some of its critics allege. For one, the formation of any paradigm requires consensus, and it was no different for the Muslims. Not only did consensus allow scholars like al-­Shafi to introduce some rigor into modes of interpretive reasoning, but it also preserved the Sharīah in its early years. For another, the theory of ijmā was a response to specific historical exigencies, and if it promoted quietism, it was not because Islam itself is averse to rebellion but because, as Marlow (1997) shows, there was a felt need to counter the radicalism of the Qurān’s teachings and the example of early Muslim history. If the Abbasid state’s role in the creation of religious ilm, tradition, and methodology underwrote communal identities, its involvement in the creation of secular knowledge reinforced these identities by (re)shaping Muslim historical memories. As Fatima Mernissi (1996, 89) argues in this context, every “claiming of Islam as a tradition is a political act. Every ‘tradition’ is a political construct, a sophisticated editing of ‘memory.’” If this is so, then the most sophisticated editing of this memory occurred during the reign of the Abbasids through reconstructions of history itself. Thus, on the one hand, collusion between the state and the ulama inspired the latter to doctor the historical corpus, which, says Khalidi (1994, 70), was “islamized, ‘domesticated,’ pruned of its outrageous elements.” On the other hand, the state presided over the inauguration of a brand of historiography in its own service that sought to reconstruct religious and political events without much concern for factual accuracy. When the evidence did not conform to the vision of the Abbasid state, writes Jacob Lassner (1986, xiii), its apologists simply “reversed the historiographical process. Returning to the earlier periods, they again rewrote history; however, this time, they recorded the past as a back projection of more current events.

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As a result, critical moments of Islamic experience were idealized and then recorded as distant echoes of one another.” In this manner, “the nostalgic memories of a not so distant past were instrumental in shaping the political outlook of Muslims during the formative years of the Abbasid regime” (Lassner 1986, xii). This search for “a legitimating past” (Khalidi 1994)—rendered sacred by the Prophet’s presence in it—endowed “complex realities . . . with a compelling though highly artificial sense of symmetry” (Lassner, xiii). It is this sense of time— undefiled, sacred, unbroken—that continues to shape not only Muslim religious imaginaries and memories but also their communal identities. And defining their identities “according to the interpretation of a shared past” makes Muslims the “true inheritors of a medieval process of Islamic interpretation” (Spellberg 1994, 80, 195). However, the desire to recapture the past was not just “an exercise in which historical memories were cynically distorted and presented to a gullible public for political gain”; rather, the efforts to retrace the Prophet’s steps not only had “an almost magical quality,” but it seemed as if an invocation of past memories was enough “to overcome the most discouraging of contemporary obstacles” (Lassner 1986, xiv). To the extent that the Abbasids were besieged by obstacles, such “imaginative reconstructions”30 of history (and of Islam) must have seemed deeply appealing and integral to maintaining unity in the face of dissension and diversity. Indeed, “the attachment to Islam and to the liturgical language which had become the cultural language,” argues Dominique Sourdel (1979, 185), helped to maintain “a deeper unity than could have been thought possible in this very mixed totality, always ready to carve itself up, and which remained, despite all the divisions and all the schisms, an Arabic and Islamic world.” Yet, eventually, this very attachment would enable the political uses—and abuses—of Islam by states to further their own political and ideological objectives. Although the conservative nature of Muslim methodology and Islam’s association with quietism resulted from the consensual, rather than the coercive, aspects of religious discourse and of Abbasid rule, this does not mean that coercion played no role in its growth. The Abbasids suppressed dissenters “with a determination hitherto unknown in Islam” (Kennedy 1981, 97), even having some ulama flogged for political dissent. Such persecution crushed the pluralism evident in different readings of Islam. As a result, despite interpretive differences, “including with regard to 89

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arrangements governing the relationship between the sexes,” what emerged at the end of their rule was a uniform “interpretation and . . . generally minimal differences” among the surviving “versions of Islam,” argues Leila Ahmed (1992, 99). These versions, she says, “reflect not unanimity of understanding but rather the triumph of the religious and social vision of the Abbasid state at this formative moment in history.” Insofar as this vision excluded egalitarian readings of Islam, and insofar as Abbasid rule coincided with and also facilitated the age of the jawārī (women slaves), its legacy was not very providential for women. (It was the accumulation of slaves and concubines by the thousands that spawned the prodigious harems of the famed world of the Thousand and One Nights, which continues—through the workings of Orientalist intertextuality—to shape not only Muslim but also Western memories and stereotypes of Islam.) Thus, Mernissi (1996, 14) argues that the “triumph of political/economic power” of the Abbasid state was accompanied by, and founded on, institutionalizing female slavery and subordination to men. From now on, this era— eulogized as the Golden Age of Islam—would provide the stuff of endless fantasy (and misogyny) to both Muslims and non-­Muslims. The “tradition of historicizing women as active, full participants in the making of culture” (Mernissi, 94) would come to be replaced by a “memory in which women have no right to equality” (79). Indeed, over the centuries, women would be marginalized not only in memory but also in real life within Muslim states and religious communities. According to some theorists, however, this era also saw positive changes in Muslim attitudes toward women’s sexuality. For instance, the institution of the harem, borrowed by Muslims from the Greeks and Persians, no longer came to be viewed as “a reservoir of passive women in the sexual service of their master” (Tucker 1993, 12). Rather, women were acknowledged as having the same sexual drives as men and the same right to fulfill them; moreover, women and men were seen to be equally responsible for creating a child. Qualities that allegedly were prized in slaves—such as intellect, spirit, and learning—also came to be prized in wives. Yet at the level of rulers and the ulama, segregation remained prevalent. The belief that the “Islamic world” was a conglomeration of “tribes, dynasties, religious communities” and not “a congeries of national states” (Beckingham 1983, 610) deflects attention from the role of the state in the subordination of Muslim women. By helping to define meaning and historical memory in ways that were inimical to women and encouraging

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a mode of religious politics that conflated Islam with the state, state rulers also lent legitimacy to some of the repressive state practices that women experience today.

Tex ts, Sex , and State s The conservatism of Muslim tradition, method, and memory, I have suggested, can be ascribed to a specific configuration of political and sexual power that, in general, privileged the state over civil society, men over women, conservatism over egalitarianism, and some religious texts and methodologies over others. The nexus between state power and knowledge is, of course, not unique to Islam. Bandali Jawzi argued in the 1930s that “interpretations that [become] canonized as knowledge, to be passed down through generations, are those that are conducive to the maintenance of power in the institutions which produced them” (quoted in Sonn 1996, 9). To Jawzi, says Sonn, “it stood to reason that the accounts promulgated as authoritative, and thus bequeathed to successive generations, would be those approved by the imperial bureaucracy” (viii). If the imperial bureaucrats and scholars of the Abbasid era could do no better than to leave their own imprints on Muslim knowledge and tradition, later generations had an opportunity to reappraise both in the light of their own wisdom and learning. However, in spite of, or perhaps because of, their “preoccupation with the authenticity and continuity of tradition,” Muslims have not found it easy to do so (Brown 1996, 81). In part, the Muslim view of history makes this difficult since, for Abrahamic faiths, “history is the field in which God operates; it is in historical events that the transcendent becomes known.” Tradition, then, is not just intertwined with history; it becomes the reincarnation of history. This may also explain why Muslims ignore “the power of interpretation in the formation of historical meaning”31 (Spellberg 1994, 1), a process in which “imagination and representation [are] no less, if not more, important than . . . the ‘reality’ of that past” (Zaman 1997, 16). Consequently, opening up to critique the processes by which historical, hence religious, meanings were formed threatens Muslims’ sense of their past and thus also of themselves. In part, however, the Muslim desire to protect their past from controversy may also have to do with the legacies of Western colonialism. As Rahman (1982, 147) says, the encounter with the West has left behind a “peculiar psychological complex” that often leads Muslims to defend their “past as

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though it were our God.” Whatever the case, it is their deep investment in the past that renders Muslims so vulnerable to the ulama and to states that are often the only ones to claim the mantle of leadership on the basis of appeals to the past, appeals that once Muslims accept as legitimate also lock them into certain epistemologies, methodologies, and histories. In this context, I have argued that what is defined as an Islamic epistemology and methodology is based less on the view of Qurān-­as-­revelation than on prophetic praxis-­as-­revelation (the Sunnah-­as-­wahy). This view leads to locating meaning not in the Qurān, and thus in authorial intent discourse (though classical tafsīr contains elements of both), but in communal interpretive practices that have given the Sunnah much of its content. In spite of the putatively democratic and liberatory nature of a method that locates meanings in the community, it has turned out to be neither democratic nor liberatory since it has closed off critical reasoning (ijtihād) by taking a medieval consensus (ijmā) as infallible and irrevocable (Hourani 1985, 199, 225). This has culminated in the stagnation of tradition itself. Even though tradition is not always irrational or arbitrary, and every redefinition of it may be freely chosen,32 in reality, Muslim tradition resists the application of new methods to read the Qurān, while the structure of religious authority also closes off the Qurān to new readers, especially women. Interpretive communities have come to see as their task not only reading the Qurān as the first Muslims may have done but also to read it for all Muslims; in such a milieu, locating meaning in “the community” counts for little. Moreover, the state’s ongoing involvement in sustaining the hegemony of conservative interpretive communities and of religious meaning has injected coercive power into the very heart of knowledge construction in many Muslim societies. In light of these facts, and also the conservative processes that shaped tradition and method, it should not be difficult to see why Muslims have been susceptible to patriarchal readings of the Qurān; why it is so difficult to generate new, liberatory readings; or why Qurānic hermeneutics remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry today. While the conservatism of Muslim method and tradition derives from the ways in which knowledge was constructed historically, its persistence today in most societies has to do with “the absence of large-­scale external— or internal—challenges or pressures to change it” (Stowasser 1994, 7–8). In fact, there are pressures to keep it intact. Their own conservatism may be the most crucial internal pressure that functions to protect not only tradition and method but also their attendant legal-­theological paradigms, even

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though some Muslims have challenged both periodically. Where such pressures have threatened the status quo, the modern state has stepped in to ensure the hegemony of certain groups and of their readings of Islam. In fact, “the ability of the authoritarian ‘Islamic’ state to establish the dominant terms of discourse” (Roff 1987, 5–6), and thus to impose its own vision of Islam on civil society, has increased over time as the state has acquired the means to execute its policies more efficiently. Thus, whereas the Umayyad and Abbasid states were able to proscribe religious knowledge and discourses from time to time, they were unable “to implement their religious policies effectively,” even enabling the advent of counter-­orthodoxies (Zaman 1997, 202). The policies of the early states also showed significant consensual elements (the fact that the content and consequences of accord were not very auspicious for method or tradition or women is, of course, a different matter). While not all Muslim states today are committed to a process of Islamization, and while not all states who are committed to such a process have the same understanding of it, they are able to implement their programs in a much more thorough manner than before. This is because of their control over printing presses, modes of censorship, laws against apostasy,33 and the existence of weak and disorganized civil societies resulting from years of rule by brutal dictators, many kept in power by the United States. It is in light of such considerations that we can identify what is distinctive about (re)reading the Qurān in Muslim societies today. What is distinctive is not the existence of interpretive communities, since “every reading of a text always takes place within a community, a tradition, or a living current of thought” (Ricoeur 1974, 3). Rather, what is distinctive is the way in which the state itself has become involved in defining the framework for the production of religious knowledge. Readings, to be accepted as legitimate, must occur not only within the framework of certain interpretive communities and practices but also within a matrix of coercive political power wielded by the state. In such a milieu, rereading the Qurān in egalitarian modes is an exercise that has the potential to impinge on the hegemony of the state itself, and to the extent that states can threaten people’s lives, it can become an exercise in personal risk-­taking. The coercive abuse of Islam to oppress people, especially women, is one of the greatest impediments to rereading the Qurān today. In such a context, liberatory readings are not just about redefining personal freedoms; they are also about challenging entrenched structures of political, patriarchal, state, and sexual power.

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These days, readers of the Qurān also have to contend with ongoing attempts by the United States to “reform and reshape Islam” in the aftermath of 9/11/2001. As Saba Mahmood (2006, 344, 340) argues, these exertions are meant to produce “a particular kind of religious subject” in Muslim societies and countries, one “who is compatible with the rationality and exercise of liberal political rule.” Ironically, US policy makers think the way to fashion such a subject is through the Qurānic hermeneutics of some “secular liberal Muslim reformers” who also believe, as US officials do, that “the central problem haunting Muslim societies lies in their inability to achieve critical distance between the divine text and the world.” An example is the late Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd who, as Mahmood remarks, was “engaged precisely in formulating the interpretive arguments through which traditional hermeneutical methods can be displaced.” Indeed, Abu Zayd (2006) sought not only to displace such methods but also to “rethink” the Qurān by suggesting that instead of taking God as its “author,” Muslims would be better served by treating it as a part-­human discourse. (I discuss his work, along with that of some other scholars who share his views, in chapter 8.) In effect, US-­sponsored secularism in Muslim countries today aspires not to guarantee religious freedoms, as secularism does in the West, but to secularize the Quran itself. It seeks to do this by altering Muslim notions of the sacred by chipping away at the doctrine of the Qurān’s sacrality, thus hollowing out Islam from the inside. This is a particularly destructive approach since assailing Muslim beliefs, and even just “peddling the specious binary between Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights, Islam and freedom, etc., makes it seem that Muslims can have only one or the other.” Clearly, the secular hope is that Muslims will opt for secularism even if it involves gutting Islam as the condition for ensuring them certain rights. Instead, and quite predictably, Muslims go on choosing Islam or, rather, those interpretations of it that are prevalent in their societies. In so far as these are overwhelmingly patriarchal and inhospitable to certain ideas, Muslim women also go on being caught in a double bind. (Barlas 2012, 422)

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P a r t II

God, the Prophets, and Fathers

Invent not similitudes For God: for God knoweth, And ye know not. The Qurān (16:74 [Ali 1988, 676])

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Chapter 4

The Patriarchal Imaginary of Father/s Divine Ontology and the Prophets ▼

God has said: “Take not (For worship) two gods: For [God] is just One God Then fear Me (and Me alone).” The Qurān (16:51 [Ali 1988, 669]) 1

I

slam, I began this work by saying, need not be read as a religion of the Father/fathers; that is, as a patriarchal religion, if by “patriarchy” we mean father-­rule and/or a politics of male privilege based in theories of sexual differentiation.2 Both forms of patriarchy associate the male/masculine with the Self, knowledge, truth, and sovereignty, while representing the woman as different, unequal, or the “Other.”3 In monotheistic religions, these representations draw on a patriarchalized view of God, whereas in secular contexts they are based in specific claims about biology and culture. I thus visualize patriarchy as a continuum and move between its different poles in interpreting the Qurān. I hope to show that the Qurān challenges the constitutive myths of patriarchy and that it does not inherently or symbolically (biologically or culturally) privilege males, masculinity, fathers, or father-­right/rule. Beyond that, I will show that the teachings of the Qurān are radically egalitarian and even antipatriarchal.

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I substantiate this claim by examining the nature of divine self-­disclosure and the Qurānic narratives of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad. Specifically, I focus on the Qurān’s repudiation of the patriarchal imaginary of God-­the-­Father and the irreconcilable conflict between Islamic monotheism (Tawhīd) and theories of father-­right/male privilege. In this context, I examine the Qurān’s refusal to sacralize the prophets as real or symbolic fathers, as well as its sustained critique of the historical practice of fathers’ rule. In chapters 6 and 7, I explain why we cannot derive theories of male privilege or sexual inequality and differentiation from the Qurān’s position on sex/gender, sexuality, the family, and marriage. Together, these chapters aim to clarify the scriptural basis of sexual equality in Islam and to challenge feminist claims that patriarchy has God on its side, and conservative ones that “the Islamic family was to be essentially maleworshipping” (Bouhdiba 1985, 11). I. (Re)presenting God Since “a culture’s idea of divinity is central not only to that culture’s religious life but also to its social, political, familial institutions and relationships,”4 how we define God has implications not only for patriarchies but also for a theology and hermeneutics of liberation. In other words, “sacred knowledge [as] master knowledge”5 has the power to shape our views not only of God but also of our own moral, social, and sexual self-­worth and relationships. As such, when sacred knowledge is used to engender or sexualize God (humanize or anthropomorphize God) as male, it also underwrites male privilege since men acquire power from “the fact that the source of ultimate value is often described in anthropomorphic images as Father or King.”6 Indeed, many feminists have pointed out that it is the “exclusively masculine symbolism for God, for the notion of divine ‘incarnation’ in human nature, and for the human relationship to God” that reinforces sexual oppression (Daly 1973, 4). Since the use of sacred knowledge to engender God or, rather, to represent God as male impedes a theology of liberation, attempts to depatriarchalize theology and to evolve a liberatory hermeneutics start by engaging the sexual/textual politics of sacred misrepresentation. In this context, some theorists favor degendering “the word God” (Ramshaw 1995, 19), while others want to re-­engender God by recovering God’s “female guises” (Raschke and

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Raschke 1995). Yet others have sought to revive the ancient goddess cults as a counterpoint to masculinist constructions of God. Despite the differences between them, however, all three approaches reveal that the problem, as scholars see it, ultimately is not so much that a specific sex has been ascribed to God, but that a specific meaning has been ascribed to this sex historically, one that has served to legitimize sexual hierarchy and inequalities. Arguably, then, it is not God’s representation as male that is problematic but our own definitions of male/ness; that is, sexed representations of God are problematic only to the extent that specific constructions of gender are. Nonetheless, as long as our views of gender remain questionable, so does God’s depiction as father/male. That is why, in my own analysis, I begin by examining the nature of divine self-­disclosure in the Qurān before discussing the various “Creator models”7 Muslims have formulated on the basis of its teachings.

Di v i ne Sel f -­d i sclo sure The single most essential aspect of God’s self-­disclosure in the Qurān is that God is One, hence indivisible; this principle of divine unity (Tawhīd) extends to the idea that God is incomparable, hence unrepresentable. Both separately and together, these doctrines preclude associating forebears, partners, or progeny with God, or misrepresenting God as father, son, husband, or male. I will therefore consider each proposition in turn. Islamic monotheism would not be monotheism if it were not based in the idea of God’s indivisible unity. As the Qurān repeatedly warns and confirms, “Your God is One God” (16:22 [Ali, 661]). In fact, one entire su¯rah is dedicated to the theologeme of divine unity: Say: [God] is God, The One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; [God] begetteth not, Nor is [God] begotten; And there is none Like unto [God]. The Qurān (112 [Ali, 1806])

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God is Absolute, and God’s nature is unity. Tawhīd, as Merryl Wyn Davies (1988, 58) points out, is the foundation of “the Islamic conceptual fabric,” and, as a concept, it rules out the notion of “dichotomy, of mutually opposed difference. Any reduction to mutually opposed difference would be false opposition, a reductive destruction of balance.” Thus, the very manner in which the Qurān describes God’s unity rules out the binary modes of thinking which underpin patriarchal thought.8 Since God is indivisible, God’s sovereignty is also indivisible. No one— not other deities, or divine consorts and offspring, or humans—can partake in it; shirk, the symbolic extension of God’s sovereignty to others, is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Qurān. In explaining why God and God’s sovereignty are indivisible, the Qurān states that had there been multiple gods and many sources of divine sovereignty, “behold, each god Would have taken away What [each] had created, And some would have Lorded it over others!” (33:91 [Ali, 889]). In contrast to the existential and moral chaos unleashed by polytheism, monotheism makes for a just and coherent moral universe, since God—as Toshihiko Izutsu (1964, 129) reminds us—never does any wrong (zulm) to anybody; rather, God in the Qurān is an ethical construct associated with the concepts of truth and justice. Indeed, the idea of God’s justness is integral to God’s unity (monotheism). As L. E. Goodman (1996, 16) says of the God of Abraham, “God here is universal, not local or parochial,” an “Absolute [Who] brooks no evil” (22). In fact, it is the goodness of God, integrating all affirmative values, that renders the God of Abraham9 universal. Had evil remained, conflict would be ineradicable—one deity or tribe of deities for one value or farrago of values and another deity or swarm of deities for another. Moral coherence would be lost and, with it, the very possibility of an idea of God. (Goodman, 28)

God’s unity is thus foundational to “the intellectual advance [that represents the] purgation of evil from the idea of the divine” (Goodman, ix) since it is only “when dualism finally yields to monotheism and acknowledges the insubstantiality of evil and the pure reality of the Good” (29) that evil is nullified. God’s unity means not only that God has no partners but also that God is neither Son (Christ) nor Father (of Christ or of other deities). Allegations to the contrary by the Jews, Christians, and polytheists during

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the Prophet’s lifetime led the Qurān to admonish them unendingly. Says the Qurān: In blasphemy indeed, Are those that say That God is Christ The son of Mary. Say: “Who then Hath the least power Against God, if [God’s] Will Were to destroy Christ The son of Mary, his mother, And all—every one That is on the earth?” The Qurān (5:19 [Ali, 246–47])

Christ, the Qurān repeatedly clarifies, was a prophet who forbade his own deification and sacralizing God as his Father: Christ Jesus the son of Mary Was (no more than) An apostle of God, . . . Say not “Trinity”: desist: It will be better for you: For God is One God: Glory be to [God]: (Far Exalted is [God]) above Having a son. The Qurān (4:171 [Ali, 234])

The Qurān also condemns Jewish sacralizations of God as father. As it says: The Jews call Uzair a son Of God, and the Christians Call Christ the Son of God. That is a saying from their mouth;

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(In this) they but imitate What the Unbelievers of old Used to say: God’s curse Be on them: how they are deluded Away from the Truth! The Qurān (9:30 [Ali, 448])

The Qurān is equally severe in castigating the polytheists, who, it says, “falsely, Having no knowledge, Attribute to [God] Sons and daughters. Praise and glory be To [God Who is] above What they attribute to [God]!” How, asks the Qurān, “can [God] have a son When [God] hath no consort?” (6:100–101 [Ali, 319]). When another āyah condemns the polytheists for ascribing only daughters to God, it is not because God deems them less worthy than sons; it is because the polytheists assign to God “what they hate (for themselves)” (16:62 [Ali, 672]). Not only did the Arabs of the Prophet’s time regard the birth of girls as a calamity, but they buried many alive, a practice God condemns as utterly heinous and promises to punish.10 That it is no better to ascribe sons to God than it is daughters is clear from numerous āyāt, including those quoted above. Not only, then, does God not stand in the literal relationship of son, father, husband, or partner to a divine pantheon, but God also does not stand in the symbolic relationship of a father (or jealous wife)11 to human beings. Thus, the Qurān also rejects designations of God as a figurative father: (Both) the Jews and the Christians Say: “We are sons Of God, and His beloved.” Say: “Why then doth [God] Punish you for your sins? Nay, ye are but men,— Of the men [God] hath created:” The Qurān (5:20 [Ali, 247])

Given the Qurān’s unrelenting rejections of God’s sacralization as Father, it seems unconscionable to read Islam as a theological patriarchy. If God can only be a patriarch or God can only be patriarchalized—to the extent

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that God can, in fact, be sacralized as Father—then how can God’s self-­ disclosure in the Qurān be interpreted as providing the basis for either patriarchalized views of God or theories of father-­right/rule based in such views? If God is not Father in Heaven in either a literal or a symbolic sense, how can fathers represent their rule on earth as replicating the model of divine patriarchy? And if—as the Qurān makes clear—we cannot represent fathers’ rule as replicating God’s rule, in what sense is God “on the side” of fathers or of patriarchy? Indeed, if God is not father, son, or husband, in what sense is God male (“He”)? Ironically, while Muslims reject misrepresentations of God as father/ male, most see no problem in continuing to masculinize God linguistically and to propagate, on the basis of their linguistic references, theories of male rule/privilege over women. One therefore needs to inquire into the paradox of masculinist conceptions of God and the idea of a symbolic continuum between God’s rule and man’s in the absence of the Qurānic view of God as Father/male. This paradox, I believe, is a function of the Creator models, as Ian Netton (1989) calls them, and of a semiotic collapse in Muslim theology between the signifier (the word God) and the Signified (God), and I examine each in turn.

C re ato r Model s: (Re)th eorizin g the Divin e As the four Creator models—the Qurānic, the mystical, the allegorical, and the neo-­Platonic—attest, Muslims have conceived of “their one God in several widely different ways” (Netton 1989, 2). Even so, all “Islamic thinking about God, centers upon the divine names or attributes revealed in the [Qurān]” (Murata 1992, 9). Drawing on such āyāt as “there is nothing Whatever like unto [God]” (42:11 [Ali, 1307]) and “Glory be to God, the Lord of Inaccessibility, Above everything [ascribed to God]” (37:180),12 the classical position (tanzīh) in dogmatic theology (kalām) began by declaring God incomparable, hence unrepresentable, especially in terms of “human form or human attributes” (Sherif 1985, 16). However, since this position stressed God’s transcendence to the exclusion of God’s immanence, it also ended up conveying the sense of a God whom, argued Sufis such as Ibn al-­‘Arabi, “no one could possibly love since He was too remote and incomprehensible” (Murata 1992, 8). The theological cost of rendering God incomparable, then, was also to render God remote, hence dissimilar to humans. This is why the sapiential (Sufi) tradition has

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concentrated on God’s immanence, interpreting it as nearness to, and similarity with, humans by way of tashbīh. However, even those Muslims who stress similarity, notes Murata, “give priority to incomparability” so as to remain within Islamic norms (53). As she says, tashbīh and tanzīh represent the two poles between which Muslims have tended to think about God, and both, I will argue, anthropomorphize God. Thus, readings of Islam as a “theological patriarchy” emerge from within kalām, which “is locked into an approach that places God the King and the Commander (a close associate of God the Father) at the top of its concerns” (Murata 1992, 3). It seems God’s very transcendence creates the desire to render God intimate in uniquely human terms. Hence, it is kalām (and the Sharīah that derives from it), argues Murata, that establishes God’s primacy as King/Lord/ruler and, in one case, even as Father; however, the solitary reference, by Ibn al-­‘Arabi, to God as Father is anomalous both because of its Christian13 connotations (Murata, 145), and because in Islam, God’s relationship to human beings is ontological and ethical in nature, not consanguinal or contractual (Asad 1993). It is not just kalām that anthropomorphizes God; so too does the sapiential tradition that Murata (1992, 79) maintains seeks to establish a spiritual, as distinct from a social, matriarchy—by “affirming the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving”—even though Muslim theologians “refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God.” If both kalām and Sufism misrepresent God by engendering God, so too do neo-­Platonic models that represent God in terms of essences and attributes. According to Izutsu (1964, 48), the idea of God understood “as a transcendental ‘essence’ opposed to its ‘attributes’ is no longer a [Qurānic] concept in its original form.” Indeed, even the word “Allah,” he says, does not “denote in philosophy simply the same thing as that living God of Creation and Revelation . . . so vividly depicted in the [Qurān]” (51). God in the Qurān, insists Izutsu, can “epistemologically . . . only be an object of ilm [knowledge]. In other words, God can only be known to [humans] indirectly” (49). Even when the Qurān assigns an “immanent aspect” to God, the “Quranic Creator Paradigm,”14 as Ian Netton (1989, 22) calls it, conveys the idea of “a God Who (1) creates ex-­nihilo; (2) acts definitively in historical time; (3) guides His people in such time; and (4) can in some ways be known indirectly by His Creation” (emphasis added). Although all Creator models (except the allegorical, which represents God in purely symbolic terms) anthropomorphize God, there is nothing in

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the doctrines of divine transcendence or of divine immanence that should lead us to do so. Thus, in its avowal that “there is none Like unto [God]” (112:4 [Ali, 1806]), the Qurān establishes that God is unique, hence beyond representation and also beyond gender, since gender is nothing but a representation of sex. In the ideas of divine transcendence and incomparability, then, Muslims have compelling theological reasons to reject God’s engenderment. In fact, inasmuch as the doctrine of divine immanence also recognizes divine incomparability, it provides equally compelling reasons to refuse God’s engenderment. Even the Sufis, who emphasize God’s immanence (hence, similarity to humans), do not refute the idea of God’s incomparability; rather, they arrive at similarity after bringing out incomparability, says Murata (1992, 52). What they dispute is not the idea of incomparability, but that it is “the only valid point of view.” However, even if we do not take incomparability as the only valid viewpoint, it is not necessary, even though it is difficult, to think and speak of divine similarity in sexed or gendered terms since there is nothing in the idea of divine immanence itself that should lead us to engender God. To understand this point, it is necessary to recall that God’s engenderment results both from using gendered languages to speak about God and from labeling God’s attributes masculine or feminine. The Sufis, for example, emphasize attributes they feel reflect “‘feminine’ qualities like love, beauty, and compassion” (Murata 1992, 56), even though the Qurān itself does not define God, or these qualities, in such terms. Similarly, the Qurān speaks of God’s love for human beings; it is theology that, in translating this theme, declares God “‘similar’ (tashbīh) in some fashion to His Creation,” and it justifies this move by referring to such āyāt as “Wherever you turn, there is the face of God” (2:115 [Murata, 9]). However, references to God’s face, or hands, or even to God’s attributes are insufficient in themselves to allow us to depict God as a “distant, dominating, and powerful ruler,” or “a strict and authoritarian father,” or “a warm and loving mother.” Rather, such portrayals stem from imposing onto divine ontology a system of gender dualisms and binary thought in which men are defined as stern, distant, and authoritarian, and women as close, loving, and gentle. Yet nothing in the ideas of distance and sternness renders them (or God) male (kalām), or in the ideas of love and nearness that renders them (or God) female (Sufism). Nonetheless, such ideas of the masculine and feminine principles infuse Muslim conceptualizations of God, even as their own views of Tawhīd (divine unity)

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suggest that God incorporates, but also transcends, all (gender) dualisms and oppositions.

G o d a n d t he Mascul i ne and Fem in in e P rin ciple s Muslim mystics and scholars, says Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1987, 185), interpret “the Quranic statement that God reveals Himself in the Universe through His Names” to mean that “Being manifests itself through its Qualities.” Humans see these qualities as manifesting the masculine and feminine principles and, since we view these principles as being opposed to each other, as also manifesting opposites. Thus, God is “the all-­comprehensive reality, the coincidence of opposites, in whom all characteristics are found” (Murata 1992, 95). God is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Immanent, the Subduer and the Bestower, the Expediter and the Delayer, the Exalter and the Abaser, the Creator of Death and the Alive, and so on, as the ninety-­nine beautiful Names of God reveal. According to Murata, these opposing attributes have led Sufis and scholars to search for the “deepest roots of polarity in the Real” (93). Since God’s Reality as manifest in the cosmos “can be described by opposite and conflicting attributes,” she says, the cosmos too can be viewed “as a vast collection of opposites.” However, not only does this collection “display the activity of the single Principle,” but “opposing forces [are not] absolutely opposed”; rather, they are “complementary or polar” (10–12). Polarity, Roger Ames argues, is to be understood as a “holographic” view of the world and not as duality; the difference, he says, is that the separateness implicit in dualistic explanations yields a view of “a world of ‘things’ characterized by discreteness, finality, closedness, determinateness, independence, a world in which one thing is related to the ‘other’ extrinsically” (quoted in Murata, 10). In contrast, polar explanations give rise to “a world of ‘foci’ characterized by interconnectedness, interdependence, openness, mutuality, indeterminateness, complementarity, correlativity, coextensiveness, a world in which continuous foci are intrinsically related to each other.” Polarity thus manifests not the exclusion implied by duality, but the relationship of opposites within an internally differentiated organic unity. However, as Murata says, the distinctiveness of polarity emerges only through a critique of duality, hence the latter’s usefulness for defining certain theological positions.

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As theorists observe, there is, in polar explanations, a sense of a “higher order unity [that] supersedes contradictions,” much like the “unifying function of the dialectic” (Grosz 1990, 65). And it is such a view of unity that underpins Qurānic/Islamic conceptions of God, which challenge both “orthodox” and feminist Muslim assertions that there is a strict separation of masculine and feminine principles in Islam (Bouhdiba 1985; Sabbah 1984). Such views ignore that Muslims have always understood Tawhīd to signify multiplicity-­in-­unity, meaning that all principles (masculine or feminine) are interconnected in the totality of God’s Being. Thus, among God’s attributes are ones we label “feminine,” like loving, creating, nourishing, forgiving, being patient and compassionate,15 and so forth. At the same time, however, God is also stern in justice, powerful, and a ruler—attributes we think of as masculine. However, the Qurān itself does not masculinize or feminize God’s attributes, and even though femininity and masculinity “have figured very strongly in interpretation of the Qurān,” they have done so without explicit Qurānic sanction, argues Wadud (1999, 22). Polarity—or the interconnectedness of opposite principles—defines not only God’s Reality but the reality of human beings as well who, says Murata (43), being “made in the form of God [also] manifest the whole.”16 This means, in effect, that women and men do not embody mutually exclusive or opposite attributes; rather, they incorporate both masculine and feminine attributes.17 In a polar conception, women are not women because they manifest a lack (usually defined as feminine traits), and men are not men because they possess what women lack (masculine traits). Rather, each manifests the whole. This is why I question some feminist claims that the Qurān is “a thoroughly androcentric” text because it “privileges male sexual agency” (Ali 2006, 132). Androcentrism means treating male traits and masculinity as normative, which the Qurān never does (see chapters 6–8). Indeed, if it were to designate women and men as opposites (man as the Self and woman as the Other, man as having something and woman as lacking something), it could not reasonably hold them to identical standards of moral praxis; lacking knowledge, rationality, the ability to reason (attributes associated with the masculine/Self ), women would be unable to understand, or act upon, divine Truth. In fact, the Qurān does not define women and men in terms of sex or gender attributes; rather, it teaches that humans were created from a single Self (nafs), possess the same attributes, and have the

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same capacity for moral choice, reasoning, and individuality (see chapters 6 and 7). As such, there is nothing in the concept of divine incarnation in humans (or in monotheism itself, as some feminists allege) that is anti-­ women. In fact, inasmuch as the idea of Tawhīd allows for a holistic view of human identity, it is liberatory not only for women but also for men.18

L a n g uage and th e Sem i oti c Co ll a pse It is not only social constructions of gender, including our ideas of masculinity and femininity, that have led Muslims to anthropomorphize God; so too have the discursive strategies they have employed to read the Qurān. In particular, masculinist representations of God result from the tendency to collapse the signifier (the word God) with the Signified (God); that is, to confuse gendered languages with God’s Reality. On the other hand, the tendency to represent men as sovereigns/rulers over women arises not only in masculinized representations of God but also in misconstruing the Qurān’s position on human subjectivity (vice-­regency). This is often misinterpreted as establishing men’s superiority over women even though the Qurān designates human beings, without regard to sex/gender, as God’s vice-­regents.19 It is thus through a double movement, a semiotic one and an analogical one, that God is masculinized and men deified. The semiotic collapse of the Signified with the signifier dates from medieval times, but few scholars have studied it or its implications for Muslim masculinizations of God. In fact, Netton (1989), who uses modern linguistic and semiotic theories to analyze medieval Muslim theology, locates the opposite tendency in it: toward a semiotic disjuncture resulting from the theologians’ adherence to the theme of divine transcendence. This adherence, he says, grew out of a desire to rid formulations about God of “grosser anthropomorphisms [by] stripping God . . . of all human attributes” (3). This is precisely what the Mu‘tazilah (whose doctrine of the created Qurān I examine in chapter 8) were involved in doing. As Netton explains it, however, the problem is that once we accept a theory of God’s utter transcendence after the frequent manner of so many of the medieval philosophers, and then say that “God knows,” or “God has knowledge,” the theologeme “divine knowledge” is basically meaningless in deconstructive terms, since what does it really mean to predicate knowledge of a transcendent divinity? (331)

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According to Netton, then, it was (Mu‘tazilah) theology’s attempt to de-­ anthropomorphize God that occasioned a “radical break between the . . . signifier and the signified,” leading logically to the “prospect of an endless semiosis,” and semiotically to a “paradigm of imperfect signification.” In such a context, Netton argues, even the term “God” becomes “almost equally meaningless” (331). To me, however, Netton’s example shows that, far from emptying out the term God and thereby making it meaningless, the Mu‘tazilah, and medieval Muslim theology in general, invested it with a specific, patriarchal/ized meaning by continuing to assume that God’s transcendent Reality was male (“He”). The semiotic disjuncture is thus also a semiotic collapse since God was masculinized in the midst of efforts to rid our ideas of God of human attributes! Indeed, efforts to de-­anthropomorphize our conceptions of God have never involved finding a suitable theological language to speak about God. Not only do Muslims collapse gendered terms with God’s Reality (masculinizing God by a mere use of words), but they also fail to consider the ways in which gendered language often subverts the Qurān’s purposes. For example, rendering the word insān as “man” even where such a usage runs counter to the Qurān’s intent gives a totally different meaning to its āyāt. For if insān did refer only to “man,” then women would be “exempted from almost all the Islamic injunctions” (Shahab 1993, 403). The androcentric nature of language is, of course, likely to create persistent problems in signification. It may therefore be that “because all our words fall short of His reality, a huge range of more or less unsatisfactory ways of talking about God is positively desirable” (Tugwell, quoted in Netton 1989, 134). However, when some modes of God-­Talk20 are always undesirable to the same group of believers (women), and for the same reasons (their paternalism or sexism), it is time to say that some unsatisfactory ways of talking about God are, in fact, worse than others. The Qurān itself offers us better ways to talk about God by using terms like Rabb and Allah, which have no human counterpart or equivalent, and by prohibiting comparisons with God. It is thus all the more troubling when we translate these terms as “King” or “Lord,” which are not only androcentric but which also fail to convey the sense of creatorship and sovereignty implicit in terms like Rabb and Allah. In fact, words like king and lord encourage false analogies between God’s sovereignty and man’s, even though the two are wholly different, as I will argue below.

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Similarly, confusing words like He or Himself with God’s Reality—which the Qurān also conveys in sex/gender-­neutral terms as We, Us, I—undermines the rich pluralism of scriptural language, reducing God’s Reality to one term or attribute. Even when the Qurān does refer to God as “He,” it does not mean God is male or like one since the Qurān says God cannot be explained by way of similitude (by comparison with another) and in fact forbids using similitude for God. In that God’s representation as “He” or as “King/Lord” is premised on our idea of males and what we take to be definitive about their social or sexual roles, it is a similitude and thus contrary to the Qurān’s injunctions. As the Qurān’s teachings suggest, humans (hence our languages) cannot comprehend, much less define, God; moreover, God’s recourse to human language is meant only to communicate with us in words we can understand, not to delimit God’s Reality. However, instead of recognizing the limitations of language, Muslim theology confuses it with divine Reality, ignoring how this confusion results in humanizing God. And, of course, when “anthropomorphisms succeed in containing God, we have no God; we have instead a glorified image of ourselves” (Ramshaw 1995, 21). It may be that the only way we know how to think or talk is from within our own sexed/engendered bodies and experiences; moreover, as Gail Ramshaw says, in “a century obsessed with sexuality, it is difficult to imagine a being beyond sexuality” (20). However, what we need is an anamnestic practice: a working toward an unrepresentable something that allows us to think and speak differently than we otherwise could.21 Unfortunately, however, there is much at stake for most Muslims in not learning to think or speak differently, given the real and symbolic value of masculinist images and language in sustaining male privilege. Masculinizing God is the first step in positing a hierarchy in which males situate themselves beneath God and above women, implying that there is a symbolic (and sometimes literal) continuum between God’s rule over humans and male rule over women. However, the assumption, no matter how indirect, that God’s sovereignty and man’s are coextensive fundamentally misrepresents the nature both of divine sovereignty (hence the doctrine of Tawhīd) and of human vice-­regency. (As my discussion in later chapters shows, it also misapprehends the Qurān’s definitions of faith and human equality.)

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D i v i n e Soverei gnt y, Hu m a n Vice - ­Re ge n cy I noted above that God’s sovereignty is a function of God’s unity, which is absolute and extends over all living and nonliving worlds and is not contingent on human approval or acceptance of it, though faith hinges on our voluntarily accepting it. (This is why the “master-­slave” metaphor22 cannot convey the sense of willed submission to divine Truth that defines Muslim praxis.) In contrast, human vice-­regency is finite and a trust from God, and is not meant to further one’s own personal power or glory; as the Qurān says, “If any do seek For glory and power,—To God belong All glory and power” (35:10 [Ali, 1155]). The concept of vice-­regency derives from the term khilāfah, a word the Qurān uses twice for “humans,” not just for “men.” As a verb, khilāfah signifies succession, and Muslim scholars believe it has a dual meaning: that of humans “succeeding, according to God’s will, to the inheritance of the earth; as well as the implication that each generation of [hu]mankind succeeds the other in assuming the obligations of the status of khilafah” (Davies 1988, 92). In other words, the idea of vice-­ regency is not contingent on sex, and while it is a relational term, it does not mean that humans are vice-­regents over one another. Rather, they are vice-­regents on earth, on which they nonetheless have been warned not to walk “with insolence” (17:37 [Ali, 704]). That humans are vice-­regents over the earth and that their vice-­regency is a trust from God emerges from āyah 33:72: “Verily, We did offer the trust [of reason and volition] to the heavens and the earth, and the mountains: but they refused to bear it because they were afraid of it. Yet [humans] took it up” (Davies 1988, 92). The concept of trust, or ammanah, says Davies, entails responsibility and the notion of rights and duties implicit in the terms of the trust. The khilafah has been entrusted to inherit the earth, to have the use of all the bounties for the sustenance and enrichment of [hu]mankind’s life on it. The capacities of fitrah [human nature] are the means to be employed so that the status and role of the khilafah can be enjoyed. . . . Since all men and women are khilafah there is a basic equality in their rights of access to and enjoyment of the bounties of earthly existence. (93)

There is thus no reason to assume that only men are vice-­regents on earth, much less vice-­regents over women.

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The finite nature of human vice-­regency and its trust-­like nature are also clear from God’s admonishment to David: O David! We did indeed Make thee a [vice-­regent] On earth: so judge thou Between [humans] in truth (and justice): Nor follow thou the lusts (Of thy heart), for they will Mislead thee from the Path Of God: for those who Wander astray from the Path Of God, is a Penalty Grievous, For that they forget The Day of [Account]. The Qurān (38:26 [Ali, 1223])

Even a prophet and a king like David is fallible since he is capable of “following the lusts” of his heart, and even the vice-­regency of a prophet and a king like David is a trust from God, not a function of his own sovereignty over humans. Significantly, even David’s vice-­regency is meant to establish God’s rule on earth, not his own. To establish that humans are not rulers/sovereigns in the same way that God is would be to belabor an obvious point to believers. But if we concede this, how can we extrapolate from God’s rule/sovereignty over humans to men’s over women? Yet exegetes customarily draw on views of man as vice-­regent (and ruler) and of God as King, Lord, and ruler to advocate men’s dominion over women, in some cases even ordering wives to prostrate themselves before their “earthy gods,” their husbands (Tabrisi, quoted in Murata 1992, 176). Similarly, following a hadīth, most Muslims hold that ingratitude to a husband is like ingratitude to God (Thanawi, quoted in Metcalf 1990, 23), thereby equating husbands with God. In much the same vein, Muslims who would find Ibn al-­‘Arabi’s depiction of God as Father objectionable nonetheless accept the typology deriving from his portrayal that represents fathers as the high, spiritual aspects of existence, and mothers as the low, corporeal ones. This is so despite the fact that the Qurān elevates mothers over fathers (see chapter 7), as does 112

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Muslim tradition. However, not only is it rank hubris to associate males with God in this way, but the mis-­association also violates the concept of Tawhīd, which puts God firmly beyond such correspondences in addition to establishing the principle of the indivisibility of God’s sovereignty. Misrepresentations of God as male, and of male sovereignty as being coextensive with that of God, derive not from the Qurān, then, but from the tendency to anthropomorphize God on the one hand, and to misapprehend the theme of vice-­regency on the other. Such distortions are common not only among “orthodoxies,” but also among many Muslim feminists who routinely assail Islam’s “paternalistic” and “uncompromising monotheism” (Hussain 1994), while depicting monotheism itself as misogynistic. As I have argued, however, Islamic monotheism as embodied in the doctrine of Tawhīd is vital not only to a purification of our idea of God but also to our being able to reject patriarchalized misrepresentations of God as well as theories of father-­right or male privilege. The idea of Tawhīd is also essential to our idea of human beings as inherently good and as manifesting “the whole” (Murata 1992, 43). By disputing gender dualisms and binaries, we open up a space to theorize human subjectivity in terms that respect the complete equality and humanity of women and men. II. Desacralizing Prophets as Fathers we worship None but God; . . . we associate No partners with [God]; . . . we erect not, From among ourselves, Lords and patrons Other than God The Qurān (3:64) 23

The Qurān challenges representations of fathers as surrogates of a divine patriarch by rejecting the myth of God-­the-­Father. Likewise, the Qurān challenges the concept of father-­right/rule by refusing to sacralize the prophets as real or symbolic fathers. I illustrate this now by rereading the Qurānic narratives of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad. To

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understand the point of my reading, it is necessary to recall that patriarchy has ranged from traditional modes in which the father was symbolically the “common father of all those . . . under his authority,”24 to classical ones based in theories of political obedience and rights, to modern and contractual forms. Here, I concentrate on the first definition of patriarchy because I wish to examine the Qurān’s position on father-­right/rule. In later chapters, I will interpret its teachings with the definition of modern patriarchy in mind.

G o d , Ab r ah am , and Ab r ah am’s Fathe r Usually exegetes in all three monotheistic religions read Abraham’s narrative as confirming his status as a patriarch25 rather than as displacing father-­ right/rule and thus as subverting the imaginary of the prophet-­as-­father. The latter reading, though, is not only con/textually plausible, but it is also more congruent with the concept of Tawhīd (the indivisibility of God’s unity and sovereignty). The Qurānic story of Abraham opens with his search for God, which begins when God shows him “the power And the laws of the heavens And the earth” so that he might discern God’s Reality (6:75 [Ali, 309]). At the outset, however, Abraham confuses the manifestations of God’s Power (“signs of God”) with God’s Reality: When the night Covered him over, He saw a star: He said: “This is my [Rabb].” But when it set, He said: “I love not Those that set.” When he saw the moon Rising in splendour, He said: “This is my [Rabb].” But when the moon set, He said: “Unless my [Rabb] Guide me, I shall surely Be among those Who go astray.”

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When he saw the sun Rising in splendour He said: “This is my [Rabb]; This is the greatest (of all).” But when the sun set, He said: “O my people! I am indeed free From your (guilt) Of giving partners to God. “For me, I have set My face, firmly and truly, Towards [God] Who created The heavens and the earth, And never shall I give Partners to God.” The Qurān (6:76–79 [Ali, 309–10])

In the Qurān’s narration, Abraham arrives at divine Truth through a dual process of reasoning and spiritual submission (islam), and it is this process that brings him to an awareness of his father’s sin of shirk (extending God’s sovereignty to others, in this case to false gods) and ultimately to a break with him. Incidentally, false gods are not just idols; there is he who takes “for his god His own passion (or impulse),” says the Qurān (25:43 [Ali, 935]). The break between father and son occurs when Abraham, having come to recognize God’s Reality, confronts his father in an exchange that is truly instructive for determining the Qurān’s position on father-­right/rule: Behold, he said to his father: “O my father! why Worship that which heareth not And seeth not, and can Profit thee nothing? “O my father! to me Hath come knowledge which Hath not reached thee:

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So follow me: I will guide Thee to a Way that Is even and straight.” The Qurān (19:42–43 [Ali, 776]; emphasis added)

Thus, Abraham begins by denying his father’s gods, and then his father’s authority, calling on his father to follow him instead, challenging the very core of father-­right/rule as it is structured in patriarchies (where the father derives his authority to rule over his family from his assumed association with God, knowledge, and the truth). However, this inversion is not meant to establish Abraham’s authority over his father, as the Qurān makes clear, but that of Abraham’s God; and only after his father disavows God does Abraham disavow his father. In effect, what leads Abraham into the conflict with his father is his “uncompromising monotheism”; as such, the conflict between his (belief in) God and (obedience to) his father illustrates the conflict between monotheism and (traditional modes of ) patriarchy. Indeed, Abraham’s break with his father is embedded in a larger Qurānic account of the tensions that have existed historically between God’s rule and fathers’ rule. As the Qurān details it in the Abrahamic narrative and in others, the struggle to establish God’s rule constantly ran up against the ways of the fathers who were “void of wisdom and guidance” (2:170 [Ali, 67]). This theme is palpable in Abraham’s address to his community: Behold! he said To his father and his people, “What are these images, To which ye are (So assiduously) devoted?” They said: “We found Our fathers worshipping them.” He said, “Indeed ye Have been in manifest Error—ye and your fathers.”

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They said, “Have you Brought us the Truth, Or are you one Of those who jest?” He said, “Nay, your [Rabb] Is the [Rabb] of the heavens And the earth, . . . Who Created them (from nothing): And I am a witness To this (truth).” The Qurān (21:51–56 [Ali, 834])

The basis of the polytheists’ faith, as they themselves declare it, is adherence to patriarchal traditions, and it is this practice that Abraham attacks, with God’s full approval, as the Qurānic narrative shows. In fact, Abraham attacks not only this practice but its material culture as well by breaking the polytheists’ idols and then challenging them to get the biggest idol to identify him as the culprit. On their ensuing confusion, he asks why they take for “Worship, besides God, Things that can neither Be of any good to you Nor do you harm?” (21:66 [Ali, 836]). Unable to persuade him of their logic and threatened by his challenge to patriarchal authority, the polytheists—his father among them—determine to consign Abraham to a fire, from which he is saved by God. As a righteous man, Abraham prays to God on his father’s behalf and is told that God’s mercy is not for those who persist in espousing falsehoods after the Truth has reached them. Central to Abraham’s embrace of God, and the condition for the embrace, then, is his break with his father. The conflict between God’s rule and father’s rule at the heart of Abraham’s story also finds expression in the Qurān’s warnings to believers to “fear (The coming of ) a Day When no father can avail Aught for his son, nor A son avail aught For his father” (31:33 [Ali, 1089]). For believers, God’s rule (monotheism) must take precedence over the father’s rule (patriarchy) and the pursuit of worldly success, which, the Qurān reminds us, is transitory. One could perhaps argue that Abraham’s story, as well as the Qurān’s disapproval of misguided fathers, applies only to unbelievers; that God’s bestowal of prophethood on Abraham and his line is meant to replace the

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rule of unbelieving fathers with that of believing fathers. In other words, it is possible that the Qurān disapproves of fathers’ rule only when it conflicts with God’s rule; which is to say, it is opposed to a specific content of father-­right/rule and not to its form. However, the Qurān itself offers evidence against such a reading. Three themes in particular are relevant here. First, the Qurān seeks to establish the rule not of believing fathers but of their God (God’s rule takes precedence over the institutions of proph­ et­hood, fatherhood, and motherhood); second, while the Qurān extols Abraham and his line, including the Prophet Muhammad, it does not do so by valorizing them as fathers; finally, the Qurān does specify parental, as against paternal, rights, but never in terms of sovereignty or rule over children. (I consider this last point in chapter 7.) When the Qurān extols Abraham and his line, it does so in order to establish their moral certitude as believers and not their real or symbolic status or rights as fathers; thus, when Abraham’s progeny testify that they are following their fathers, they are actually attesting to following the God of their fathers: Were ye witnesses When Death appeared before Jacob? Behold, he said to his sons: “What will ye worship after me?” They said: “We shall worship Thy God and the God of thy fathers,— Of Abraham, Isma’il, and Isaac,— The One (True) God: To [God] we bow (in Islam)” The Qurān (2:133 [Ali, 54–55]; emphasis added)

Incidentally, in Islam, references to the “God of our fathers” never devolve into views of God-­as-­father, unlike in the Hebrew Bible in which, says Paul Ricoeur (1974, 484), “Yahweh is ‘God of our fathers’ before being father.” However, according to Ricoeur, even in the Bible, “Yahweh’s ‘I am that I am’” dissolves “all anthropomorphisms, of all figures and figurations, including that of father” (486). As the Qurān makes clear, then, believers are expected to submit to the God of believing fathers, not to the fathers themselves. Indeed, a central

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motif of the Abrahamic narrative is establishing Abraham’s own submission to God’s will: Behold! [Abraham’s Rabb] said To him: “Bow (thy will to Me):” He said: “I bow (my will) To [my Rabb].” And this was the legacy That Abraham left to his sons, And so did Jacob; “Oh my sons! God hath chosen The Faith for you: then die not Except in the Faith of Islam.” The Qurān (2:131–32 [Ali, 54]; emphasis added)

What makes Abraham a believer is his willingness to yield up his will/ sovereignty to God; he is thus not sovereign in the sense in which fathers were/are sovereign in traditional patriarchies where the legitimacy of their rule derives from its association with God’s rule/sovereignty. Submission to God’s will, however, does not make a Muslim man an associate in God’s sovereignty, but subject to it. Second, when God rewards Abraham and his line with the mantle of prophethood, God does so by designating Abraham an imām and not by anointing him as a symbolic patriarch/ruler: And remember that Abraham Was tried by his [Rabb] With certain Commands, Which he fulfilled: [God] said: “I will make thee An Imam to the Nations.” [Abraham] pleaded: “And also (Imams) from my offspring!” [God] answered: “But My Promise Is not within the reach Of evil-­doers.” The Qurān (2:124 [Ali, 52])

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Etymologically, imam is related to ummah (community) and umm (mother). In this āyah, its primary meaning, says Yusuf Ali (1988, 52 n. 124), is to be “foremost: hence it may mean: (1) leader in religion; (2) leader in congregational prayer; (3) model, pattern, example; (4) a book of guidance and instruction . . . (5) a book of evidence or record. . . . Here meanings 1 and 3 are implied.” In effect, the term imam is sex/gender-­neutral26 and is applicable to both humans and nonhuman things. Thus, God’s favors to Abraham do not entail sacralizing him as a symbolic father; rather, God designates Abraham an imam. One could also read God’s response to Abraham as an argument against patriarchy; after all, God does not promise his offspring that they will inherit Abraham’s standing or authority simply by virtue of being his heirs. Indeed, as the episode of his near-­sacrifice of his son reveals, it is Abraham’s willingness to yield up his rights as father in favor of the rule/rights of God (that is, Abraham’s de-­sacralization as father) that establishes him as a true believer in the Qurān’s account. In the Qurānic story, the idea of the sacrifice appears to Abraham in a vision,27 which he shares with his adolescent son, whom the Qurān does not name: when (the son) Reached (the age of ) (Serious) work with him, [Abraham] said: “O my son! I see in vision That I offer thee in sacrifice: Now see what is Thy view!” (The son) said: “O my father! Do As thou art commanded: Thou will find me, If God so wills one Practising Patience and Constancy!” So when they had both Submitted their wills (to God), And he had laid him Prostrate on his forehead (For sacrifice),

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We called out to him, “O Abraham! Thou hast already fulfilled The vision!” The Qurān (37:102–5 [Ali, 1204–5]; emphasis added)

Thus, it is only after Abraham’s son freely, and in his own voice, consents to the sacrifice that they proceed. The fact that Abraham does not assume his son’s consent illustrates that without it, the sacrifice would not carry moral weight in view of the Qurān’s teachings that faith must always be voluntary. It also shows that Abraham does not have the right of life and death over his son, as fathers did in traditional patriarchies (Abraham does not “rule over” his son). As the Qurānic account makes clear, it is the son’s expressed will, not just the father’s vision, that clears the way for the sacrifice, a fate from which God saves both; as the Qurān says tersely, this was “obviously A trial—” (37:106 [Ali, 1205]). Abraham, the dearly beloved prophet of God, cannot dispose of his own son as he wishes, even in the name of God, until his son, at his own discretion, agrees to it! And, once again, it is God who saves a (believing) son from a (believing) father. Traditionally, as noted, exegetes have read this account as establishing the primacy of father-­right/rule since, after all, it is Abraham who sets out to sacrifice his son and not the other way around. But such a reading transforms into a tale of patriarchal tyranny what is meant to be a moral allegory about the consensual and purposive nature of faith, its primacy over kinship and blood, the existential dilemmas that can result from submitting to God’s will (especially where it comes into conflict with one’s own life), and, not least, the insignificance of the father’s will in comparison to God’s. These themes infuse all of the Qurān’s teachings, not just the Abrahamic parable. Indeed, this parable is one way to illustrate these themes in intimately personal terms. However, they are also present in God’s counsel to the Prophet Muhammad and to all believers: Take not For protectors your fathers And your brothers if they love Infidelity above Faith:

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If any of you do so, They do wrong. Say: If it be that your fathers, Your sons, your brothers, Your mates, or your kindred; The wealth that ye have gained; The commerce in which ye fear A decline: or the dwellings In which ye delight— Are dearer to you than God, Or his Apostle, or the striving In [God’s] cause;—then wait Until God brings about [God’s] Decision: and God Guides not the rebellious. The Qurān (9:23–24 [Ali, 444–45])

The Qurān does not mention daughters here, but it is giving examples of what the Arabs of those times held dear. Many of those Arabs were practicing female infanticide and were unlikely to have found any references to daughters meaningful. Nonetheless, the Qurān’s command applies equally to daughters. It instructs women, no less than men, not to take the males in their families (the heads of the family) as their protectors if doing so interferes with their practice of faith. Clearly, the āyāt here were encouraging the pagans and polytheists of the Prophet’s time to choose belief in God even if doing so led them to break with their families, as Abraham did with his father. However, what is significant is that the Qurān expressly legitimizes the principle of disobedience to males in their capacity as fathers, brothers, and so on. (It also mandates disobedience to parents on similar grounds, as I argue in chapter 7.) To say that faith should take priority over social or material attachments and accoutrements—a teaching that finds a powerful allegorical expression in Abraham’s story—is not to say anything about the legitimacy of father’s rule, or even to say anything out of the ordinary, at least to believers. But to suggest that for God’s rule to exist, the father’s rule must either be broken (Abraham’s father) or subordinated symbolically to God’s rule (Abraham as father) is indeed to say something revolutionary. Thus, it is not just that

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the Qurān seeks to establish the primacy of God’s rule over father-­right/ rule; rather, in delineating the relationship between God’s rule and father’s rule, the Qurān dislocates the latter. God comes to dis-­place, not replace, fathers. In fact, one āyah expressly bids people to “Celebrate the praises of God, As ye used to celebrate The praises of your fathers” (2:200 [Ali, 80]). (This does not mean that God wishes to be a Father, as the Qurān makes clear.) It is in light of this moral that the Qurān’s refusal to sacralize Muhammad, the Seal of prophets, as a symbolic father also becomes so significant, as I argue below. There is one additional way in which Abraham’s story can be read as illustrating the Qurān’s opposition to father-­right/rule, and this has to do with how the Qurān—through the Abrahamic story—defines faith itself. Thus, when God accepts Abraham’s prayer to make his line imams, God does not promise them all freedom from evildoing; as the Qurān says, God “blessed [Abraham] and Isaac: But of their progeny Are (some) that do right, And (some) that obviously Do wrong, to their own souls” (37:113 [Ali, 1206]; see also āyah 2:124 above). In other words, faith is not a function of kinship or sex but remains transcendently personal; that is, in the reach of the moral personality alone. This theme finds an illustration not only in Abraham’s story, in which the son of a disbelieving father embraces divine Truth, but also in Noah’s story, in which the son of a prophet breaks with this truth and becomes one of the lost. Similarly, the wife of the prophet Lot is of those who disbelieve and is punished by God,28 whereas the wife of the unbelieving Pharaoh is of those who believe and is saved by God. In all these instances, the prophets pray on behalf of their kin to God, but, as the Qurān tells us, no “bearer of burdens [can] Bear another’s burden. . . . Even though he be nearly Related” (35:18 [Ali, 1158]). Rather, says the Qurān, each soul must account for herself, and warns us to “guard yourselves against a Day When one soul shall not avail another, Nor shall compensation be accepted from her Nor shall intercession profit her Nor shall anyone be helped (from outside)” (2:123 [Ali, 51–52]). In place of intercession, the Qurān privileges the idea of individuals as free moral agents and as witnesses to their own deeds,29 and in place of bloodlines, the idea of a morally defined community, the ummah. That is why the Qurān describes the “nearest of kin to Abraham” as “those who follow him. . . . And those who believe” (3:68 [Ali, 140]). Such a view of faith, says Arkoun (1994, 57), opens up “an infinite space for the promotion of the individual beyond the constraints of fathers and brothers, clans

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and tribes, riches and tributes; the individual becomes an autonomous and free person, enjoying a liberty guaranteed by obedience and love lived within the community.” The very structure of faith in Islam, then, is at odds with (traditional) patriarchy. Faith privileges the rights and rule of God (freedom) over the rule of believing fathers (necessity, tradition). Since moral freedom “is achieved only by moving towards God” (Murata 1992, 79), the rule of the father, which sets up man as a parallel node of authority over women and children, becomes an impediment to faith. It therefore matters little whether or not the father is a believer (the content of father-­rule is immaterial); it is the very form of father-­rule (its assumed parallelism to God’s rule) that, the Qurān confirms, is unacceptable. Although I have read Abraham’s story as illustrating, among other things, “the existential dilemmas that can result from submitting to God’s will (especially where it comes into conflict with one’s own life),” this is not the only conclusion one can draw from it. Indeed, it may not even be the best one, as I have learned over the years. For instance, Ibn al-­‘Arabi offers a fundamentally different interpretation, and I feel that contrasting it with mine opens up more ways to think about this parable than I have proposed here. Accordingly, this is what I do in the following chapter, where I also briefly contrast the Qurānic and biblical accounts of Abraham’s sacrifice.

P ro ph e t Muh am m ad and Sym b olic Fathe r/ ho o d The Qurān’s opposition to father-­right/rule continues to surface in its account of the Prophet Muhammad’s life. The opposition is discernible in its narration, for the benefit of the Prophet and of believers, of the history of unbelief against which God’s messengers30 had to contend. It is also obvious from God’s refusal to anoint the Prophet as a symbolic father. The Qurān’s opposition to the idea of male rule/sovereignty, however, emerges from its delineation of the relationship between God and the prophets on the one hand, and from the nature of the Prophet Muhammad’s marital relationships (which we can deduce from the Qurān and Muslim tradition) on the other. In the Qurān’s telling, the conflict between belief and un-­belief has manifested itself historically as a struggle between God’s rule and fathers’ rule (following the ways of the fathers, or ancestors). As God tells the Prophet, whenever God

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sent a Warner Before thee to any people, The wealthy ones among them Said: “We found our fathers Following a certain religion, And we will certainly Follow in their footsteps.” He [the Warner] said; “What! Even if I brought you Better guidance than that Which ye found Your fathers following?” They said: “For us, We deny that ye (prophets) Are sent (on a mission At all).” So We exacted retribution From them: now see What was the end Of those who rejected (Truth). The Qurān (43:23–25 [Ali, 1328–29])

Plainly, then, following their fathers has led people to reject God, and their rejection has been the cause of their destruction. This antagonism between monotheism and traditional patriarchy is evident from a number of narratives in the Qurān, including that of Moses. When Moses takes God’s message to Pharaoh, the people ask him if he has “Come to us to turn us Away from the ways We found our fathers following” (10:78 [Ali, 504]). Similarly, says the Qurān, it is the Arabs’ adherence to their fathers’ ways that keeps them from embracing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad: When it is said to them: “Come to what God Hath revealed; come To the Apostle”: They say: “Enough for us

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Are the ways we found Our fathers following.” What! even though their fathers Were void of knowledge And guidance? The Qurān (5:107 [Ali, 275])

Adherence to patriarchal traditions has kept not only unbelievers from the path of God but also many believers (People of the Book [i.e., Christians and Jews]), who, the Qurān notes, “take their priests And their anchorites to be Their lords in derogation of God. . . . Yet they were commanded To worship but One God” (9:31 [Ali, 448]). The very persons entrusted with interpreting sacred knowledge have misled people, both because of perversity in their hearts (2:7 [Ali, 123]) and their cupidity, which drives them to “Devour [in falsehood] the substance of [insān] And hinder (them) from the Way of God” (9:34 [Ali, 449]). (This scathing criticism of professional interpreters of sacred knowledge, who claim to be intermediaries between God and believers, may be why Islam did not ordain a clergy.) It is in the context of the history of this conflict between monotheism and patriarchy that we can interpret the Qurān’s categorical assertion that even though he is “closer To the Believers than Their own selves” (33:6 [Ali, 1104]), “Muhammad is not The father of any Of your men, but (he is) The Apostle of God, And the seal of the Prophets” (33:40 [Ali, 1119]). While this āyah meant to clarify the Prophet’s relationship to his adopted son, its assertion that he does not stand in the symbolic relationship of father to his own community returns us once again to the role of fathers, and it does so by refusing to consecrate them. From the denial of symbolic fatherhood to the Prophet, which exegetes pass over in silence, I derive the lesson that, in Islam, God’s rule displaces rule by the father, whether or not the father is a believer. At the same time, the concept of imām (which does not give the sense of rule/sovereignty and is not sex/gender specific) displaces the imaginary of the father altogether. In other words, the Qurān views fathers in a fundamentally different way than patriarchies do (see chapter 7 as well). Given that the Prophet is not sacralized as father, is it also a coincidence that he loses his father, Abdullah, in his own infancy, and all his sons in theirs; that only his daughters survive, at a time and in a place when people viewed girls as a curse? Or do these events in his life illustrate the superficial nature of many of our priorities and the Qurān’s moral that neither 126

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fathers, nor progeny, nor spouses, nor wealth, nor false gods will stand people in better stead than God’s mercy? Is that not why the Qurān reassures the Prophet, when he stands alienated from his entire tribe, that he will not find those who believe In God and the Last Day, Loving those who resist God and [God’s] Apostle, Even though they were Their fathers or their sons, Or their brothers, or Their kindred. For such [God] has written Faith In their hearts, and strengthened Them with a spirit From [God’s Self ]. The Qurān (58:22 [Ali, 1518])

In other words, believers are expected to define social ties and relationships through faith, hence the Islamic perception of a community united by a shared moral worldview rather than by blood, sex/gender, race, or age. (Significantly, the first to join the new ummah were a woman—Khadijah, the Prophet’s first wife, twice widowed, some fifteen years older than he, and a merchant31—and Ali, his cousin, a preteen youth.) In the absence of valorizations of Muhammad as a symbolic father, there remains the complex issue of how best to interpret the Qurānic injunctions to obey and follow him while also not taking one another “for lords.” Clearly, the Prophet is a role model for Muslim men and women,32 both in his capacity as a prophet and as a moral individual whose character embodies the best of the masculine and feminine traits as we describe them. Thus, he is said to have been unyielding and stern in justice and yet also “a man of kindness, gentleness, integrity, and humility”33 who had “a mild and forgiving disposition, and disliked unpleasantness and cruelty.”34 Indeed, his nature and habits are “those we may think of as particularly feminine: he is humble, gentle, given to few words, eager to serve others, always ready to work with his own hands, pious beyond measure. He keeps his gaze lowered.”35 In other words, the Prophet was unconventional by the 127

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hypermasculinist standards not only of traditional Arab culture,36 but also by modern ones, which disparage tenderness, gentleness, and humility in men. In Muhammad, therefore, all Muslims have an exemplary model for emulation. The problem, however, is that in their desire to live by his standards and ethics, most Muslims have ended up canonizing his Sunnah (praxis) and even elevating it over the Qurān itself, which—for reasons I explain in chapter 3—is inappropriate. How, then, do we find the balance between following the Prophet and not idolizing him? The Qurān itself makes clear that following and obeying the Prophet means obeying and following God, not idolizing the Prophet himself. (This is why Muslims are offended by the old European way of referring to them as Muhammadans.) It is on the basis of this distinction between God and the prophets that Islam also denies divinity to Christ. To those who sacralize prophets, the Qurān says: It is not conceivable that a human being unto whom God had granted revelation, and sound judgment, and prophet-­hood, should thereafter have said unto people, “Worship me beside God”; but rather [did he exhort them], “become [Rabbani] by spreading the knowledge of the divine writ, and by your own deep study [thereof ].” And neither did he bid you to take the angels and the prophets for your lords: [for] would he bid you to deny the truth after you have surrendered yourselves unto God? (3:79–80 [Asad 1980, 79])

(Rabbani, says Asad [79 n. 62], is someone devoted “to the endeavour to know the Sustainer [ar-­rabb] and to obey Him.”) The āyāt not only make a clear distinction between God and prophets, but they can also be read as establishing the primacy of the Qurān (divine Writ) over the narratives of the Prophet’s life and praxis (ahādith). This may seem obvious, but as I noted earlier, Muslims interpret the Qurān by way of the ahādith and thus by way of the Prophet’s assumed Sunnah, rather than the other way around (using the Qurān to determine the accuracy of both as recorded by Muslims). They also take the Prophet’s Sunnah (as textualized in the ahādith) to abrogate the Qurān, practices that, from the Qurān’s perspective, seem inadmissible. To be sure, one cannot obey the God of the prophets without obeying the prophets, and in order to obey the latter, we need some knowledge of their lives and practices (sunnahs). However, the Qurān clarifies that the sunnahs of the prophets cannot outweigh divine

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Writ, nor, indeed, do we need to emulate the prophets since this can also result in glorifying them. As the Qurān says, “Muhammad is only an apostle; all the [other] apostles have passed away before him: if, then, he dies or is slain, will you turn about on your heels?” (3:144 [Asad, 89]). The point, evidently, is to contrast Muhammad’s mortality with God’s immortality, and the absence of prophetic sovereignty with the Reality of divine sovereignty. God is ruler, sovereign, savior—not Muhammad. The Qurān, argue scholars, makes clear that “Muhammad was a human being, and therefore fallible; the Prophet himself urged the first Muslim community to discriminate between his opinions as a human being and his teachings as a prophet” (Davies 1988, 59). Consequently, reversing the relationship between the Qurān and the Prophet’s Sunnah, or sacralizing his Sunnah and thus encouraging its ritualized imitativeness, contravene both the Qurān’s teachings and his own. If the Qurān does not sacralize the Prophet as father, it also does not sacralize him as husband by setting him up as a ruler, guardian, or manager over his wife’s affairs, or those of his people. As it says, “thou art One to admonish. Thou art not one To manage [people’s] affairs” (88:21–22 [Ali, 1729]). Although these āyāt, which exemplify the principle of the uncoerced nature of faith and of moral responsibility, are not directed at the Prophet’s relationships with his wives, there are others that are, and none of them suggest that he forced compliance on his wives to God’s injunctions. Thus, according to Leila Ahmed (1992, 56), after the āyāt on veiling were revealed, the Prophet gave his wives the choice of remaining married to him or getting a divorce if they felt unable to abide by God’s commands. Nor did the Qurān force his wives to obey God or the Prophet. Instead, it held out to those who were righteous the promise of a doubled reward, and to those who were guilty of “manifest lewdness,” a double punishment (33:30–31). The Qurān suggests that this exception is a function of the fact that his wives “are not like any Of the (other) women”37 (33:32 [Ali, 1115]). Presumably, as the Prophet’s consorts, they were required to be role models for the ummah and therefore carried a greater responsibility. As such, the Qurān holds them to standards of behavior it does not require of others. For instance, it asks them to speak to men not of their household from behind a curtain, not to remarry after their husband’s death, and to remain in their homes and not to go into public arenas to make a wanton display of themselves. However, there is controversy regarding the last injunction contained in āyah 33:30. Arberry (1955, 124) renders it

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as “Remain in your houses; and display not your finery, as did the pagans of old.” According to some scholars, the Qurān placed this restriction on the Prophet’s wives because they were not permitted to remarry after his death. Others, however, argue that the word qarna (translated as “stay quietly in your homes”) was rendered as qirna (in Basra), meaning “have dignity and serenity.”38 As Kaukab Siddique (1990) points out, the Qurān could not have required the Prophet’s wives to be sequestered in this way since it commands them to udhkurnā: to mention, teach, spread God’s words—which required their presence in the public arena. Nor did the Prophet himself confine his wives to their home. In fact, two of his wives, the daughters of Omar and Abu Bakr—the first two caliphs of Islam—are said to have rebuffed attempts by their fathers to restrict them, saying that if the Prophet did not do so, their fathers had no right to demand it of them either. By all indications, the Prophet did not behave like a traditional head of household in other matters either. He is said to have done his own household chores, including preparing his own food. Not only did his wives not wait upon him, but his status as God’s Messenger did not deter them from sometimes quarreling with him, and one of them divorced him by saying that she sought refuge in God from him.39 There is no record that he ever abused them physically or verbally. Indeed, “for most of his life Muhammad himself respected and trusted women, was strongly influenced by a number of forceful females, and attempted to provide for equal participation of women in the religious life of the new community” (Smith 1985, 20). He was also far more progressive than his peers on the issue of children’s position in the community (Levy 1962, 91). Yet it is usually not these egalitarian aspects of the Prophet’s Sunnah many Muslim men want to emulate today; rather, they focus mostly on his multiple marriages, and on the age of one of his wives, Ayesha, which they use to legitimize marriages to little girls. In this context, it is important to be aware, first, that the Qurān permitted the Prophet to contract specific types of marriages as “a privilege for thee only, not for the (rest of ) believers” (33:50 [Pickthall, 305]). The privilege given to the Prophet seems to have been in his capacity as God’s Messenger and not as a man; otherwise, why would God have denied it to other men? Moreover, the Qurān also circumscribed the Prophet’s polygyny by forbidding him “to take (other) women henceforth, nor that thou shouldst change them for other wives even though their beauty pleased thee” (33:52 [Pickthall, 305]). However,

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as Pickthall points out, the Prophet was allowed to marry more wives than were others “because, as head of the State, he was responsible for the support of women who had no other protector. With the one exception of Ayeshah, all his wives had been widows” (406). Similarly, Wiebke Walther (1981, 34) notes that in “most of his marriages, if not in all of them [the Prophet] is said to have also had the solidarity of his community in mind.” As I will argue in chapter 7, these standards do not apply to all men, and the Qurān does not, in fact, favor generalized polygyny. (It is also impor­ tant to recall that the Prophet is said to have discouraged his son-­in-­law, Ali, from taking a second wife.) As far as Ayesha’s age at the time of her marriage to the Prophet, it is a matter of ongoing controversy that cannot be resolved because what is known about her is from reconstructions of her life undertaken a century and a half after her death. These accounts drew on “oral reports transmitted over three to four generations” (Spellberg 1994, 2), which means “even the earliest Arabic written sources on Aisha’s life already capture that life as a legacy, an interpretation.” As Denise Spellberg puts it, in studying Ayesha, one is therefore studying “male intellectual history, not a woman’s history, but reflections about the place of a woman, and by extension, all women, in exclusively male assertions about Muslim society” (191). To what extent estimates of Ayesha’s age or the details of her marriage embody displaced male desires remains open to question. However, it is safe to say that men who wish to marry children today in order to indulge their sexual lusts under the guise of adhering to the Prophet’s Sunnah seem to have forgotten two crucial aspects of it: first, the Prophet was married for much of his life to a much older woman who had been twice widowed, and during her lifetime he did not take another wife. Second, the Qurān forbids lechery in a marriage, as my discussion of its position on sexuality will show in chapter 6. Given that the Prophet’s life was meant to exemplify the Qurān’s teachings, it is reasonable to assume that he took these to heart, which is more than can be said for those who wish to hide their sins in the mantle of his Sunnah. In Conclusion The Qurān’s teachings about God and prophets, I have argued, clearly undermine the imaginary of “the Father/fathers” inasmuch as they do not allow us either to engender God (represent God as Father/male) or to

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condone theories of father-­right/rule and male privilege. This is because if Qurānic monotheism is intolerant, as its feminist critics allege, it is intolerant of men/fathers arrogating to themselves rights that belong only to God. It is, of course, true that the Qurān’s teachings recognize that, in patriarchies, fathers/husbands are the locus of authority, which may be why so many āyāt are addressed to men. Here I refer not just to the use of the words an-­nās or bashar, incorrectly translated as “man,” but also to āyāt that explicitly speak about and/or address fathers. There are those who read some of these āyāt as, in fact, being inclusive of women; in other words, they say that references to one’s fathers are references to male and female ancestors. If this is so, then my argument becomes moot, and the arguments of those who read such āyāt as being patriarchal become redundant. If, on the other hand, one takes many of the Qurān’s references to and about fathers as addressing men, then my argument may serve to establish that the Qurān does not privilege fathers and, to the contrary, takes the practice of father-­rule to task in a number of ways. Here I should note that it does not take husbands to task in the same way that it does fathers. But, as will become clear from chapters 6 and 7, the Quran does not naturalize or ontologize men’s authority as husbands by linking gender roles to claims about sexual differences or inequality. This is why I read its allusions to the husband’s authority and to the gender hierarchy of seventh-­century Arabia as testifying to the “infinity of traces” (Gramsci, quoted in Said 1979, 25) of the history of patriarchy itself and not as an advocacy of it. In this context, what seems to be worthy of comment in the Qurān is not that patriarchies exist, but that historically they have provided the core of resistance to divine Truth. This is partly why the Qurān objects to the idea of father-­right whether or not the father is a believer; that is, it opposes not only the content but also the form of father’s rule. At least, this is how I understand the Qurān’s delineation of the rule of God vis-­à-­vis the lives of both prophets and ordinary humans. If my reading is correct, then it becomes possible to say that the Qurān is an antipatriarchal text or, at the very least, can be read as one. That Muslims have chosen not to do so reveals the power of patriarchy and its desire to perpetuate itself. Then, too, Muslim resistance to reading the Qurān differently could reflect their belief that the Prophet’s community is above interpretive error,40 a conviction that frees them from rethinking its patriarchal exegesis. However, what God has pledged to protect is the integrity of the Qurān, not Muslim interpretations of it. As I argue in chapter 2, the

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Qurān clearly distinguishes between itself and its interpretations. Further, as I have shown in this chapter, God does not promise even the lineage of prophets freedom from error or wrongdoing. In fact, Islam is unique in disallowing the idea that its followers are infallible or exceptional; even the Prophet stands corrected on occasion in the Qurān. Arguably, theories of exceptionalism or infallibility—which also underpin men’s claims to authority over women—would undercut the Qurān’s view of moral individuality. In the end, therefore, it may be its view of male, and human, fallibility and unexceptionalism that makes the Qurān’s episteme truly antipatriarchal.

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Chapter 5

Abraham’s Sacrifice in the Qurān1 Beyond the Body ▼

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ike the Qurān’s story of Abraham’s sacrifice, the Bible’s, too, offers rich insights into conceptions of faith and moral personality and, according to theorists, also focuses attention on the human body. Thus, a volume on religion and the body begins by stating that “Since Abraham’s binding of Isaac, minutely described by Søren Kierkegaard as an ethical, religious, spiritual, and physical double bind, the body has overtly or latently been a focal point in the history of the three Abrahamic religions” (Mjaaland et al. 2010, 1). While this may be true of Jewish and Christian exegetical history, however, it is not of Qurānic, perhaps because in the Qurān, Abraham (“Ibrahim” in Arabic)2 does not bind his son’s body. Nor is the body the focal point of the story; nor, indeed, is it of consuming interest in Muslim history.3 This then leads me to question the tendency to homogenize the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice and, by extension, the religions that claim their descent from him. There is no denying their family resemblance, of course, but while the family may be

A br ah am’s Sacr ifice in  the  Qurān

Abraham’s, Abraham himself is not identical in the Qurān and the Bible, and neither are his trials. The term “Abrahamic religions” is not very helpful here since, despite its linguistic pluralism, it obscures this crucial distinction between a genealogy that is shared and depictions of a common ancestor that are not. Nonetheless, it is more accurate than the standard alternative, “the Judeo-­Christian tradition,” a phrase that papers over the fissures in this tradition while also excising Islam from what is surely an “interreligiously shared” world (Wasserstrom 1995, 209). However, I want to suggest that the only way to include Islam in this world does not have to be through an assimilative embrace that stifles its individuality; one could, instead, find ways to honor both the plurality of the Abrahamic tradition and the specificity of Islam within it. This is what I aspire to do by re-­citing the Qurānic story of Abraham as a way to unbind the lessons of his sacrifice from the body and also to illustrate the inappropriateness of using Isaac’s bound body as a universal template for all the Abrahamic religions. Specifically, I discuss two different renditions of the story: the “mystical exegesis” (Al-­‘Arabi 1980, 18) of the Sufi philosopher and theologian Ibn al-­‘Arabi, who lived in the lands of “Western Islam” (Spain) in the twelfth century, and my own reading of it as an antipatriarchal parable. Both of these fall well outside the Muslim exegetical tradition, but I offer them as a way, first, to illustrate the range of lessons that Muslims have drawn from the same scriptural narrative over time. Second, I feel that a defense of religious pluralism could begin by exploring the diversity of opinions within Islam itself, and this requires one to step beyond the confines of what is regarded as canonical in order to explore what may be marginal or repressed in Muslim thinking. As a way to put our readings into a comparative religious perspective, I also consider the “exegetical gloss” (Askari 2004, 316) on the biblical story by Kierkegaard and Jacques Derrida. The comparison, however, is not very rigorous and is meant only to illustrate some lessons that can be drawn about faith from the Bible’s account. I will start with the Qurānic narrative, followed by a synopsis of al-­ ‘Arabi’s exegesis and a brief contrast of it with Kierkegaard’s and Derrida’s, and I will end with my own take on Abraham’s story. I. The Qurān and Abraham The Qurān tells of the most extraordinary sacrifice that never was in minimalist and enigmatic terms. The relevant verses do not even name

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Abraham’s son, and God calls Abraham by his own name only at the very end: He said, “I am going to my Lord; He will guide me. My Lord, give me one of the righteous.” Then We gave him the good tidings of a prudent boy; and when he had reached the age of running4 with him, he said, “My son, I see in a dream that I shall sacrifice thee; consider, what thinkest thou?” He said, “My father, do as thou art bidden; thou shalt find me, God willing, one of the steadfast.” When they had surrendered, and he flung him upon his brow, We called unto him, “Abraham, thou has confirmed the vision; even so We recompense the good-­doers. This is indeed the manifest trial.” And We ransomed him with a mighty sacrifice, and left for him among the later folk “Peace be upon Abraham!” (37:99–105 [Arberry 1955, 153–54])

This is the Qurānic account in its entirety, and it is as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does. For instance, it does not say that God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, or how much time elapses between his dream and the proposed sacrifice, where it is to take place, if Abraham ties his son, or if he ends up sacrificing a ram in his place in the end. Thus, missing from it are all the details recounted in Genesis, where there is an ongoing call and response between God and Abraham, starting with God’s command to him to sacrifice his “only son,” Isaac. Although the biblical account is also rather terse, it says that the father and son journey for three days to the land of Moriah, that Abraham binds Isaac and lays him on an altar, and that when an angel stops him from slaying Isaac, he sacrifices a ram instead (Gen. 22:1–24).5 Conversely, missing from the biblical saga is the defining motif of the Qurānic story: that Abraham shares his dream with his son, and they only proceed with the sacrifice after he agrees to it. In the Bible, by contrast, Abraham does not tell Isaac of his intent to kill him, and it is his silence, more than his binding of Isaac, that weighs on Kierkegaard and Derrida. As the latter says, “ideas of secrecy . . . are . . . essential here, as is Abraham’s silence. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t tell his secret to his loved ones. He is, like the knight of faith,6 a witness and not a teacher. . . . Abraham is a witness of the absolute faith that cannot and must not witness before men. He must keep his secret” (Derrida 1995, 73).

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In effect, it is this burden of secrecy, no less than the tyranny of an inexplicable command, that evokes the fear and trembling of which Kierke­ gaard speaks, for “what could be more abominable, what mystery could be more frightful . . . vis-­à-­vis love, humanity, the family, or morality” than an “infanticide father who hides what he is going to do from his son and from his family without knowing why?” (Derrida 1995, 67).7 The Qurānic Abraham may not know God’s intent in testing him either, but he does not face an ethical dilemma as his biblical counterpart (allegedly)8 does, because while the Qurān links the sacred and sacrifice, it does not link either one to secrecy. In the Qurān, not only does Abraham tell his son of his dream, but the son also has a role in interpreting it.9 Thus both father and son witness their absolute faith in front of one another. From a Qurānic standpoint, had the father set out to kill an unsuspecting son, it would have robbed the son of all moral agency and made him into a victim of his father’s tyranny, while also making the father a murderer. This is precisely the reading from which Kierkegaard and Derrida seek to rescue the biblical Abraham by arguing that faith transcends ethics. In fact, not only does it lead “one to do what ethics would forbid” (Kierkegaard 1983, 74), but it even “demands that one behave in an irresponsible manner (by means of treachery or betrayal)” (Derrida 1995, 66; emphasis added). In Kierkegaard’s telling, for Abraham to put “himself in an absolute relationship to the absolute. . . . [There must be] a teleological suspension of the ethical” (Derrida 1995, 62, 66). In Derrida’s hands this becomes “ethics as ‘irresponsibilization,’ as an insoluble and paradoxical contradiction between responsibility in general and absolute responsibility” (61). In the Qurān, however, there is no such ethics as “irresponsibilization” because Abraham does not plan on killing an unwary son; one does not therefore need to worry about treachery or responsibility. And if, like al-­‘Arabi, one believes that the reason God puts Abraham and his son through a test of such magnitude is because of their own stature as prophets, then one also does not need to impute to them the anguish that Kierkegaard ascribes to the biblical Abraham. As al-­‘Arabi would have said, a prophet cannot be tormented at the prospect of doing God’s will; anguish can only be the fate “of one who is ignorant of his Fixed Entity” (Askari 2004, 327). Since these two Abrahams emerge not only from opposing scriptural texts but also from the very different epistemological approaches of al-­‘Arabi and Kierkegaard, this may be the appropriate place to look more closely at al-­‘Arabi’s exegesis.

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II. Ibn al-­‘Arabi and Abraham In the only comparative essay on Ibn al-­‘Arabi and Kierkegaard, Muhammad Hasan Askari argues that, unlike Kierkegaard, al-­‘Arabi engages a set of questions that are “entirely metaphysical in character.” For instance, what is Abraham’s “spiritual station” as a prophet and a friend of God (Khalil)? “How does one attain . . . gnosis of God?” “What do divine will and command mean?” “What is the relationship between God and man? What is the distinction between . . . lord and . . . vassal?” and so on (Askari 2004, 321). I cannot, of course, summarize al-­‘Arabi’s position on all these issues, but perhaps all that is needed to understand the substance of his exegesis are its three main points. One is that divine commands are congruent with our own natures since “Every lord gives only that command to his vassal which is consistent with that vassal’s nature. Therefore, one never receives a command which is against one’s Fixed Entity.” It then follows that knowing one’s nature is crucial for “self-­knowledge, and it is in fact the ‘soul at peace’” (Askari 2004, 324). In keeping with this logic, al-­‘Arabi argues that the reason Abraham was called “Khalil” is because he knew his own nature, which was to make “God’s command his own choice” (325). As a matter of fact, much before he had his dream of sacrificing his son, he had extinguished his Self in his gnosis with God (and, according to al-­‘Arabi, Abraham’s son was also treading on the same path). Second, and for this reason, al-­‘Arabi believes that God was testing Abraham not for his faith (iman), which was never in doubt, but for his knowledge (ilm). Abraham, he points out, “saw in the dream that he was sacrificing his son. The question now was whether to interpret the dream or act on it literally,” and here al-­‘Arabi is of two minds. On the one hand, he says that Abraham’s “greatness lay in transforming the dream into reality” (Askari 2004, 322); on the other, however, he maintains that Abraham was wrong in having taken his dream literally. He makes this claim on the basis of a twofold distinction: between the senses and the imagination, and between reality and its forms. Sleep, he argues, is “the plane of the Imagination,” and a revelation of Reality on this plane “requires an additional knowledge by which to apprehend what God intends by a particular form” (Al-­‘Arabi 1980, 99). This is especially so when Reality appears “in a form unacceptable to the reason” (101). For instance, what appeared to Abraham in his dream as his son was “with God . . . nothing

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other than the Great Sacrifice in the form of his son”; that is, it was the ram Abraham ends up sacrificing in his son’s place (99).10 According to al-­‘Arabi, when God says to Abraham, “This is indeed a clear test,” God is testing to see if he knows that the “perspective of the Imagination required interpretation”; however, even though Abraham knew this, he remained “heedless . . . and did not deal with the perspective in the proper way. Thus, he believed the vision as he saw it” (100). His error, continues al-­‘Arabi, is clear from how “God says . . . O Abraham, you believed what you saw. . . . He does not say, ‘You were right concerning what you saw.’” This is why God saves Abraham’s son from his father’s “misapprehension” (99).11 This reading suggests that Abraham’s dilemma was epistemological, not ethical, since he was faced with the challenge of interpreting God’s will, and inasmuch as he failed to do so correctly, one could say that he also failed the test. If this is so, what lessons can we draw from Abraham’s story? Before I address this question, I want to round out al-­‘Arabi’s exegesis by clarifying his stance on prophets and sacrifice. Like all Muslims, he believes that a prophet is called to this spiritual station by God for reasons we cannot know. However, what prophets have in common is that each embodies “a particular aspect of God’s wisdom” (Al-­‘Arabi 1980, 16) and each is tasked with making “the Creator and Creation manifest at the same time” (Askari 2004, 328). To be able to do this, a prophet must be willing to descend (from his own state of gnosis) “to the plain of humanity” in order to “convey God’s message to the people” (328, 332). However, a Gnostic “experiences such exhilaration in the final stage of the ascent that he feels disinclined to come down. He does not want to return to the stage of humanity” (328). That is why, for a prophet, it is a sacrifice to end his gnosis with God, and it is precisely in this sense that the sacrifice of Abraham and his son was “God’s sacrifice” since it required them “to descend and to manifest” themselves in order to act on Abraham’s dream. As Kierkegaard might have said, a prophet is both a witness and a teacher whose duty is to both God and humanity, not to himself. This, in a nutshell, is al-­‘Arabi’s reading of Abraham’s story, and one can discern some obvious problems with it. For instance, how is it that Abraham does not know the real meaning of his dream, but al-­‘Arabi does? And what of the fact that al-­‘Arabi ignores the Qurān’s chronology (by making it seem that God tells Abraham of his trial beforehand) and ascribes a comment to God (that Abraham “believed” his vision) that the Qurān does

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not? Most egregious of all, to a majority of Muslims, is likely to be his claim that Abraham misinterpreted his dream, even if it is clear that God does indeed save him and his son from their own literalism. Yet the idea that a prophet could have been mistaken is not un-­Qurānic since the Qurān itself tells of how, as a youth, Moses misinterpreted the meanings of certain incidents that he witnessed. In the Qurān, prophets are not perfect since the attribute of perfection belongs to God alone. Despite these problems, however, and even if one is not persuaded by al-­‘Arabi’s parsing of Abraham’s story, the morals of his exegesis are still worth considering: that literalism is not the essence of faith, that God’s will is not transparent but needs to be interpreted, and that no one can claim interpretive infallibility. These are particularly compelling reminders at a time when so many Muslims are bound to textual literalism, when they see reason as an obstacle to faith, and when male hubris has reached such heights that a handful of (mostly Arab) men can claim to know the truth as it resides with God. It is this claim to authority, which also manifests in patriarchal interpretations of the Qurān, that is the point of departure for my own reading of Abraham’s story. However, before I describe that, I want to draw out some contrasts between al-­‘Arabi’s and Kierkegaard’s portraits of Abraham more explicitly than I have done so far.12 III. Differing Abrahams Unlike al-­‘Arabi, Kierkegaard does not seem to be interested in Abraham’s nature, which he sees as being no different from his own and which he even explains “by recourse to his own personality” (quoted in Askari 2004, 317). And while he does distinguish between their relationships to God, he does not conceive of the relationships, or of the differences between them, in ontological terms, as does al-­‘Arabi. In Kierkegaard’s view, what makes Abraham, Abraham and Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard is not that one is a prophet and the other is not, but rather that one elects to do God’s bidding despite the anguish it causes him, while the other says he could not have done as much in the same situation. Second, according to Kierkegaard, it is this willingness to put himself in an absolute relationship to the Absolute that marks Abraham as a knight of faith, whereas al-­‘Arabi would have said Abraham was already in such a relationship as a prophet. Lastly, Kierkegaard believes that a knight of faith owes a duty of obedience to God and “a duty of freedom in unfettered individuality” to himself (quoted in

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Gellman 1994, 15). Hence, it is only by becoming such a knight that Abraham is also able to individuate himself. This emphasis on Abraham’s “free will and independence” (Lowin 2006, 223) and “atomic sense of individuality” (Gellman, 14), may resonate well with secular notions of radical individualism and the promise of infinite choice, but many Muslims would be troubled by Kierkegaard’s own rather secular portrait of a prophet. As al-­‘Arabi would have objected, a knight of faith is not the same as a prophet since one cannot become a prophet by one’s own efforts or even by obeying God. That is why even if Kierkegaard had done exactly what Abraham did, he might have become a knight, but he could not have become a prophet. In fact, God would not have put him to the same test to which God put Abraham precisely because Kierke­ gaard was not Abraham. Thus, al-­‘Arabi would have agreed that Abraham’s relationship with God was ineluctably personal, but he would have taken this to mean that his sacrifice was commensurate with his own nature and relationship to God, and therefore not generalizable since our natures and relationships with God are likely to be different. As for “the whole issue of compulsion . . . and . . . free will,” he would have considered it “a colossal deception,” because “compulsion only obtains when one is forced to act against his own will, but God commands man to do only what is innate in man’s primordial nature” (Askari 2004, 323). In contrast to Kierkegaard, then, al-­‘Arabi’s exegesis seems to convey “the more Mosaic idea of Allah’s supreme and active control of the universe” (Lowin 2006, 225). This contrast, Shari Lowin argues, is also discernable in early Jewish and Muslim commentaries on the story. Even so, I would hesitate to overdraw the contrast between al-­‘Arabi and Kierkegaard because, despite their differences, they also share the view that obedience to God’s will is not the only lesson of Abraham’s sacrifice—or even the only element of faith. To Kierkegaard, “mere obedience cannot distinguish faith. How Abraham survives is key” (Mooney 1991, 85.) To al-­‘Arabi, not all of God’s prescriptive commands are meant to be obeyed (see Chittick 1989, 291). If he makes this argument elsewhere but not in his exegesis of Abraham’s story, it is because he believes that prophets stand in a distinctive relationship to God, one that transcends the dilemmas posed by free will. Still, his exegesis of Abraham’s story also makes clear that a prophet can be faced with both dilemmas and choices. In fact, it is from Abraham’s freely made choice that God rescues his son. Of course, in al-­‘Arabi’s opinion, the rescue testifies to Abraham’s failure to interpret God’s will accurately;

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in mine, however, this rescue signals a resistance on the Qurān’s part to father-­right, or traditional patriarchy.13 IV. Abraham’s Son and Patriarchy My interpretation of Abraham’s story also emphasizes the importance of free will, but in a very different way and to very different ends than Kierkegaard’s. And while, like al-­‘Arabi, I am also interested in Abraham’s dream, unlike him, I approach it mostly from the perspective of Abraham’s son because I think his role in assuming his own sacrifice puts a constraint on the rights his father exercises over him. Since this is the opposite of what Muslim tradition holds, I should note that the lessons most Muslims draw from the story are “about obedience to God’s will and His reward for those who obey Him unquestioningly” (Leemhuis 2002, 125). A few exegetes even maintain that the son (whom most take to be Ismail, but some, Isaac) not only agrees to his own sacrifice, but also tries to ensure “that he himself will not try to resist his father and thus asks to be bound. He also wants to make sure that his father will . . . not show mercy at the last moment. Therefore he asks that his face be put down so that his father will not look him in the eye” (133). In brief, the son’s role is seen as enacting his obedience to patriarchal authority. This explanation fits nicely into traditional interpretations of the Qurān as a patriarchal text, but I do not consider it to be very thoughtful or compelling. For one, where it does not take the verses at face value, it injects a welter of interpretive details into them that cannot be justified textually. As we have seen, the Qurān does not say that Abraham binds his son’s body, nor does it offer any particulars that would indicate the drama and pathos that have has been conjured up by exegetes. For another, the Qurān tells us that Abraham had submitted himself to God’s will while he was still a young man and even risked death as a consequence (see below); we therefore do not need the story of the sacrifice to prove this. Besides, for Muslims, it is not much of a lesson to know that prophets were willing to obey God when the very term muslim means “one who submits to God’s will.”14 Most importantly, “Allah at no point demands a literal sacrifice. As the text explicitly says . . . ‘This was an obvious trial.’ . . . The Qurān elsewhere condemns the sacrifice of children and family (70:11–14), as well as infanticide (17:31), because they are sinful.”15 For all these reasons, I read the story of Abraham’s sacrifice very differently, and I put it into the larger context of his own life, as well as

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of some fundamental Qurānic teachings about God, faith, and the nature of moral personality; specifically, that God is not Father; that there should be “no compulsion in religion” (2:256 [Ali 1998, 103]); that each soul is answerable only for “herself,” and no one can “Bear another’s burden . . . [e]ven though he be nearly Related” (35:18 [Ali, 1158]); and that God tries a soul only to the limits of its own capacity. If Abraham’s story is to cohere with such principles, then it is clear that he cannot witness his son’s faith by offering his life to God; rather, the son must do so himself. However, what seems significant is not just that he consents to his sacrifice but also how and why. I want to consider each of these points in some detail. At a time when the law of the father sanctioned infanticide, it would not have been extraordinary for God to have commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, as in the Hebrew Bible. But we know that God does not do this in the Qurān; instead, Abraham has a dream that he tells his son about. The dominant Muslim view, as I have just noted, is that this disclosure allows for a display of Abraham’s authority as a father, a reading with which some feminists16 would agree on the grounds that, as Michelle Lelwica says, “patriarchal society’s emphasis on obedience to authority (including corrupt or even deranged authority),” produces modes of socialization that encourage “us to make ‘choices’ that reproduce the dominant/patriarchal status quo.”17 There is no gainsaying the logic of this argument, but I read the son’s part in his sacrifice as doing just the opposite—that is, as illustrating the different ways in which the Qurān challenges the legitimacy of patriarchal norms. It does this, for instance, by not upholding paternal authority just because it is paternal authority; in fact, the Qurān advocates disobeying parents if they “strive To make thee join In worship with Me Things of which thou hast No knowledge” (3:14–15 [Ali, 1083]). It is true that Abraham was not pressing his son to worship anyone other than God, but my point is simply that the Qurān’s concept of moral personality is not premised on the notion of blind obedience to parents, particularly to fathers. (I will return to this point below.) There is therefore no a priori reason to assume a son’s investment in consenting to his father’s authority, especially since the Qurān mentions other prophets whose wives and children refused to heed their messages because they refused to acknowledge them as prophets at all. Second, it is not even the case that Abraham asks for his son’s consent or obedience; rather, he asks his son what he makes of his dream. To this open-­ended question the son replies that his father should do as he is bidden (by God). This shows both that the son takes the dream literally and

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that he believes he is obeying God’s will; that is, he is submitting to the God of his father, not to his father. Abraham’s question also shows that up to that point in the story, he has not decided on the meaning of his dream. Otherwise he could just as easily have asked his son a very different sort of question, perhaps about how to proceed with the sacrifice. If one is to go by these details in the story, as well as of the Qurān’s teachings I have mentioned above and others that I will consider shortly, there is no reason to treat the son’s voice in the cavalier and instrumentalist manner of Muslim tradition. Indeed, it allows the son to profess his faith by assuming his own death. If it is true, as Derrida (1995, 41) says, that death is “the one thing in the world that no one else can either give or take: therein reside freedom and responsibility,” then it is only by assuming his own death that the son can make his sacrifice a morally purposive and self-­determining act rather than one of treachery or betrayal on his father’s part. This is partly why I believe the Qurān gives him a voice in his sacrifice; otherwise, it could have made him like Isaac in the Bible, unaware of his fate. Third, the son’s voice is important because it serves to curtail Abraham’s rights as a father. By this I mean that not only does Abraham not have the right to commit infanticide, but whatever rights he does have in this instance are made subject to his son’s moral choices. But if Abraham’s authority is not absolute in the matter of his son’s sacrifice, can we view him as a patriarch, and the sacrifice as an act of patriarchal violence or as upholding the patriarchal status quo? This point can be better made by contrasting the biblical and Qurānic Abrahams. In the Bible, too, Abraham’s will is not absolute since it is subjected to God’s will, but this does not detract from his authority as a father. On the contrary, God’s command to sacrifice Isaac clearly reaffirms this authority. Even if Abraham is distraught at doing God’s will, his right to kill his son is never called into question. Therefore, the authority that the two Abrahams exercise over their sons is very different, and I want to suggest that this has to do with Christian and Islamic views not just of fathers, but of God. In fact, the two are contingent. In Christianity, as some feminists have long argued, patriarchy draws its legitimacy from sacralizations of God as Father.18 And while Abraham himself does not refer to God as Father in the biblical story, given the possibility of patriarchalizing God, one can read God’s rescue of Isaac not as displacing the patriarchal status quo, but as demonstrating that divine patriarchy takes precedence over the earthly one.

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In the Qurān, however, God is not Father, and Muslims are forbidden from referring to God as such and even from using “similitude” for God (16:74 [Ali, 676]). As the Qurān repeatedly says, God is uncreated (thus beyond sex/gender) and also incomparable and unrepresentable. The Qurān’s refusal to patriarchalize God means that Muslim fathers cannot rely on a model of divine fatherhood to legitimize their own authority. Not only that, but the Qurān also roundly condemns people who ignored God’s messages because they wanted to follow “the ways of their fathers” (2:170 [Ali, 67]), a phrase one can take to mean patriarchy proper or, more broadly, patriarchal tradition. This hostility to father-­rule also finds a powerful expression in Abraham’s story, including (and especially) the part that deals with his relationship with his own father. As the Qurān recounts it, after Abraham’s search for the one true God eventually leads him to submit himself to God, he gets into a confrontation with his father’s people: Behold! he said To his father and his people, “What are these images, To which ye are (So assiduously) devoted?” They said: “We found Our fathers worshipping them.” He said, “Indeed ye Have been in manifest Error—ye and your fathers.” They said, “Have you Brought us the Truth, Or are you one Of those who jest?” He said, “Nay, your [Sustainer]19 Is the [Sustainer] of the heavens And the earth . . . Who Created [Creation] (from nothing): And I am a witness To this (truth).” The Qurān (21:52–56 [Ali, 834])

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As this exchange demonstrates, the basis of his father’s faith is to cleave to patriarchal traditions, and it is this practice that Abraham attacks, with God’s approval, as the next verse makes clear: Behold, he said to his father: “O my father! why Worship that which heareth not And seeth not, and can Profit thee nothing?” “O my father! to me Hath come knowledge which Hath not reached thee: So follow me: I will guide Thee to a Way that Is even and straight.” The Qurān (19:42–43 [Ali, 776])

To demonstrate that the idols his father worships are ineffectual, Abraham breaks all of them except the largest and dares his father’s people to get it to identify the culprit. His father reacts to this challenge by having Abraham thrown into a fire from which God saves him, just as God saves Abraham’s son from him years later. Clearly, then, the condition for Abraham’s embrace of God is to break with his own father, and this conflict between God’s rule (monotheism) and father’s rule (patriarchy) also finds an exposition in the Qurān’s warning to Fear (The coming of ) a Day When no father can avail Aught for his son, nor A son avail aught For his father. The Qurān (31:33 [Ali, 1089])

On that day, it says, One soul shall not avail another; Nor shall compensation be accepted from her

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Nor shall intercession profit her, Nor shall anyone be helped (from the outside). The Qurān (2:123 [Ali, 51–52])

It is within the context of these teachings that I understand God’s rescue of Abraham from his father, and of Abraham’s son from him, and I consider the two to be very different. For one, the sons and fathers could not be more different themselves. Both sons, for instance, are monotheists, but one falls victim to his unbelieving father’s depredations, while the other submits of his own volition to the God of his fathers. Both face death, but for different reasons and at the hands of very different fathers. One father (Abraham’s) tries to kill his son for his faith, and the son has no choice in the matter. In contrast, the other father (Abraham), while also ready to sacrifice his son as a matter of faith, can only proceed with it at his son’s expressed wish. If these differences did not exist, Abraham would have been no different from his own father, and the story of his near-­sacrifice of his son would have proved little more than the omnipotence of fathers in patriarchies. However, the morals of the two stories are not the same, and that is the second way in which they are different. One reveals an outright conflict between obeying God and obeying fathers, especially those who are “devoid of wisdom and guidance” (2:170 [Ali, 67]). The message of the other story is that in order for God’s will to be done, believers must submit to it voluntarily. And since God is not Father, one cannot view God’s rule (monotheism) as a divine surrogate for father’s rule (patriarchy). To the contrary, and borrowing from Derrida (1995), there is an “insoluble and paradoxical contradiction” between father’s rule and God’s rule. That is why Abraham’s story can be read as “a moral allegory about the consensual and purposive nature of Faith, its primacy over kinship and blood, the existential dilemmas that can result from submitting to God’s Will (specially where it comes into conflict with one’s own life), and, not least, the insignificance of the father’s will in comparison to God’s Will” (Barlas 2002, 116). A Postscript I ended my reading on this note many years ago, but since then I have reflected on both al-­‘Arabi’s arguments and the ontology of self-­surrender to God (the meaning of the term muslim). Much about Abraham’s story

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remains a mystery to me: Why did God choose him as a friend? Why did the friendship involve putting him through an “obvious” trial? Why did the trial take the form it did, and what was its real purpose: to illustrate the virtue of taking one’s faith, or perception of reality, literally—or just the reverse? Even al-­‘Arabi’s elaborate metaphysics cannot unravel these questions; in fact, suggesting that their answers may lie in Abraham’s nature just deepens the mystery. However, what I have come to realize is that alleging that he experienced an existential dilemma by submitting to God’s will amounts to embracing a rather secular and un-­Abrahamic view of prophecy. In fact, on this issue, “the Abrahamic religions are all quite clear in their original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic) that faith—from the Semitic root amiyn, one of the early nicknames of Muhammad—is a matter of placing complete confidence in God, not just agreeing to a proposition” (Chilton 2008, 157). However, even if this is the principal lesson one can draw from the story of Abraham’s sacrifice, it seems that each of the Abrahamic religions has chosen instead to arm itself with “the conviction that its innocent victim, Isaac or Christ or Ismail, models God’s desire for how his people should sacrifice themselves for him”; thus, “both self-­sacrifice and the extermination of infidels in the name of God . . . have haunted the West . . . and . . . all but obscured Muhammad’s vision, and Ibrahim’s, that violence is never God’s requirement, but only an obvious trial” (Chilton 2008, 170–71). It seems that in their self-­righteousness, at least, Abraham’s children are very much alike. Still, it is worth cautioning against the tendency to see only sameness among them since doing so ignores fundamental scriptural differences between the three religions, including concerning Abraham himself. Thus even that ultimate theorist of difference, Derrida (1995, 64), can speak about Isaac’s sacrifice as “the terrifying secret of the mysterium tremendum that is a property of all three so-­called religions of the Book, the religions of the races of Abraham.” This view then leads him to cast the ongoing political strife between these “races of Abraham” as “the fight to the death that continues to rage on Mount Moriah over the possession of the secret of the sacrifice by an Abraham who never said anything. Do they not fight in order to take possession of the secret as the sign of an alliance with God and to impose its order on the other, who becomes for his part nothing more than a murderer?” (87). I cannot say why the children of Abraham are so quarrelsome; perhaps they have not yet figured out the terms for mutual exclusion or embrace.20 148

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But about this I am clear: Abraham in the Qurān did not possess a secret as a sign of his “alliance” with God, nor is he a murderer, nor does he try to impose his will on his son. I feel that all these differences should matter because they do matter. And I feel, too, that like Abraham and his son, we are free to speak about the unspeakable since there is no burden of secrecy here, just the limitations of our own knowledge.

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P a r t III

Unreading and Rereading Patriarchy

For believing men and women, For devout men and women, For true men and women . . . For men and women who Guard their chastity . . . For them has God prepared Forgiveness and great reward. The Qurān (33:35 [Ali, 1116–17])

Chapter 6

The Qurān, Sex/Gender, and Sexuality Sameness, Difference, Equality ▼

reverence [God] Who created you From a single Person The Qurān (4:1 [Ali, 178]) 1

I

n chapter 4, I read the nature of God’s self-­disclosure and the narratives of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad in the Qurān in order to show that Islam opposes traditional patriarchal imaginaries of God-­the-­Father, the prophet-­as-­father, and the father/male-­as-­ruler. Here I analyze the Qurān’s position on sex/gender in support of my claim that Islam also opposes modern patriarchal theories of sexual differentiation that represent man as a “constituting Cartesian subject”2 and woman as his Other by teaching the idea of the “immutable, and complete differences of their nature.”3 On a related note, I also examine the Qurān’s approach to sexuality in order to show that, unlike “Patriarchal religion and ethics,” Islam does not “lump the female and sex together as if the whole burden of the onus and stigma [attached] to sex were the fault of the female alone” (Millett 1970, 51).

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If all binary thinking is in itself patriarchal,4 as is the tendency to confuse sex with gender and to associate women with sex, while disparaging both, then I assume that revealing the absence of such tendencies in the Qurān is one way to affirm its non/antipatriarchal episteme. Accordingly, this is what I will do. Basically, I will argue that not only does the Qurān not define women and men in terms of binary oppositions, but also that it does not portray women as lesser or defective men, or the two sexes as incompatible, incommensurable, or unequal, in the tradition of Western/ ized patriarchal thought. Unlike the latter, the Qurān does not even associate sex with gender, or with a specific division of labor, or with masculine and feminine attributes (e.g., men with intellect and reason,5 and women with instinct and emotion). Rather, “since they manifest the whole,”6 the Qurān does not endow humans with a fixed nature. Moreover, its account of human creation from a single Self, its definition of moral agency and subjectivity in terms of “ethical individualism,”7 and its emphasis on the equality before God of the moral praxis of both men and women confirms that the sole criterion for differentiation in Islam is ethical-­moral, and not sexual, and allows for a mutual recognition of individuality.8 That is, morally purposeful action in keeping with the Qurān’s teachings, and not sexual identity, is what defines the human subject in Islam. Finally, the Qurān does not use sex/gender to discriminate against women, and it does not stigmatize sex itself. Rather, it treats sex as natural and desirable for women and men, albeit within the context of a moral sexual praxis that remains within the limits and constraints prescribed by God. In support of this argument, I read the Qurān’s position on human ontology, creation, and moral personality in part 1, and on sex/uality in part 2. On occasion, I contrast Qurānic concepts with both pre-­Islamic and modern/Western ideas as a way to explain them and also to establish their specificity. While many theorists view such comparisons as suspect,9 there seems to be no better way to distinguish different religious or theoretical positions and perspectives from one another. I. Sex/Gender and Moral Individuality In order for me to illustrate and for readers to appreciate the Qurān’s approach to sex/gender and sexual (in)equality, it would be helpful to begin by clarifying some general theoretical points about both.

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S e xua l I n/equal i t y: Sam eness ve rsus Diffe re n ce Even though theorists differ widely in their definitions of sexual equality, most agree that at the core of theories of sexual inequality is the confusion of biology (sex) with its social meanings (gender); or, in Marshall Sahlins’s (1976, 99) words, the “subordination of the symbolic with the natural.” Even though this confusion of difference with inequality is a “confusion of categories . . . too immoderate” to sustain (106), it has structured (Western) patriarchal thought from earliest times. As some feminists have pointed out, “patriarchal religions” ascribe “psycho-­social distinctions” between women and men to biological (sexual) differences between them (Millett 1970, 26). In fact, not only patriarchal readings of religion but also Western secular (patriarchal) theories locate the “underlying structure [of gender dualism in] anatomical differences,” claiming that it is women’s biology that renders them deficient in reasoning and morality, hence hostile to civilization (Hewitt 1995, 64). The tendency to impute gender dualisms to sex is quite old, but views of the relationship between sex and gender have changed over time. For instance, argues Thomas Laqueur (1990, 5), the early Greeks propagated a one-­sex model in which men and women were “arranged according to their degree of metaphysical perfection.” Hence, to be “a man or a woman . . . was to hold a social rank, a place in society, to assume a cultural role, not to be organically one or the other of two incommensurable sexes.” In other words, sex was “a sociological and not an ontological category” before the eighteenth century (8). However, since then, the dominant Western view has been “that there are two stable, incommensurable, opposite sexes and that the political, economic, and cultural lives of men and women, their gender roles, are somehow based on these ‘facts’” (6). This “two-­sex model” collapses sex with gender by assuming that there are fundamental biological differences “between the male and female sexes, and thus between man and woman”; it also holds that the sexes “are different in every conceivable aspect of body and soul, in every physical and moral aspect” (5). In a word, they are opposites. To put it differently, women and men are distinguished “not on the basis of (. . . ‘pure’) difference but in terms of dichotomous opposition or distinction; that is, not as contraries (‘A’ and ‘B’), but as contradictories (‘A’ and ‘not-­A’)” (Grosz 1990, 124). As Elizabeth Grosz explains it,

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in relations governed by pure difference, each term is defined by all the others; there can be no privileged term which somehow dispenses with its (constitutive) structuring and value in relation to other terms. Distinctions, binary oppositions, are relations based on one rather than many terms, the one term generating a non-­reciprocal definition of the other as its negative. The presence and absence of one term defines both positions in the dichotomy. (124)

It is the second view of difference—as binary opposition—that structures phallocentric thought, says Grosz, and therefore female and male subjectivities in patriarchies. And it is this second view of difference that has been used to oppress women and to exclude them from public and civic life during the last few centuries.10 It should thus be easy to understand why feminist theorizing on sexual equality, especially in its earliest stages, focused on trying to establish the sameness/similarity11 of women and men, and why feminists have been so persistent in calling for the identical treatment of both. Arguably, however, it is not only the notion of sexual difference (the two-­sex model) that is phallocentric but also the idea of sexual sameness (the one-­sex model) in that both regard man as the Subject and woman as the Other. And elements of both persist in modern patriarchal discourses in which woman is represented not only as the opposite of man but also as “a lesser man” (Moi 1985, 134). Given, then, that the idea of sexual sameness has also been used to discriminate against women, some theorists believe that the solution is not to replace difference with sameness (as they note, treating women and men identically does not always mean treating them equally), but to recognize some differences as crucial. This is because, first, the “same unacceptable consequences” arise if we assume women and men to be the same in all respects, for “if women have no special interests or legitimate grounds for their social being, men could speak for them as they had in the past” (Laqueur 1990, 197). Second, as Alison Jaggar (1994, 19) points out—citing the Aristotelian dictum that “justice consists not only in treating like cases alike but also in treating different cases differently”—even equality before the law may not always benefit women since “sexual equality in procedure often may ensure rather than obliterate sexual inequality in outcome” (20). Finally, as some feminists argue, “Essential difference need not be associated with power and subordination nor

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does it necessarily imply a static relationship between the sexes”; as such, it may not be “an irretrievable barrier to the establishment of social organizations built on mutual tolerance and interdependency” (Hart 1996, 29). This is why many recent theories conceptualize sexual equality not as blindness to sexual difference but as responsiveness to it (Jaggar 1994). In effect, the challenge is to think of difference itself differently so as to de-­link it from biology and also from social hierarchies and inequalities. Accordingly, in my reading of the Qurān, I do not begin by assuming that sexual equality consists in treating men and women identically or differently. Instead, I examine the teachings of the Qurān in order to see if it uses the ideas of sexual sameness and difference to privilege men or to discriminate against women in their biological capacities as males and females. And I focus as much on what the Qurān does not say about sameness, difference, in/equality as on what it does say. In this context, I hope to show that Qurānic teachings are not based in the same view of sameness/difference as either the one-­sex or the two-­sex models. Thus, although the Qurān affirms the principle of the ontological sameness/similarity of women and men, it does not use man as the paradigm for defining sameness/similarity. On the other hand, although the Qurān recognizes sexual specificity, hence sexual differences, and although it treats women and men differently with respect to some issues, it does not advocate the concept of sexual differentiation or inequality (a Self/Other binary). I realize this way of reading the Qurān does not prove that it advances a theory of equality; however, it allows me to identify some of its teachings that are conducive to theorizing equality.

Th e Qur ān and Equa lit y: Ontology of a Si ngle Se lf The most radical Qurānic teachings that establish the ontic nature of sexual equality in Islam and undermine the very notions of radical differences and hierarchies concern the origins and nature of human creation. As the Qurān describes it, humans, though biologically different, are ontologically and ethically/morally the same/similar inasmuch as both women and men originated in a single Self, have been endowed with the same natures, and make up two halves of a single pair. Thus, the Qurān instructs believers to

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Reverence Your [Rabb], Who created you From a single nafs 12 [Person] Created, of like nature, [its] zawāj [mate] and from them twain Scattered (like seeds) Countless men and women;— Reverence God, through Whom Ye demand your mutual (rights). The Qurān (4:1 [Ali, 178])

Nafs (feminine plural), argues Rahman (1980), refers to “Self ” or “Person”—not “soul,” as it was interpreted by early Muslim scholars who, under Greek influences, invented a typology of spirit, soul, and body in which the spirit occupied the highest place and was associated with man, and the soul occupied a lower rank and was associated with woman. (This typology allowed them to read sexual hierarchy and inequality even into āyah 4:1!) However, as Rahman points out, the Qurān itself does not endorse mind-­body or body-­soul dualisms (112). Nor does it espouse sex-­ gender dualisms (that is, the idea of sexual differentiation) inasmuch as words like nafs and zawāj confirm the basic similarity,13 not differences, of men and women but without treating the male as normative. The theme that women and men commenced from a single Self and constitute a pair is integral to the Qurān’s teachings and is repeated in different contexts throughout the text: “It is [God] Who hath Produced you From a single person” (6:98 [Ali, 317]); “It is [God] Who created You from a single person, And made [its] mate of like nature, in order That he might dwell with her (In love)” (7:189 [Ali, 398]); “God has made for you Mates (and Companions) of your own nature” (16:72 [Ali, 675]); “And among [God’s] Signs Is this, that [God] created for You mates from among Yourselves, that ye may Dwell in tranquillity with them” (30:21 [Ali, 1056]); “We created You from a single (pair) Of a male and a female, And made you into Nations and tribes, that Ye may know one another” (49:13 [Ali, 1407]); God “did create In pairs,—male and female” (53:45 [Ali, 1450]); “of insān [God] made Two sexes, male and female” (75:39 [Ali, 1653]); “(have We not) created You in pairs?” (78:8 [Ali, 1673]); “God has produced on earth every kind of Beautiful growth (in pairs)”

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(50:7 [Ali, 1411]); and “of everything We have created pairs: That ye may receive Instruction” (51:49 [Ali, 1428]). Male and female thus are not only inseparable in the Qurān, but they also are ontologically equal. The reason the Qurān gives for their equality and similarity is that the two sexes were meant to coexist within the framework of mutual love and recognition. (As I argue later, the sort of mutuality the Qurān envisages does not sit well with hierarchies and inequalities.) There is nothing ambiguous about these āyāt; on the contrary, they are abundantly clear. We can therefore take them as providing the ethical and epistemological framework within which we can interpret the Qurān’s teachings about sexual relationships between men and women. Even though the Qurān’s account of human creation as originating in a single Self is, or should be, sufficient to establish women and men as the same and as equal, Muslims continue to view them as binary opposites and as unequal, in part because of how they conceptualize the pair itself. In this context, it may be argued that the Qurān’s references to the pair do not establish that women and men are not binary opposites; nor do they speak to the issue of whether one term (male) in the pair defines the other (female)—that is, whether there is a real or symbolic hierarchy within the dyad. In fact, on most views, the very idea of a pair denotes opposition (and on more progressive views, complementarity) inasmuch as it is only by coming together that the two halves in/of a pair become whole. Such a view, however, is based in dualistic modes of thinking; as I argue in chapter 4, in polar explanations a pair is conceived of as an internally differentiated unity comprising two halves, each of which represents the whole (in Murata’s phrase). As Wadud (1999, 21) also clarifies, in the Qurān a pair “is made of two co-­existing forms of a single reality [such that the] existence of one in such a pair is contingent upon the other in our known world.” This single reality, as noted, is the nafs—conceivably, God’s Self,14 which incorporates within itself all oppositional attributes (the whole). There is no reason to assume that the attributes of this Self get distributed unevenly between men and women, both of whom originate in it. Even if by nafs we do not mean the divine Self, the fact remains that in the Qurān, man and woman are “related to each other ontologically, not merely sociologically” (Hassan 1999, 342), and this relationship is based in equality and not in hierarchy or differentiation. The āyāt so far cited confirm this, as does the fact that not a single āyah states that man and woman were created from different substances, or embody opposite or

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incommensurable attributes, or that the woman was created from the man, or even that she was created after the man—claims that are foundational to theories of male superiority, hence to the concepts of sexual hierarchy and inequality. In the Qurān, argues Riffat Hassan (1999), none of the thirty or so passages which describe the creation of humanity (designated by generic terms such as “an-­nas,” “al-­ insan,” and “bashar”) by God in a variety of ways is there any statement which could be interpreted as asserting or suggesting that man was created prior to woman or that woman was created from man. In fact there are some passages which could—from a purely grammatical/linguistic point of view—be interpreted as stating that the first creation (“nafs in wahidatin”) was feminine, not masculine! (345)

Although Muslims read the Qurān as establishing the priority of Adam’s creation, hence also the principle of male superiority,15 the term Adam is a Hebrew and not an Arabic word, and it means “‘of the soil’ (from ‘adamah’: the soil),” says Hassan. As she points out, in Hebrew the “term ‘Adam’ functions generally as a collective noun referring to ‘the human’ (species) rather than to a male human being.” Similarly, in the Qurān, “the term ‘Adam’ refers, in twenty-­one cases out of twenty-­five, to humanity.” That is, Adam in the Qurān is both a universal and a specific term, and it is in its universal (generic) sense that the Qurān uses it to define human creation. If, says Hassan, one analyzes the Qurān’s “descriptions of human creation,” one finds that it evenhandedly uses both feminine and masculine terms and imagery to describe the creation of humanity from a single source. That God’s original creation was undifferentiated humanity and not either man or woman (who appeared simultaneously at a subsequent time) is implicit in a number of Quranic passages. (346)

If, however, God did not create the biological male first, there is also no reason to assume that God taught knowledge only to the male or appointed only the male to be God’s vice-­regent on earth.16 In other words, the Qurān does not arrange women and men in terms of their degree of metaphysical perfection (like the one-­sex model); nor does it define them in terms of binary oppositions (like the two-­sex model).

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Rather, in the Qurān, male and female originate in the same Self, at the same time, and in the same way; that is, they are ontologically coeval and coequal. The Qurān “does not consider woman a type of man in the presentation of its major themes. Man and woman are two categories of the human species given the same or equal consideration and endowed with the same or equal potential” (Wadud 1999, 15). Using Wadud’s language, we can argue that the Qurān treats women and men as contraries (“A” and “B”),17 not as contradictories (“A” and “not A”). Notwithstanding the Qurān’s unusual and egalitarian treatment of difference, many scholars read binary opposition into it on the basis of the Qurān’s different treatment of men and women with respect to some issues (which I examine in chapter 7) and because of some symbolic references in it, such as the following oath:18 By the Night as it Conceals (the light); By the Day as it Appears in glory; By (the mystery of ) The creation of male And female;— Verily, (the ends) ye Strive for are diverse. The Qurān (92:1–4 [Ali, 1746])

According to Angelika Neuwirth (1993, 22), the semantic structure and subject matter of the oath embody a binary opposition between the two sexes, who, she says, form “the first contrasting pair” (actually, the first contrasting pair are night and day). And while Neuwirth does not claim that the Qurān privileges the man in this oath or that the contrast itself is problematic, both ideas are implicit in the very idea of binary opposition. However, while the Qurān does rest “on a number of basic conceptual oppositions” (Izutsu 1964, 74), and while it does refer to the creation of males and females alongside the contrasts of day/night, light/dark, and good/evil, it does not use these oppositions to define women and men either in relation to the oppositions themselves or to one another. This is clear not only from the totality of the Qurān’s teachings but also from the āyāt quoted above in which the first half of the dyad is not privileged over

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the second. That is, the Qurān does not privilege day over night, light over dark/ness, or male over female; it only privileges virtue over evil. Nor does the oath align males with day/light/good and females with night/darkness/ evil. Rather, in delineating good/evil, the Qurān (in subsequent passages) says only that God will punish “those most unfortunate ones Who give the lie to Truth” and will reward “those most devoted to God” (92:15–17 [Ali, 1748]). It does not define the unfortunate or the devoted in terms of their sex; rather, the rest of the su¯rah speaks in the most sex/gender-­neutral terms of “the good” simply as Those who spend their wealth For increase in self-­purification, And have in their minds No favour from anyone For which a reward Is expected in return, But only the desire To seek for the Countenance Of their [Rabb] The Qurān (92:18–20 [Ali, 1748–49])

The contrast between day/night, light/darkness, and good/evil thus never extends into associating men with the first half of the dyad and women with the second; instead, the Qurān only distinguishes between humans on the basis of their praxis (discussed further below). The radical significance of the Qurān’s teachings, especially its creation narrative, becomes apparent if we recall that in Christian traditions, sexual (and racial) hierarchies derive from their temporalization;19 that is, from the belief that superiority of creation is a function of its priority. This posited “hierarchy of being”20 is critical in biblical texts; for example, “For man is not out of woman but rather woman out of man. Because also man was not created for the sake of the woman, but rather woman for the sake of the man” (Ali 1991, 206). It is this account of the woman as being derived from the man and thus as being secondary to him that establishes her as the Other in Christian thought according to some feminists. (In fact, as Margaret Hodgen [1964] argues, this hierarchy of being also allowed

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Western anthropologists to label native people in the Americas as savages, barbarians, and Others.) In the Qurān, however, since both women and men originate in a single Self and at the same time, there is, either literally or symbolically, no “Other.” If the Qurān does not treat woman as derivative, it also does not blame her for original sin or “the Fall.” Indeed, Islam does not teach the concept of original sin, which is so crucial to Otherizing women in traditional Christian theology. Thus, “with one exception, the Qurān always uses the Arabic dual form to tell how Satan tempted both Adam and [his spouse] and how they both disobeyed [God]; this much is clear: woman is never singled out as the initiator or temptress of evil” (Wadud 1999, 25). The Qurānic expulsion narrative also differs from its Christian counterpart that holds Eve culpable for original sin, for which God damns her in the Bible: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16 [Stowasser 1984, 22]). As feminists argue, the concept of original sin leads in traditional Christian theology to the degradation of “the woman” as a symbolic category; for example, “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (Stowasser, 22). Or, “give me any wickedness but the wickedness of a woman,” and “from a woman was the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die” (Parrinder 1996, 185). The Book of Renditions also mentions “the elect who ‘were not defiled with women’” (214). Such misogyny results not only from the idea of original sin and its association with Eve but also from the theme of the Fall, which temporalizes and institutionalizes “man’s” alienation from God.21 Islam, however, does not interiorize “the rift [symbolized by the Fall] between the divine and human orders into man’s [sic] essence”22 since it does not propagate the idea of the Fall. God and humans are thus not alienated; rather, the expulsion of the human pair from Paradise opens up the possibility for all humanity to receive immeasurably of God’s mercy and to acquire salvation through their individual moral praxis. Even though the Qurān’s expulsion narrative does not suggest the loss of divine Grace or the woman’s role in bringing it about, Muslim exegetes— possibly unhappy at the very absence of detail in this narrative (Wadud 1999)—have borrowed from biblical accounts to assert “Eve/Hawah’s” role in the Fall (and her creation from Adam’s rib). Some even claim that childbirth and menstruation are punishments for this role (al-­Tabari 1987,

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51–55). Such views serve to establish women’s weak and sinful natures, and the legitimacy of their subordination to men. Ironically, however, Christian traditions that make such claims—or that assert the “moral imbecility of women” or deny them “full capacity for moral responsibility,”23 upon which Muslims draw—themselves are flawed. As feminists emphasize, the Old Testament does not preach the idea of original sin or of the sexual fall. Moreover, the early Hebrews held that all humans were created in God’s image; the claim that Eve was created from Adam’s rib was a later distortion. Also, in the Talmud, “God endowed women with more intelligence than men,” and wisdom (Sophia) was God’s female companion before creation (Parrinder 1996, 185). As my reading will show, many Muslim ideas about women also do not derive from the Qurān’s teachings—and in fact contradict them. One must then question the textual strategies by means of which misogynistic themes external to the scriptures of all three faiths have been so consummately woven into their core teachings as to render monotheism itself suspect in the eyes of many people today.

Equal i t y as Agency/Pra xis It is not only the Qurān’s account of human creation and ontology that establishes the principle of male-­female equality but also its definition of moral agency and praxis—specifically, its teaching that both women and men have the same capacity for moral agency, choice, and individuality. This is evident from two facts: first, the Qurān holds both to the same standards of behavior and applies the same standards for judging them; that is, it does not sexualize moral agency. Second, the Qurān appoints women and men each other’s guides and protectors, indicating that both are equally capable of attaining moral individuality, and both have the same functions of moral guardianship over one another. To understand the ethical-­moral dimensions of sexual equality in the Qurān, it is necessary to understand the Qurānic concept of moral personality as well as the intrinsic relationship between the moral, religious, and social spheres in Islam. The best way to do both is by examining the Qurān’s definition of faith (dīn)24 since morality—hence moral agency and personality—inhere in a specific practice of faith, and faith involves the observance of moral-­religious as well as social responsibilities and obligations. In its most quotidian sense, faith—or righteousness, as the Qurān describes it—is a willingness

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To believe in God And the Last Day, And the Angels, And the Book, And the Messengers; To spend of your substance, Out of love for [God], For your kin, For orphans, For the needy, For the wayfarer, For those who ask, And for the ransom of slaves; To be steadfast in prayer,25 And practice regular charity; To fulfil the contracts Which ye have made; And to be firm and patient, In pain (or suffering) And adversity, And throughout All periods of panic. Such are the people Of truth, the God-­fearing. The Qurān (2:177 [Ali, 69–70])

A distinctive cosmology based in the idea of divine Love makes binding not only certain ritual practices like prayers but also certain material responsibilities to the community (especially to those most at risk within it), as well as moral-­social ones toward oneself. Thus, the structure of faith encompasses the rights of God and of humans, the moral-­religious and the social-­ communal; indeed, one grows from the other and is conditional upon it. If things that are incumbent on believers define one aspect of faith, and hence of moral personality in Islam, things that are prohibited describe its other. As the Prophet is told to recite, The things that my [Rabb] Hath indeed forbidden are:

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Shameful deeds, whether open Or secret; sins and trespasses Against truth or reason; assigning Of partners to God, for which [God] hath given no authority; And saying things about God Of which ye have no knowledge. The Qurān (7:33 [Ali, 348])

In delineating the unlawful, no less than the lawful, the Qurān continues to connect specific beliefs about God with specific actions in the world; that is, the moral-­religious with the social-­communal (in the above āyah, violating truth and reason both in one’s view of the divine and one’s actions toward people). This relationship between the moral and the social (the rights of God and the rights of humans) is so intrinsic to the Qurān’s definition of faith that one cannot disconnect them. As Merryl Wyn Davies (1988, 129) argues, community and faith, or “ummah and din are mutually defining and they give distinctive characteristics to the Islamic view of communal existence.” It is the Tawhīdi (belief in the unity of God) perspective that leads to defining the “community as a moral entity . . . [whose] purpose is to achieve moral balance within and between a network of relationships”; how these relationships are realized in practice and “translated into a particular pattern of living is the function of a din” (130). To separate the moral from the social, as Muslims do when they concede equality to women in the moral sphere while discriminating against them in the social/legal sphere, thus runs counter to such a Tawhīdi perspective. At the core of Islam’s view of a morally defined community is the concept that human nature (Fitra) is also moral. As Fazlur Rahman (1980, 25) argues, weakness can lead it to evil and “self-­injustice” (self-­injustice because humans have free will and can choose good or evil), but human nature and life remain moral at their core. The human purpose is to serve God and to use knowledge and power under God’s guidance for good; the test of having succeeded is whether or not one can direct one’s history toward positive ends since the natural order in Islam is purposive and not pure chance. According to Rahman, it is the extremes between good and evil that provide the natural tensions for appropriate moral praxis, which consists in following the Qurānic ideal of the mean: “that moment of balance where both sides are fully present, not absent, integrated, not negated” (28). In effect, praxis,

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to be moral, must be anchored within the tensions defined as the “limits of God” (29). What provides the unique balance for integrative moral action is God-­consciousness (taqwá), says Rahman (28), and it is on the basis of their taqwá that the Qurān differentiates between human beings. For instance, in describing the essence of integrative moral praxis it says: Those who eschew Evil,— And fall not into Its worship,—and turn To God (in repentance), . . . Those who listen To the Word, And follow The best (meaning) in it; Those are the ones Whom God has guided, and those Are the ones endued With understanding. The Qurān (39:17–18 [Ali, 1241])

Taqwá—which defines the essence of moral personality by orienting believers toward God—consists, then, in the willingness to embrace virtue and refrain from evil by exercising one’s reason, intellect, and knowledge. In no context does the Qurān suggest that men—whether in their biological capacities as males or in their social capacities as fathers, husbands, or interpreters of sacred knowledge—are better able than women to acquire taqwá or to practice their dīn. Indeed, the Qurān is rare among scriptures in teaching that women and men are equally able to acquire taqwá, as is evident from innumerable āyāt. For example: For Muslim men and women,— For believing men and women, For devout men and women, For true men and women, For men and women who are Patient and constant, for men And women who humble themselves,

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For men and women who give In charity, for men and women Who fast (and deny themselves). For men and women who Guard their chastity, and For men and women who Engage much in God’s praise,— For them has God prepared Forgiveness and great reward. The Qurān (33:35 [Ali, 1116–17])

Thus, the Qurān does not distinguish between the moral and social praxis of men and women; instead, it holds them to the same standards and judges them on the basis of the same criteria. There is not the least suggestion that women and men, because they are biologically different, are in any way unequal or opposites, or that God has endowed men with capabilities or potential that God did not confer upon women. This “pairing” of women and men on the basis of their belief or unbelief is at the heart of all the Qurān’s teachings on moral personality and faith. For example: That [God] may admit The men and women Who believe, to Gardens26 Beneath which rivers flow, To dwell therein for aye, And remove their ills From them;—and that is, In the sight of God, The highest achievement (For [insān]),—. And that [God] may punish The Hypocrites, men and Women, and the Polytheists, Men and women, who imagine An evil opinion of God. The Qurān (48:5–6 [Ali, 1392])

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The pairing of men and women who are virtuous or, conversely, guilty of the same sins is evidence that the Qurān expects both the sexes to live by the same principles and views them both as being equally capable of doing so—or not. The Qurān’s view of “ethical individualism,” then, or what I term “moral personality,” is predicated on the idea that every human, whether male or female, can aspire to faith and taqwá, and that every individual, whether woman or man, is responsible for her/himself. In the Qurān’s words: “Every soul is a pledge for its own deeds” (74:38 [Pickthall, 421]), and every soul will receive “its reward By the measure of Its Endeavour” (20:15 [Ali, 793]). That is, the Qurān does not link moral agency or individuality, much less the quality of one’s praxis, to sexual identities or to sexual differences; certainly, it does not teach that because women are biologically different from men, they also are morally or socially deficient, weak, inferior, unequal to, or less than men. It is not just that the Qurān does not propagate the view of sex or sexual difference that patriarchies do, but it also treats difference itself differently than do patriarchies. Thus, the Qurān does not conceive of difference as inequality; nor does it view it as degenerative27 or symbolic of (racial, sexual) disunity28 as Western (Christian and secular) thought does. On the contrary, in the Qurān, differences serve to establish the principle of the fundamental unity of the human race and to enable mutual recognition: O [insān]! We created You from a single (pair) Of a male and a female, And made you into Nations and tribes, that Ye may know each other (Not that ye may despise Each other). Verily The most honoured of you In the sight of God Is ([the one] who is) the most Righteous of you. The Qurān (49:13 [Ali, 1407])

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The “knowing one another” that the Qurān envisages, argues Davies (1988, 6), “is clearly a mutual process, a dialogue,” and while this may seem obvious, the absence of such a dialogue is “one of the greatest stumbling blocks”29 in much of modern/secular/Western thought, whose embrace of relativism (“whatever is, is right in cultural terms”) shuts down conversation while seeming to open it up. The Qurān’s view of mutuality also reveals that Islam takes the “unity of [hu]mankind [as] an established proposition” (8). Further, as Davies points out, when “we refer to humankind we are discussing implications that apply equally to men and women as the consequence of the common origin in the nafs” (84). Thus, in the Qurān, differences serve a necessary, and a necessarily moral-­social, function by providing the framework for mutual recognition and moral praxis. Moreover, in the Qurān, “difference differentiates laterally,”30 not hierarchically, as is evident from other āyāt as well. For instance, speaking about religious diversity, the Qurān clarifies that To each among you Have We prescribed a Law And an Open Way. If God had so willed, [God] would have made you A single People, but ([God’s] Plan is) to test you in what [God] hath given you: so strive As in a race in all virtues, The goals of you all is to God; It is [God Who] will show you The truth of the matters In which ye dispute The Qurān (5:51 [Ali, 258–59])

Thus, religious, racial, and linguistic differences are all divinely ordained and are “Signs For those who know” (30:22 [Ali, 1056]). By representing differences as expressions of God’s will, the Qurān not only demystifies and normalizes them but also establishes the inappropriateness of trying to erase or obliterate them—for instance, through assimilation or physical destruction. If something exists by divine will, then believers must accept its legitimacy and moral purposiveness as well, even when it comes

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to disbelief. This seems clear from how the Prophet is counseled to respond to those who refuse his message: Say: o ye That reject Faith! I worship not that Which ye worship. And I will not worship That which ye have been Wont to worship. Nor will ye worship That which I worship. To you be your Way, And to me mine. The Qurān (109 [Ali, 1800])

In an obvious sense, the Qurān’s counsel to the Prophet forecloses conversations and relationships across absolute or radical differences. However, one can also read this su¯rah as simply saying that people have the right to believe in different truths, but that the content of the truths in which we believe is likely to shape the kinds of relationships we can have with one another. To recognize the limits certain kinds of differences impose on us is not to denigrate the differences themselves, nor is it to deny others their beliefs.31 In sum, the Qurān does not use differences to establish hierarchies based in race, sex, nationality, or class. Such differences, as Wadud (1999, 37) notes, are immaterial from God’s perspective, in which the only “distinguishing value” is that of taqwá, and for believers, God’s perspective is the only real perspective. Thus, the sole function of difference in the Qurān is to differentiate between belief and unbelief; hence, to the extent that a hierarchy based in difference exists in the Qurān, it is moral. As Murata (1992, 44) says, Islam only “distinguishes between those who meet the expectations of God and those who do not; those who live up to the human role in existence and those who do not.” Thus, at the most basic level of general belief, the [Qurān] distinguishes between those who have faith and those who do not: the “believers” and the “unbelievers.” In all the perspectives of Islamic life and thought

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people are separated into groups according to the degree to which they fulfill the purpose of life. (Murata, 44)

The āyāt I have considered thus far suggest that women and men can fulfill life’s purpose equally well or badly. By affirming that sexual differences are irrelevant to moral agency and praxis, the Qurān undermines not only claims about male privilege—and, to that extent, theories of sexual inequality—but also the tendency to associate “moral voice with gender.”32 Thus, the Qurān assumes that women and men have the same ability to reason and also similar patterns of reasoning. This is evident not only from some of the preceding āyāt but also from the fact that the Qurān appoints the believers each other’s awlīya: The Believers, men And women, are [awlīya], One of another: they enjoin What is just, and forbid What is evil: they observe Regular prayers, practise Regular charity, and obey God and [God’s] Apostle. On them will God pour [God’s] mercy: for God Is Exalted in power, Wise. God hath promised to Believers, Men and women, Gardens Under which rivers flow, To dwell therein, And beautiful mansions In Gardens of everlasting bliss, But the greatest bliss Is the Good Pleasure of God: That is the supreme felicity. The Qurān (9:71–72 [Ali, 461])

The Qurān also makes clear that “The Hypocrites, men and women, (Have an understanding) with each other: They enjoin evil, and forbid What is

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just, and are close With their hands. They have Forgotten God; so [God] Hath forgotten them” (9:67 [Ali, 459–60]). The term awlīya refers to custodians, protectors, and friends, and its use here implies that men and women are “guides or in charge of one another. There is a mutuality in the relationship which should be characterized by love and mercy; it has a moral and spiritual basis to be expressed in actions that cover the whole spectrum of existence” (Davies 1988, 84). The Qurān’s designation of women and men as one another’s awlīya, then, enables a mutual recognition of individuality and reveals that they are equal in God’s sight, testifying that sexual differences are irrelevant in defining moral agency or voice. Not only does the Qurān “not create a hierarchy in which men are placed above women,” but it also does not pit them against one another in an adversarial relationship (Hassan 1999, 353). On the contrary, it affirms that a shared moral discourse and mutual care between the sexes is both possible and desirable. More than that, it also assumes that in order to be men’s awlīya, women must have the freedom, right, and authority to be able to guide them and be their “custodians.” In other words, the notion of mutual guardianship presupposes a structure of male-­female authority that does not privilege males. As things stand, however, a majority of Muslims read another Qurānic injunction as saying that men are “in charge” of women and their guardians. However, to accept this interpretation—which can be questioned on various grounds (as I argue in chapter 7)—would mean letting go of the truly radical nature of the concept of awlīya and its far-­reaching social ramifications for how men’s authority could be structured in Muslim societies. Even though the Qurānic conception of mutuality that is explicit in the term awlīya necessitates an absence of gender hierarchies and inequalities based in the idea of sexual differentiation, Muslims continue to read all three (hierarchy, inequality, and differentiation) into the Qurān by differentiating between the moral and the social realms. They concede that the Qurān treats women and men similarly, hence equally, in the moral realm (conceived as the realm of worship, or ibādah), but they argue that the Qurān treats women and men differently, hence unequally, in the social realms by giving them different kinds of rights in marriage, divorce, and so on. Two arguments can be made against this reasoning. First, in addition to confusing difference with inequality, it ignores that the Qurān defines moral personality not only in terms of ibādah but also in terms of the responsibilities of believers, both women 173

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and men, to one another and therefore more broadly to the ummah. The two are therefore connected and inseparable. As I have argued, the very structure of faith, or dīn, rules out disconnecting the moral and social spheres in this arbitrary way. How logical, for instance, is it to argue that the Qurān teaches the precept of sexual equality in the moral realm (by establishing that women and men originate in the same nafs and are each other’s awlīya)and also the precept of sexual inequality in the social and legal spheres (by appointing men as rulers and guardians over women, as many Muslims claim)?33 Second, the realm of ibādah, as the core of Muslim praxis and of moral individuality (taqwá), is the highest expression of the value of human equality and is not subject to change (Esposito 1982). Again, how logical is it to argue that women and men are each other’s equals in the sight of God, but that women are unequal to men in the sight of men? Although I give examples of how the moral and the social are connected in the following chapter, I would like to cite one case here that also illustrates the nature of these connections. This pertains to the oath that women wishing to embrace Islam in the Prophet’s lifetime were required to take. In this most significant of events, in both real and symbolic terms, the Qurān connects ibādah to specific social obligations within the ummah: O Prophet! If believing women come unto thee, taking oath of allegiance unto thee that they will ascribe nothing as partner unto Allah, and will neither steal nor commit adultery nor kill their children, nor produce any lie that they have devised between their hands and feet, nor disobey thee in what is right, then accept their allegiance and ask Allah to forgive them. (60:12 [Pickthall, 397])

Notably, this oath—which required women to speak for themselves—does not mention obedience to husbands, as Siddique (1990), among others, points out, and obedience to the Prophet is also in what is “right.” Moreover, if the word women were removed from this āyah, one could not tell the sex of the person taking the oath. While there is no comparable oath for men in the Qurān, we know from tradition that they had the duty of defense added to their obligations. The Qurān exempted, but did not forbid, women from doing battle. This may have been because of the practice of enslaving women taken as war captives, which made them vulnerable to sexual abuse. This also seems to be why the Qurān instructed Muslims

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not to repatriate women who had converted to Islam to their own tribes because of the “more terrible prosecution which women had to undergo, if extradited, and their helpless social condition” (Fernea and Bezirgan 1977, 25). Although, as I argue in chapter 7, men and women do not have identical responsibilities in a marriage (which is why they also have some different rights vis-­à-­vis one another), this is not because the social (marital) sphere is disconnected from the moral, or because women are unequal to men. Rather, I believe these rights have to do with the nature of gender relationships in the patriarchy the Qurān first addressed. Given that men, not women, were the locus of power, many of its verses seem to be aimed at protecting women by recognizing their sexual specificity and by moderating men’s behavior toward them. II. The Qurān and Sex/uality34 Prior to analyzing the Qurān’s position on sex/uality, I begin with some observations about its representations in Jewish, Christian, and Western patriarchal traditions.

Pat r iarch al Constructi ons o f Se x/ ua lit y Sex, argues Jeffrey Weeks (1985, 16), “has long been a transmission belt for wider social anxieties, and a focus of struggles over power, one of the prime sites in truth where domination and subordination are defined and expressed.” Hence, “Struggles around sexuality . . . are struggles over meanings—over what is appropriate or not inappropriate”; and in defining meanings and regulating sexual practices, religion plays a vital role (35). In this context, theorists note the tendency of Western/Christian traditions to view sex as “an overpowering force which the social/moral/medical has to control” (8) and also to associate sex with women, raising “Fears of the carnivorousness in female sexuality” and the idea that “women can threaten male order, male life and sanity” (Padel 1993, 3–4). Such ideas predate Judeo-­Christian traditions, of course. Ancient Athenians, for instance, identified women with what was dark and “unspeakable” in human nature and saw women, even mother’s milk, as polluting (6). The female body, especially its interior, was considered open to demonic possession. Means to control women’s sexuality extended from violence against them to veiling and secluding them, a regime of discipline and control justified by

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theories about their flawed and incomplete humanity (see Ahmed 1992; Cameron and Kuhrt 1993; Ide 1982). Some of the same themes surface in the traditions, but not necessarily the scriptures, of the monotheistic religions. For example, orthodox Jewish traditions treat women as polluting for most of their lives and limit their movements during menstruation. The Torah states that “Anyone who touches [a menstruating woman’s] bed or sits on her seat must wash his clothes and bathe in water and is tamae until evening.”35 Some even hold that if such a woman passes between two men at the start of her period, she will kill one of them. In the past, where “sacrificial ritual was concerned, women in the formula of the Talmud were coupled with gentiles, slaves, children, imbeciles, deaf-­mutes, and persons of doubtful or double sex, all of whom were excluded from participation in the Temple’s cultic affairs” (Archer 1993, 279). Women were barred not only from temples but also from studying the Torah, while subject to its negative commandments, and were excluded from “public expressions of piety” (Archer, 284). They were also exempt “from nearly all of the positive precepts whose fulfillment depended upon a specific time of the day or of the year,” as well as from daily affirmations of faith, because of their seclusion and alleged uncleanliness. And “Throughout their lives, women’s personal vow of valuation to God was reckoned at roughly half that of men”; this may explain why among the orthodox, men thank God daily for not making them women (284).36 Christian representations of “women as the repositories of morality” also turn out, on closer scrutiny, to disguise negative attitudes toward women and sex since only women in the roles “of obedient wife and ever-­ nurturing mother” are considered moral (Turner 1985, 325). Outside these roles, they are seen as impure and dangerous, and associated with sex, which is viewed as “unclean, sinful, and debilitating” (Millett 1970, 51), hence the practice of veiling women to protect men’s virtue, and the themes in Christianity of permanent sexual renunciation, abstinence, and asceticism (the confusion of virtue with virginity). However, alongside this asceticism there also exists a “grossly male view of sexuality” that justifies female prostitution as the means for men to obtain sexual release, even as it blames life’s sorrows on sex (Parrinder 1996, 226). As Kate Millett says, the Hebrew word for “eat” also means “coitus”; the punishment for Adam and Eve “eating” is for Adam to toil by the sweat of his brow and for Eve to have him as her ruler (54). This “connection of women, sex, and sin

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constitutes the fundamental patterns of Western patriarchal thought thereafter.” Inasmuch as femaleness is seen as a cause of the Fall, there is also a “correlated rift between femaleness and sacrality,” thus between God and women (Borresen and Vogt 1993, 27). In Islam, however, there is a radical departure from such views. As Franz Rosenthal (1979, 4) points out, there is a “much repeated commonplace that Islam is a ‘sex positive’ religion and society, in contrast with the pervasive negative attitude attributed to Christianity.” Not only does sexuality pose no danger to Muslims, but “Sexual desire . . . serves God’s will and the interest of the individual at the same time” since it helps to perpetuate human communities (Nicolaisen 1983, 5). Nor does Islam hold women’s sexual virtue to be central, which would imply that men’s virtue is tangential (Metcalf 1990). And yet Muslim patriarchies have managed to read into Islam ideas that were once specific to Judaism and Christianity due to the peculiar nature of their “inter-­religiously shared ‘worlds’” (Wasserstrom 1995, 209). Among these is a tendency to view sex as unclean and dangerous, and women as sexually corrupt/ing and insatiable. In fact, on some accounts, it is Islam’s desire to curb “active female sexuality” that is at the base of many of its “family institutions” (Nicolaisen 1983, 6). At the same time, most Muslims also adhere to the view that men have been endowed with a hyperactive libido whose satisfaction necessitates polygyny, a view that leads them to see women as passive receptacles for men’s sexual pleasure and release (Sabbah 1984). Such ideas, however, derive not from the Qurān but from its exegesis and from traditions of the Prophet’s life, the ahādith. In fact, “Muslim sexual morality” has its roots in the ahādith that, argues James Bellamy (1979, 27), propagate two attitudes to sex: one, a “naive and simplistic, even innocent, view, devoid of complications, free of doubts, and quite unaware of some of the darker aspects of human sexuality”; however, the second, and more influential, view embodies a strong sense of pudendency. As Bellamy (39) notes, the “sexual ethics of Islam” were “worked out by men,” especially the Sufis, who are credited with having taken the “scattered and often dry and repetitive anecdotes” about sex and shaping “them into a viable sexual ethic.” According to Annemarie Schimmel (1979, 124), this ethic is marked by a “fear of the demonic power of sex and its dangers,” and out of this “fear of the uncontrollable, dangerous, and yet fascinating power of sex develops the tendency to see all the dreaded (hence hated) aspects of life in woman: the concept of the nafs, the lower self (feminine in Arabic).”

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T h e Qur ān’s Approach to Se x/ ua lit y The Qurān does not, in fact, make any pejorative claims about women or sex, and it also challenges the misogyny in which such claims and representations are embedded. As I argue in this section (and in chapter 7), the Qurān speaks less to the issue of human sexualities (socially constructed sexual identities) than it does to the issue of human sexual natures and praxis. At the core of its view of both is the idea that women and men have the same sexual natures (the idea of sexual sameness). In effect, the Qurān adopts an undifferentiated view of sexuality inasmuch as it does not ascribe a particular type of sexual identity, drive, or proclivity for certain types of behaviors to either sex. For instance, it does not advocate either the idea of a sexually corrupt or passive female nature, or a polymorphously perverse or aberrant male sexuality. Contrary to what patriarchies and many feminists claim, the Qurān’s provisions on polygyny are not meant to pander to male sexual needs or lusts. Indeed, it counsels chastity both outside of marriage and within it, and it extends its notion of chastity—associated with “the feminine”—to men as well. Moreover, in the Qurān, chastity implies not virginity, asceticism, or renunciation, but a sexual praxis that remains within the moral limits prescribed by God. Thus, while the Qurān recognizes the importance of sexual desire and its fulfillment, it also establishes a framework for its expression. Finally, while the Qurān’s emphasis on chastity reveals some anxieties about sex, it does not treat sex itself as dangerous or dirty but views it as fulfilling and wholesome in itself—that is, outside of its procreative role. This may interest those who think the “signal triumph of modernity” is the “acceptance of sexual behavior as a joyful and salutary form of human activity independent of the biological necessity of procreation” (Raschke and Raschke 1995, 7). Sexual Praxis: Modesty and Lust Foundational to the Qurān’s conception of sex/uality and of female-­male relationships is the claim that among God’s signs is the fact that “[God] created for you helpmeets from yourselves that ye might find [suku¯n] in them, and [God] ordained between you love and mercy. Lo, herein indeed are portents for folk who reflect” (30:21 [Pickthall, 291]). Suku¯n, often rendered as “love,” implies a deeper intimacy ensuing from sexual gratification and mental peace (Mir 1987). Its use in the Qurān is significant 178

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for a couple of reasons. First, it indicates that Islam expects sexual/marital relationships to be based in mutual love, harmony, and fulfillment, a view that—given the time in which it was advocated (the seventh century)— is nothing short of revolutionary. By emphasizing the mutuality of sexual desire and its gratification, the Qurān establishes that both men and women have sexual desires and needs, and the right to fulfill them. Second, by defining sex in terms that suggest mutual pleasure and fulfillment, the Qurān also affirms that sex is not only or primarily for procreative purposes; it is a joyful and purposive activity in itself which is conducive to suku¯n. (In chapter 8, I consider some feminist interpretations of the Qurān that explicitly reject applying the principles of suku¯n and love to its provisions on sex.) The āyah itself is significant for two additional reasons. First, it reveals that, “unlike dualistic traditions,” the Qurān does not set up sexuality in opposition to spirituality; rather, it regards sexuality as a “‘sign’ of God’s mercy and bounty to humanity.” Nor does it associate sex/uality with “animality or corporeality” (Hassan 1999, 341). Thus, it does not suggest, in the manner of many Muslims, that the “‘sex-­instinct’ [is the] ‘greatest weakness of the human race’” (Maududi, quoted in Hassan, 351). To the contrary, the Qurān views sex “as the divine instrument for creating man-­ women relationships characterized by togetherness, tranquility, love, and mercy” (341). Second, this āyah, like many others, confirms that women and men have same/similar natures, including sexual natures, which are an integral aspect of one’s overall nature, or Fitra. Indeed, it is the sameness/ similarity of human (sexual) nature that makes mutual suku¯n meaningful and possible. That the Qurān does not distinguish between female and male sexual natures is also evident from its “pairing” of women and men on a variety of issues that show their equivalence/likeness. For instance, the Qurān decrees that Women impure are for men impure, And men impure for women impure And women of purity Are for men of purity, And men of purity Are for women of purity The Qurān (24:26 [Ali, 902])

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By affirming that both women and men can be sexually pure or impure, and that believing women, no less than believing men, have the right to marry pure spouses, this āyah challenges Muslim views of women as sexually corrupt, and also the association of purity (typically defined as virginity) only with women. The Qurān does not, however, put a premium on only female chastity; moreover, in the Qurān, purity and chastity are a function of conduct, not of sexual identity or nature, which is why it applies the concept of chastity equally to both the sexes. This is borne out by another āyah: Let no man guilty of Adultery or fornication marry Any but a woman Similarly guilty, or an Unbeliever: Nor let any but such a man Or an Unbeliever Marry such a woman: To the Believers such a thing Is forbidden. The Qurān (24:3 [Ali, 896])

Sexual morality, or purity, is a function not of one’s nature or sexual identity, then, but of one’s behavior. Further, purity is not the absence of sex, but the absence of certain types of sex (adultery, fornication) and the valuation of purity, chastity, avoidance of lust and lewdness, and so on. Indeed, in the Qurān, the condition of forced abstinence from marriage, the permission for marriage, and the state of marriage all are made contingent on chaste behavior and the avoidance of degrading, uncontrollable, or violent sex (lust and lewdness) on the part of both women and men (although the Qurān addresses men rather than women in warning against lustful behavior). Thus, the Qurān forbids extramarital sex by advising those who do not have the means to get married to “Keep themselves chaste, until God gives them means” (24:33 [Ali, 906]). Those who can afford to marry, on the other hand, are encouraged to seek wives “With gifts from your property,—Desiring chastity, not lust” (4:24 [Ali, 187]). Lawful to men, says the Qurān, Are (not only) chaste women Who are believers, but Chaste women among

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The People of the Book, Revealed before your time,— When ye give them Their due dowers, and desire Chastity, not lewdness, Nor secret intrigues. The Qurān (5:6 [Ali, 241–42])

In passing, I should note that the Qurān forbids marriage with unbelieving women until they believe, but it allows men to marry from among the People of the Book. Likewise, it forbids marriage with unbelieving men. It does not, however, state that women cannot marry men from among the People of the Book even though Muslim tradition holds they cannot. That by “chastity” the Qurān has in mind male virginity as well as female is evident from its stipulation to those who cannot marry to abstain from sex, as well as from its injunction that only pure women and men should marry one another. It is also borne out by the Prophet’s life; as I note in chapter 4, with one exception, all his wives were widows. The example of the Prophet’s marriages reveals that pure women are not simply virgins; nor does the Qurān itself valorize female virginity in this way. Besides, the purpose of marrying chaste women is not to encourage their despoliation but to enable the man also to remain virtuous within the marriage, whose very purpose is to avoid lechery. In this context, notably, the Qurān does not define chastity as a characteristic only of Muslim women; non-­Muslim women also can be chaste, and they also are to be paid their dowers and sought in marriage—and not for the purpose of indulging men’s sexual appetites. (Men who try to legitimize their affairs with non-­Muslim women by “marrying” them for the duration of the affair are therefore violating the letter and spirit of the Qurān’s teachings.) In the Qurān, then, chastity is a function of one’s conduct, hence of the moral and sexual choices one makes rather than one’s nature, identity, religion, or even social class. This is evident also from the Qurān’s injunction to believers to “Marry those among you Who are single, or The virtuous ones among Your slaves, male or female”37 (24:32 [Ali, 905]). That virtuous slaves are better than free-­born believers is developed at some length in the Qurān, which tells men that if they desire to marry women slaves, they

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“should be Chaste, not lustful, nor taking Paramours: when they Are taken in wedlock” (4:25 [Ali, 188]). Pickthall (82) renders this āyah as “Ye (proceed) one from another; so wed [slave girls and concubines] . . . and give unto them their portions in kindness, they being honest, not debauched nor of loose conduct.” Given the racialization of slavery by white Europeans and its legacy of the systematic rape, murder, and displacement of millions of Africans, some people may misread this āyah as justifying slavery. However, the principle the Qurān establishes here is not that slavery itself is just, but that slaves, who existed at that time, had a moral personality and will. This is clear from the fact that the Qurān is assuming the ability and right of women slaves to turn down lovers after their marriage. This teaching affirms that chastity is a function of choice rather than identity or nature. It is also significant because it ascribes to female slaves, in the eyes of society the most debased of all social classes, a will (the right to reject lovers after their marriage), and therefore moral agency and personality. However, even though slavery in seventh-­century Arabia was unlike its modernized version (the Qurān, after all, was encouraging men and women to marry slaves), Islam sought to attenuate it by various means. In addition to marriage, these included freeing slaves, especially as a way to atone for various transgressions. In view of the Qurān’s disapproval of licentiousness and its insistence that marriages be based in chastity and mutuality, one may wonder how Muslims can interpret its provisions on polygyny (or the Prophet’s marriage to Ayesha) as pandering to male sexual lusts. As I argue in chapter 7, the Qurān not only restricted polygyny but made the practice contingent on ensuring justice for women. However, many Muslim men have made a mockery of its teachings by acquiring harems and contracting serial one-­ night marriages. Not only do these not serve any moral or social purposes that are compatible with the Qurānic ideals of chastity and justice, but they also pervert these ideals. By valorizing only female virginity and, on this pretext, marrying prepubescent girls, and by interpreting the promise of chaste women in paradise as a license to engage in unbridled debauchery (it seems the very mention of chaste women conjures up in many men fantasies of rape and defilement), many Muslim men have completely perverted the Qurānic ideals of temperance and virtue. Through their prurient and orgiastic speculations, they have transformed even the Qurān’s view of paradise into what some critics of Islam call a “heavenly whorehouse” (Brooks 1995, 39).38

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Sexual Praxis: From the Gaze to the Body It is in light of the Qurān’s teachings about chastity that one can understand its other provisions about sexual praxis, especially those pertaining to the gaze and the body, which apply equally to men and women. The male gaze, characterized as male phallic/scopic activity, has been the subject of extensive feminist critiques. Some theorists emphasize the “mastery of the gaze” that allows a man to “‘eye up’ a woman” (King 1992, 134), while others criticize the “gendered character of looking and being looked at” (Bonner and Goodman 1992, 4). On such views, men are empowered “as spectators” while “women live as the seen rather than as a seer” (King, 135–36). The Qurān, however, rules out all scopic activity by censoring the gaze itself, and it does so in the context of its discussion of “the veil,” as I argue in chapter 2. Thus, the Qurān instructs the Prophet to tell the believers, that they cast down their eyes and guard their private parts; that is purer for them. God is aware of the things they work. And say to the believing women, that they cast down their eyes and guard their private parts,39 and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward; and let them cast their [khumür] over their bosoms, and not reveal their adornment save to . . .40 (24:30 [Arberry 1955, 2:49–50])

Yusuf Ali (1988, 904) renders “outward” as “except What (must ordinarily) appear,” which seems more appropriate inasmuch as ideas about what must “ordinarily” show are culturally specific, and the Qurān’s purpose is to counsel modesty for all cultures, not to universalize Arab modes of dress/ing. I argued earlier that there are two concepts of “the veil” in the Qurān, one specific and the other general. In chapter 2, I discuss the specific (historically contingent) model; as such, I will focus here only on the general model suggested by the āyah quoted above. In this context, I should note that there are two concepts of “the veil” in it: one pertaining to the eyes/ gaze and the other to the body/dress, which often get conflated—with dire consequences for women. Thus, many commentators of old, who took this āyah to mean that the gaze was the “messenger of fornication,”41 sought to mitigate it not as the Qurān does, by counseling modesty for both men and women, but by segregating and veiling women in order to protect men’s sexual virtue.42 The Qurān, however, rules out both male and female scopic activity. Moreover, its injunction to cast down one’s eyes takes it as a

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given that men and women are in fact free to look at one another publicly. If they were segregated or if women’s faces were veiled, it would not be necessary to cast down one’s eyes, thus making the Qurān’s ruling unnecessary. If anything, the Qurān’s ruling establishes that women can enter public arenas (as do the āyāt on the jilbāb I consider in chapter 2), undermining the claim of Muslim conservatives that Islam mandates secluding and segregating women. Even though, as this āyah makes clear, the real veil is in the eyes/gaze, the Qurān is also concerned with the dress/body. In this context, it is important to note, first, that it requires both men and women to dress modestly. That is to say, the Qurān does not single out women when it comes to the issue of modesty of dress. Second, it describes modesty of dress rather sparingly as the covering of private parts. The only difference is that whereas it does not refer to men’s apparel and “adornments,” it does to women’s. However, it is important to be clear, third, that the function of the khumür (shawl) is to cover the bosom, not the face; this is evident not only from the nature of the garment itself but also from the āyah which, in so many words, refers to the bosom and to private parts. Yet Muslim commentators overlook this fact and focus instead on words like “adornment,” which the Qurān does not define but which they define so broadly as to include even the face and hair. This obsession with the female body has spawned forms of veiling the Qurān does not mandate. Equally impor­ tant, it has deflected attention from its provisions about male “veiling”; that is, its teachings about the proper display of the male body in front of women believers: O ye who believe! Let those whom your right hands Possess, and the (children) among you Who have not come of age [attained puberty] Ask your permission (before They come to your presence), On three occasions: before Morning prayer; the while Ye doff your clothes For the noonday heat; And after the late-­night prayer: These are your three times

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Of undress: outside those times It is not wrong for you Or for them to move about Attending to each other. The Qurān (24:58 [Ali, 884])

If women have an obligation not to be sexually provocative and, to that end, to dress modestly in public, men also have an obligation not to be sexually provocative by being undressed in private, even in front of their “own” women. Even men’s bodies, then, are not to be displayed in all states, even in the privacy of their own homes. It is thus reasonable to assume that the Qurān’s concern with bodily modesty is based in its view of the body itself as a sexed body, not just the female body. And implicit in its attitude to the sexed body is a view of it as a potentially erotic body, not a polluting body, since missing from the Qurān are the tortuous “Judeo-­Christian disquisitions on the sins of the flesh” (Weeks 1985, 65). While the Qurān thus closes off the body to scopic activity, it does not mean that it de-­eroticizes or de-­sexualizes the body. Even a de-­eroticized body (if a clothed body can be described as such) is not a de-­sexualized body. We can infer, therefore, that the Qurān is concerned with modulating sexual desire and not with establishing the body itself as de-­sexualized/unerotic or, conversely, as unclean/sinful. In other words, the Qurān links desire to the body, and it views the body— whether male or female—as potentially erotic rather than as unclean. In sum, we can understand the Qurān’s provisions on “veiling” in the context of its view of human bodies as potentially desiring and desirable— not as pudendal. In fact, the Qurān does not refer to pudendency, much less to female pudendency. Nor does it suggest that in order to maintain an Islamic society, we need to hide women from view by confining them to their homes or by enshrouding them in face and body veils. What the Qurān does mandate is that both women and men comport themselves modestly and not make public spectacles of themselves through a “wanton display” of their bodies. There is absolutely nothing in these values that supports the conservative Muslim position on the female body, male and female sexual natures, or the practice of veiling and segregating women as a way to make them invisible. If the Qurān’s teachings are fundamentally at odds with conservative readings of these teachings, they also are at odds with Western and

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feminist views of the body. Thus, the fact that in the Qurān this erotic body remains a private body, not a body meant for public viewing, is what seems the most backward and offensive to many Westerners and feminists who argue against an association between bodily exposure and sexual availability. (Yet some of these same feminists hold that a clothed body signals sexual inaccessibility!) Some deny that bodily exposure is meant to provoke sexual desire, while others hold that a woman’s right to dress as she chooses outweighs any provocation she may cause to others. Indeed, the popular view not only disparages sexual modesty (“if you have it, flaunt it”), but it assumes that modesty inheres not in one’s own modes of dress or undress but in how others react to it. Moreover, the exposed/naked body is represented as the free/liberated body, leading many people to see clothed bodies as unfree/imprisoned bodies. And while some forms of the veil are prisons, it is simplistic to assume a correlation between nudity and freedom/democracy, or between a covered body and slavery; in fact, historically, it was slaves who were denied the right to cover themselves, as the Qurān recognizes when it defines the function of the jilbāb (cloak) to distinguish free women from slaves (chapter 2). Women as Sexual Property? Many Muslim feminists identify the Islamic marriage as patriarchal on the grounds that it “transfers” the rights to a woman’s sexuality from “her tribe to men” (Ahmed 1992, 62).43 Others claim that Islam objectifies women by describing them as a category of possessions that tempt men on earth (Sabbah 1984). Such feminist readings—which suggest that Islam treats women as men’s sexual property—draw not so much on the Qurān as on a conservative-­patriarchal exegesis, particularly of two āyāt, 3:14 and 2:223. I will therefore discuss each in turn. A. J. Arberry (1955, 74) renders 3:14 as: “Decked out fair to men is the love of lusts—women, children, heaped-­up heaps of gold and silver, horses of mark, cattle and tillage. That is the enjoyment of the present life; but God—with [God] is the fairest resort.” Although women are included among men’s “lusts” on earth, this is a list of what men covet, not what God wants them to covet, which is nearness to God. Indeed, the Qurān is clear that covetousness and lust can cost men the afterlife. Hence, the primary function of this āyah is to emphasize the primacy of the afterlife over this life; it is not to establish the nature of property or women as property. Nor

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does it suggest that women are temptresses whose role it is to keep men from attaining salvation. The Qurān does not in any context state that the afterlife is contingent on abandoning the love of/for women for the love of/for God. God and women are not competing for the love and attention of the male believer, as misogynists and feminists alike are wont to claim.44 Such a view not only debases our ideas of the divine but also contradicts the teaching of the Qurān that God created men and women so that they could live together in mutual love, harmony, and sexual fulfillment on this earth and, if they are believers, together in the afterlife (in Paradise) as well. There remains āyah 2:223, which refers to women as harth, a word most commentators translate as “tilth” (property). However, in order to read the āyah accurately, it is also necessary to read the preceding one—that is, 2:222: They question thee (O Muhammad) concerning menstruation. Say: It is an illness [adan], so let women alone at such times and go not in unto them till they are cleansed. And when they have purified themselves, then go in unto them as Allah hath enjoined upon you. Truly Allah loveth those who turn unto [Allah], and loveth those who have a care for cleanness. Your women are a tilth [harth] for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will, and send (good deeds) before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will (one day) meet [Allah]. (2:222–23 [Pickthall, 53])

From these āyāt many Muslims infer that a wife is her husband’s sexual property and that he has the right to have sex with her as and when he pleases—that is, without her consent. They also take the reference to menstruation to mean that women themselves are unclean. As the last claim is the easiest to contest, let me address it first. The root meanings of adan are “damage, harm, injury, trouble, annoyance, and grievance” (Cowan 1976, 12). Menstruation, therefore, is hurt, injury, and so on, not pollution. Even if we view menstrual blood as polluting, it does not follow that the woman or her body are polluting since there is no statement to that effect in the Qurān. Moreover, in the Qurān, the menstrual taboo extends only to intercourse; it does not extend to sexual intimacy, nor does it call for social ostracization or confinement (Badawi 1995). There are ahādith to the effect that menstruating women may go to mosques, participate in Haj, jihad, and du‘ā’ (invocation to God after ritual prayer), and even have the Qurān read on their laps, following the

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Prophet’s example (Siddique 1990, 17). Moreover, while the Qurān counsels cleansing after menstruation and sexual intercourse, it also counsels cleansing after calls of nature, indicating that uncleanliness is a function of certain biological functions, not biological differences. And while “menstrual taboos clearly affirm a difference between the genders, their existence per se may not be correlated with gender inequality,” since even egalitarian societies have such taboos (Bonvillain 1995, 207). As for the general import of the āyāt, first, they are said to have been revealed in response to men’s questions about when and in what positions they could have intercourse. The response of the Qurān to the “when” is to forbid sex during menstruation on the grounds that it is a period of hurt or trial for women. (The Qurān also forbids sex during the fast in Ramadan, when Muslims forego food and drink.) Second, the āyāt state that men must go into their wives as God has enjoined. This reference can be both to the general and to the specific. In general, the Qurān forbids lechery, hence, undoubtedly, violence and force. What it is enjoining in terms of the specific seems to be sexual position; since the “Allah hath enjoined” in the preceding āyah rules out “‘unnatural’ practices,”45 the reference seems to be to natural (vaginal) intercourse, also suggested by the metaphor of sowing, or harth and the menstruation taboo. The permission to husbands to go into their wives, then, is not as open-­ended as it seems; if anything, it is clear that men cannot have sex with their wives whenever and however they please. If many men read these āyāt as a license to rape their wives or to abuse them, it may be because they are already abusing their wives and are seeking religious justification for their transgressions. The Qurān does not condone degrading or violent sexual behavior, nor does it establish the wife as her husband’s sexual property, in spite of the use of the term harth. Since patriarchs and feminists alike are willing to hang an entire ontology of oppression onto this one word—ignoring all other aspects of the Qurān’s teachings—I will also restrict my analysis to its use in the Qurān and will make both a historical and a textual argument against translating it as property. The historical argument is that while metaphors are not time-­bound, they convey different meanings in different social, cultural, and historical contexts. For instance, in the seventh century, harth could not conceivably have meant “land as property” or “property as land” because property in land did not yet exist. Hence, the Qurān could not have used it to mean property because that would not have conveyed anything of

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significance to its immediate audience. If, on the other hand, the word refers more broadly to land, then, in the Qurān, land is “to be protected, not destroyed or polluted” (Hanafi 1996, 209). Yet, again, if the metaphor means to convey the idea of cultivation, then the “use of the simile of cultivated land shows that it is natural intercourse that is thought of,” since the metaphor of tillage denotes the sowing of seed (Bell 1991, 46). As such, even if many of us are bent today upon viewing harth as property, this could not have been its commonsensical meaning to the first Muslim communities. Second, while metaphors, like texts, are polysemic, it is possible to identify the dominant textual and symbolic sense in which they are used by examining other contexts of their usage. For instance, in the Qurān harth also refers to Paradise: To any that desires The [harth] of the Hereafter, We give increase In his [harth]; and to any That desires the [harth] Of this world, We grant Somewhat thereof, but he Has no share or lot In the Hereafter. The Qurān (42:20 [Ali 1988, 1311])

Pickthall (345) translates this āyah as: “Whoso desireth the harvest of the Hereafter, We give him increase in its harvest. And Whoso desireth the harvest of the world, We give him thereof, and he hath no portion in the Hereafter.” In one translation, harth is tilth; in the other, harvest; in Arberry (1955, 74) it is tillage. None of these translations, however, can be taken to mean that Heaven literally is the property of believers, to be parceled out to them to treat as they wish. Nor can the āyah itself be taken to mean that only men will get the harth of Paradise. Rather, textually, linguistically, and historically, harth conveys a sense of cultivation. Since not all believers are landholders, and the Qurān is not concerned with agriculture per se, the sense in which it uses the term cultivation suggests that what it means is the cultivation of love and mercy, since these themes are central to its teachings on marriage and female-­male relationships.

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Finally, given that the Qurān does not, in any context, designate a human being, including a slave, as another’s property, it seems wrong to confuse the word harth with the idea that women are sexual property. Of course, it is not impossible to misread the āyāt along such lines; more harmful and unseemly views have been hung by more tenuous threads, but such a reading is incongruent with the emphasis of the Qurān on equality and mutuality, and its reference to spouses as each other’s garments. To Murata (1992, ix), this term connotes “the alter-­ego of a human being.” Moreover, in the Qurān, garments not only protect against evil but also render their wearers resplendent; hence, its advice to believers to wear their best raiment for ibādah, or worship, although “the raiment of restraint from evil” is best of all (7:26 [Pickthall, 123]). If one were not dealing with centuries of entrenched sexism and misogyny, the emphasis of the Qurān on mutuality would have been enough to disabuse men of the idea that their wives are their property or that the wife’s will does not count, which leads to the contention that sex in marriage does not need to be consensual. Unfortunately, however, the teachings of the Qurān, especially on such sensitive issues, have been consistently ignored, misinterpreted, and perverted. This is why I will end this section by considering whether the Qurān does, in fact, advocate nonconsensual sex in marriage or the idea that the wife/woman has no will in the matter. Even though the āyāt quoted above do not refer to the wife’s will or to the idea of consensual sex in marriage, which we have come to value only lately, the Qurān does raise both issues in other contexts. In addition to imputing will to women as moral agents, it also imputes will to women as sexual beings on at least two occasions. First, as I noted above, it assumes that even female slaves can act willfully not to take lovers; if this were not a matter of choice for them, then the Qurān’s distinction between virtuous slaves and nonvirtuous freewomen would not be very meaningful. Second, the Qurān tells men that they “are forbidden to inherit Women against their will”46 (4:19 [Ali, 184]). While the specific reference here was to the seventh-­century Arab practice of inheriting a dead father’s wives as part of his estate, the fact remains that the Qurān imputes a will to women in matters of sexual access and choice, and it also mandates that men respect its expression. Thus, the Qurān assumes that men will respect even a female slave’s will, once she is married, not to have sex with her (that is, the Qurān assumes both that female slaves will refrain from taking lovers after their marriage and that the potential lovers will take their

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“no” as a no). What reason is there to assume, therefore, that upon marriage the woman loses her will, or becomes incapable of expressing it, or that the husband has no obligation to respect it if she does express it—for instance, by not wanting to have sex at a particular time or in a particular position? In fact, Muslim marriages are often called “consensual contracts of sexuality.”47 While it is true that the Qurān does not specifically speak about consensual sex in marriage, its teaching that men should not take women against their will and its emphasis on the concept of suku¯n assumes that there will be mutual love, kindness, and decency between spouses. We could not adhere to these values if we did not respect each other’s wills or desires. Therefore, even though the Qurān does not frame the issue in the kind of language to which we are accustomed, it does not condone the (sexual) abuse of wives; nor do even the misogynistic ahādith. It is, of course, true that the Qurān speaks to husbands about wives and not the other way around. Some Muslim scholars and feminists interpret this to mean that it “privileges male sexual agency” and that it is “a thoroughly androcentric” text (Ali 2006, 132). Indeed, to them, the fact that the Qurān speaks to men about women proves that women are the objects and not the subjects of divine discourse. This, however, is a very misleading critique. First, as I note in chapter 4, for the Qurān to be androcentric, it would have to treat masculinity and male traits as normative, which it does not do, as my discussion of if its teachings so far reveals. Indeed, it does not even take male sexual behavior to be normative since it does not define female sexual behavior in light of male behavior. Consequently, for the Qurān to speak to men about sex does not automatically prove its alleged androcentrism. It could simply be that it speaks to men because the men, and not women, asked the Prophet certain questions about sex. Certainly, the Qurān banned a prevalent form of divorce on the pleas of a wife (Su¯rah 58 is named after this instance), and as I mention in chapter 1, Muslim tradition holds that God responded to Umm Salama’s concerns by addressing women as women in the Qurān. In other words, the Qurān appears to have been responsive to both men and women, albeit over different sets of issues. Second, and more importantly, if the point is to understand the relationship between the Qurān and the contexts of its revelation, it seems more appropriate to try to understand the sexual ethics of the seventh century instead of passing judgment on it from our location in the present. For instance, one could ask if the Qurān conferred sexual or other privileges on men that amounted to oppressing women given prevailing standards.

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In effect, did it “privilege male sexual agency” beyond what was already in vogue in the seventh century? Third, if the Qurān had, in fact, privileged male sexual agency, why would it have forbidden a husband to approach his wife during menstruation? Is the Qurān not speaking on behalf of the wife’s (sexual) well-­being in this instance? As for the claim that women are the objects of divine discourse, I consider it in chapter 8, where I examine the work of some secular and feminist Muslims who reduce the Qurān to its “hierarchy verses,” the six or so āyāt out of six thousand—or, 0.1 percent of the text—that they read as affirming its patriarchalism. III. Sex/Gender and Sex/uality: Sameness/Difference Based on the preceding discussion, it seems that sex as presented in the Qurān is an ontological as well as a sociological category; at the same time, however, the Qurān does not use sex to construct ontological or sociological hierarchies that discriminate against women. Thus, the Qurān recognizes sexual differences, but it does not adhere to a view of sexual differentiation; put differently, the Qurān recognizes sexual specificity but does not assign it gender symbolism.48 Since the Qurān does not invest biological sex with content or meaning, being male or female does not in itself suggest a particular meaning of gender. And to the extent that it is difficult to theorize a determinate relationship between sex and gender based on the Qurān’s teachings, it is also incorrect to claim that it ascribes sex/ gender hierarchies or inequalities to biological sex. Conversely, while the Qurān recognizes sexual differences, it does not sexualize difference itself; in other words, it does not define women in terms of attributes that are unique only to women,49 or suggest that they are opposites of men or that they manifest the lower aspects of creation. Nor does it define men in terms of attributes that are unique only to men,50 or suggest that they are opposites of women or that they alone manifest the higher aspects of creation. Indeed, Wadud (1999, xxi) argues that there is no “concept of woman” or of “gendered man” in the Qurān. As such, whatever differences exist between women and men “could not indicate an inherent value” because, if they did, the concept of “free will would be meaningless” (35). Although the Qurān does not locate gender dimorphisms in sex, it does recognize sexual specificity; for instance, in its view of the female and male bodies. However, its views of the body do not arise in “a biology of sexual

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incommensurability” (Laqueur 1990, 196) or in claims about sexual differentiation or inequality. Thus, even though the provisions of the Qurān on “veiling” have become part of Muslim discourses on sexual inequality, the Qurān itself does not locate its treatment of the female body in the context of such a discourse. Even as it acknowledges the sexual specificity of a woman’s body, hence also its greater vulnerability to abuse in patriarchies, it does not do so in order to discriminate against women. Moreover, as feminists themselves now admit, recognizing “the particularity and specificity of the woman’s body need not be to define her as ‘different.’” Thus, it is possible to affirm “the biological particularity of the female body” without endorsing “the historical contingencies of its engendered form” (Eisenstein 1988, 107, 4). And the Qurān certainly does not endorse either the engendered forms of the female body or the historical contingencies that have resulted in particular modes of engenderment. Thus, whatever ideas Muslims may have of women and their bodies and of sex and sexual differentiation, the Qurān itself does not suggest that sex or sexual differences are a determinant of moral personality, gender roles, or inequality. This emerges not only from the position of the Qurān on the issues I have discussed here but also from its treatment of the family and marriage, to which I turn in the following chapter.

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Chapter 7

The Family and Marriage Retrieving the Qurān’s Egalitarianism ▼

I

n this chapter I examine the Qurān’s position on mothers and fathers, and wives and husbands—the two axes along which Islam defines the family. My primary objective is to show that the family in Islam is not patriarchal inasmuch as the Qurān’s treatment of women and men in their capacities as parents and spouses is not based in assumptions of male rule/privilege or sexual inequality. Of course, if we consider the heterosexual family patriarchal by definition, then the family in Islam is also patriarchal. However, if we find such essentialisms questionable, we might also be able to read the Qurān’s teachings differently. Since in traditional patriarchal societies the rights of a husband extend from his rights as a father, I discuss the Qurān’s view of fathers and mothers before examining its approach to husbands and wives. In this context, I focus on showing that the Qurān repudiates the concept of father-­right/ rule and, to that extent, claims about husband-­privilege as well. To understand this point, it is necessary to recall Carole Pateman’s (1988, 104)

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definition of traditional patriarchy as having been symbolized by the “law of the father, the untrammeled will of one man.” This form, as feminists note, gave the father-­husband “nearly total ownership over wife or wives and children, including the powers of physical abuse and often even those of murder and sale.”1 That is why the principal institution of patriarchy was said to be the “patriarchal marriage,” which blurred the distinction between the male’s authority as father and his authority as husband and, while designating the father-­husband as God’s surrogate on earth, established the woman/wife as (his) property/child. As my reading will show, however, the Qurān not only does not link the rights of fathers and husbands in this way, but it also does not appoint either one a ruler or guardian over his wife (and children), or even as the head of the household. Nor does it designate the wife and children as the man’s property or require them to be submissive to him. Indeed, as I argue in chapter 4, the Qurān teaches that submitting to fathers/males has led people in the past to transgress against God. Although this emerges more clearly from the Qurān’s treatment of fathers than from its treatment of husbands, inasmuch as their rights are interdependent, it is significant for how we understand the husband’s status as well. Prior to discussing the Qurān’s teachings, however, I begin by revisiting the relationship between text and context, and then situate the family and marriage in Islam conceptually before analyzing the Qurān’s perspective on mothers and fathers and on wives and husbands. I end by assessing Qurānic teachings in light of some Western/feminist approaches to the family and marriage. I. Text/Context In chapter 1, I argue in favor of examining the Qurān’s contents and contexts together by reading it intratextually but also with regard to the social and historical contexts of its revelation. This is because even though the Qurān’s teachings embody universal principles, the fact that it “was revealed in seventh-­century Arabia when the Arabs held certain perceptions and misconceptions about women and were involved in certain specific lewd practices against them resulted in some injunctions specific to that culture” (Wadud 1999, 9). Contextualizing the Qurān’s teachings is thus necessary for understanding their rationale. It is also necessary in order to distinguish between the universal and the specific so as to avoid

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generating readings that are oppressive for women. This is not to say, however, that oppressive and restrictive readings arise only from ignoring the contexts of the Qurān’s teachings; rather, they also arise from specific epistemologies and methodologies employed to read the text, as I argue in chapters 2 and 3.

Readi ng th e Tex t My argument so far has not been that we cannot read the Qurān in patriarchal or oppressive modes, but that such readings typically result from reading the text in a piecemeal and decontextualized way—for instance, by privileging one word, or phrase, or line, or āyah, over its teachings as a whole and/or by focusing on its less clear āyāt at the expense of those of fundamental meaning. Moreover, not only do Muslims often fail to read those aspects of the Qurān’s teachings that threaten the power and legitimacy of patriarchies, but they also read into the Qurān meanings that are often just not there, especially with regard to issues like polygyny and “wife-­beating.” In other words, a restrictive and oppressive exegesis results from the failure to historicize the Qurān’s teachings and to read the text as “a whole, a totality.”2 Accordingly, I read the Qurān holistically and also try to distinguish between its stated intent and the unintended outcomes of (mis)reading some of its āyāt. I also attempt to differentiate between teachings that I believe were specific to the Arabs and the universal prin­ ciples that these teachings mean to convey. Throughout this exercise, I focus on retrieving the Qurān’s ethical vision and its egalitarianism. Evaluating the Qurān’s teachings leads one to ask: Whose perspective and definition are we to apply if we are to determine if these teachings are ethical and egalitarian—those of the Qurān itself or of Muslim and Western patriarchies, feminists, or some combination? This is a critical question since different perspectives yield different answers. For instance, those who accept the Qurān’s own line of reasoning and its view of what is egalitarian generally consider its teachings progressive; on the other hand, those who derive their ideas from Western/feminist theories generally consider the Qurān’s teachings oppressive (though, clearly, not everyone can be pigeonholed in this way).3 Both approaches have merit inasmuch as the first approximates an internal critique and the second an external one; my own method, therefore, is to combine them. Thus, I accept the Qurān’s own view of egalitarianism and justice, which allows me to consider the intent

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of its āyāt separately from the results that flow from (mis)reading them. At the same time, however, I also situate and assess the Qurān’s teachings in light of some modern, feminist theories. That is, I start my reading of the Qurān in the first mode and end my argument in the second.

Speci f yi ng th e Con te xt The misogyny and sexism of Arab culture, especially at the time of the Qurān’s revelation, have been well documented by Muslims themselves (Ahmed 1992; Bouhdiba 1985; Malti-­Douglas 1991). However, the Arabs did not invent sexual inequality or discrimination; no society in the seventh century was egalitarian since no society at that time recognized women as full human beings, or as moral agents, or as independent legal persons. As Leila Ahmed (1992, 13) has shown, misogyny was endemic to most cultures at the time. For instance, Assyrian laws allowed a husband to pull out his wife’s hair and to mutilate her ears; a wife who contradicted her husband could have her “teeth smashed with burnt bricks.” Unchecked polygyny, concubinage, slavery, incestuous marriages with sisters and daughters, husband-­worship, and the veiling/seclusion of elite women were endemic. While a few women were able to acquire some moral and spiritual authority in Christianity, they could do so only by embracing celibacy. A premium on female virginity also meant that women who were not virgins had no avenues to express their sexuality (13). Seventh-­century Arab society had its own modes of sexual politics and its record was mixed. A woman could choose/dismiss a husband at will, she remained with her kin after marriage, and her children belonged to her tribe (Smith 1885). However, by the time of Islam’s advent, women may have become more dependent on men because of baal marriages (deriving from the Old Testament) that established the husband as overlord over his wife and the wife as his subject. Sexual unions were generally temporary since husbands deserted their wives for years on end and also enjoyed powers of unilateral, habitual, and arbitrary divorce (Ayoub 1984; Esposito 1982). A nomadic lifestyle prevented the strict seclusion of women, but not all women enjoyed freedom of movement. One custom was to parade daughters and female slaves in their finery, faces unveiled, to attract suitors/buyers; if the attempt succeeded, the women had to don the veil (Levy 1962). Yet some women were able to exercise influence in public life as priestesses and prophetesses, though they were not active in Meccan

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political life on the eve of Islam. They could also take part in warfare by tending the sick and wounded. On the whole, however, women’s social place was a function of their class or their personalities and was not codified in law (Smith 1985, 232). In spite of some freedoms, women could not inherit property but were themselves considered property and could be inherited as part of a dead father’s estate by his sons. Unrestricted concubinage, polygyny, and slavery were replenished by taking women captives in war. What we would regard as sexual abuse was prevalent, and newborn girls were often buried alive. This was the milieu in which the Qurān was revealed and interpreted, and it is in light of this milieu that the radicalism of the Qurān’s teachings on the family, marriage, and sexual relationships becomes fully apparent. II. Conceptualizing the Family and Marriage Prior to discussing the Qurān’s provisions on marriage and the family, it might be useful to locate them conceptually. The Islamic marriage, which is based in a contractual4 and typically monogamous5 relationship, is located at the intersection of the social and the moral-­religious spheres. The marriage is located in the social realm because of its contractual nature; it is also situated in the religious realm because spousal (and parental) rights are claimed through the practice of faith, hence by observing the limits ordained by God. These limits can be understood in terms not only of the rights of God but also of the social good (Izutsu 1959). Since faith in Islam is personal but not private, the marriage (and the family) also can be located at the intersection of the private and the public. (Faith is personal in that only individuals can choose to embrace it; however, since the rights of individuals are defined in relation both to the rights of God and to those of the community, the practice of faith is necessarily communal.) The private and the public as they exist in the Qurān and in classical Western theory6 are very different, however. The latter defines the public sphere as the domain of freedom, politics, and culture, and associates it with men. The private sphere, on the other hand, is described in terms of a lack: as the domain of necessity, not freedom; of nature, not culture; of the family, not politics/state, and while the private sphere is associated with women, it is also the arena in which males reign supreme (as “kings of the castle” and “heads of households”). While men may move freely

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between both spheres, women are confined to the private. The family and marriage, then, also fall into a private, nonpolitical domain, and it is this location that, according to many feminists, accounts for the history of sexual inequality and oppression in Western societies.7 The Qurān, however, does not define either human beings or social reality in terms of female-­male, public-­private, nature-­culture, politics-­ family binaries. Nor does it assign politics or the public sphere the same primacy as does Western thought. What matters in and to the Qurān is the extent to which women and men, whether organized in a family, state, or the economy, observe the limits of God, and the only distinction it makes in this regard is between believers and unbelievers. Second, even though the Qurān distinguishes between the individual and the community, and thus between the private and the public, since God belongs equally in both spheres, there is little to distinguish public institutions from private relationships: both must equally observe the limits of God. As such, claims to the effect that in Islam the “public was in fact the ideal domain of religion; the private, by default was marginal”8 are misleading inasmuch as the Qurān does not make such distinctions between the public and the private. To the extent that the public and the private do exist in real life, the Qurān’s reforms, particularly with respect to women, impinge on both. Finally, since the Qurān teaches that all authority and power are a trust from God and not a sign of human sovereignty, a public sphere based on Qurānic ideals would look very different from such a sphere as Western theories have imagined it. It is thus in terms of the Qurān’s teachings that I locate the family and marriage in Islam at the juncture of the private (individual) and the public (communal), the religious and the social. Even though the social and the sexual are also connected in the Qurān, I examine its position on sexuality and on the sexual aspects of marriage separately from its other teachings on marriage simply in the interest of organizational convenience. If the public/private dichotomy is only marginally helpful in reading the Qurān, the concept of the social/sexual divisions of labor (in terms of which feminists analyze the family in the West) is not helpful at all. For one, the concept itself is troubling because it confuses sex with class;9 for another, the Qurān does not advocate a specific social or sexual division of labor.10 That is, while it “does not attempt to annihilate the differences between men and women the Qurān does not propose or support a singular role or single definition of a set of roles, exclusively, for each gender

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across every culture” (Wadud 1999, 8). As such, while there may be a relationship between the social and sexual divisions of labor in the real world, the Qurān does not have much to say about it. Nonetheless, I apply some insights generated by the concept in order to distinguish the Qurān’s position from that of Muslim and Western patriarchies and secular-­/feminist scholars. III. Mothers and Fathers If my argument so far is correct that the Qurān opposes rule by fathers and the symbolism attaching to fatherhood (in Lacanian terms, the Name-­of-­the Father),11 and that it stipulates the ontic equality/similarity of men and women, then one would expect it to speak of parental rather than paternal rights, and that is what it does. However, in discussing parents’ rights, the Qurān privileges mothers while displacing the thematic of father’s rule, thus also challenging the way in which patriarchies treat both mothers and fathers.

G o d’s Ri gh ts and Parents’ Rights In chapter 4, I discuss how God’s rights/rule come into conflict with the rights and rule of fathers by examining the accounts of the prophets Abraham and Muhammad as well as the Qurān’s criticism of following the ways of the fathers. Here I examine how God’s rights and rule also come into conflict with the rights and rule of fathers by examining the Qurān’s definition of parent-­children relationships. The first thing to note about the Qurān’s discussion of these relationships is that it is based more in the idea of obligations than of rights, though one can always derive rights from obligations. There are only a couple of āyāt that deal with parents’ rights, and none with the father’s rights, especially as defined in patriarchies. Thus, foremost among the parents’ responsibilities is the father’s obligation to take care of his children, especially daughters,12 and to provide economically for them, including in the event of a divorce between the parents. However, the Qurān does not then give the father any additional rights; the mother and father have identical rights over the children. If the Qurān is sparse in defining parental rights or roles (it does not, for instance, define the content of mothering or fathering), it is more

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forthcoming in outlining the children’s duties toward their parents. Primary among these is the charge to show kindness to parents, especially as they grow older. Thus, says the Qurān, God has decreed That ye worship none but [God], And that ye be kind To parents. Whether one Or both of them attain Old age in thy life, Say not to them a word Of contempt, nor repel them, But address them In terms of honour. And, out of kindness, Lower to them the wing Of humility, and say: “My [Rabb]! bestow on them Thy Mercy even as they Cherished me in childhood.” The Qurān (17:23–24 [Ali, 700–701])

This juxtapositioning of the rights/rule of God and the rights of parents is significant because it differentiates between what is owed to God—that is, worship and, to the extent that worship is contingent on obeying God’s limits, obedience—and what is owed to parents—compassion and mildness in conduct. This distinction undercuts misrepresentations of God as Father and of fathers as associates in God’s rule/sovereignty by separating them. At the same time, it also renders untenable the idea that fathers enjoy real or symbolic privileges that mothers do not by failing to separate them. The Qurān neither defines the father in terms that suggest he is a ruler over his children (“cherish” implies loving, not ruling), nor in terms that imply that he has any rights in his role as a father as against in his role as a parent. Moreover, the command to honor parents issues from God, not from the parents themselves, and is linked to the idea of mutuality: children need to be kind to their parents because the parents nourished them in their youth. This theme reiterates two others in the Qurān:

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the view that believers come to kinship through faith, hence by observing God’s limits and rights, and the idea of mutual care that, far from setting up a hierarchy, suggests parallelism. As the āyāt quoted above reveal, the Qurān envisions a reversal in parent-­children relationships: as they age, parents become more vulnerable to, thus dependent on, their children, just as the children were once vulnerable to and dependent on them; and in both cases the Qurān enjoins mutual love and gentleness. This juxtapositioning of the rights of God and those of parents is intrinsic to all Qurānic references to parental rights even though the ends toward which the Qurān juxtaposes these rights differ. Thus, say other āyāt: We have enjoined on insān (To be good) to his13 parents: In travail upon travail Did his mother bear him, And in years twain Was his weaning: (hear The command), “Show gratitude To Me and to thy parents: To Me is (thy final) Goal. “But if they strive To make thee join In worship with Me Things of which thou hast No knowledge, obey them not;14 Yet bear them company In this life with justice (And consideration), and follow The way of those who Turn to Me (in love): In the End the return Of you all is to Me And I will tell you The truth (and meaning) Of all that ye did.” The Qurān (31:14–15 [Ali, 1083]; emphasis added)

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While these āyāt also begin by reiterating the theme of kindness to parents, this time the Qurān links filial obligations to the mother’s role in bearing and nursing children; that is, not just to her role as a parent or a caregiver, but to her biological role as mother as well. However, while recognizing the travails inherent in childbearing, the Qurān does not suggest that it is a punishment for women, and, indeed, it shows sensitivity toward the mother. This sensitivity and tenderness are also apparent in God’s attitude to Moses’s mother and her desire to nurse him; thus, God grants her wahy, or inspiration, that enables her to fulfill her desire. God is also sympathetic to Mary when she is in labor; moreover, “the priority of saving the child, in each case, is also viewed in the light of the concern for the respective mothers” (Wadud 1999, 40). After emphasizing the mother’s role in procreation, the first āyah returns us to the theme of life’s impermanence and the inexorable return to God of both parents and children alike: a reminder that we need to acknowledge the primacy of God’s rights/rule over those of parents. In effect, the mother’s role in procreation should not detract attention from God’s role as Creator. This juxtapositioning of Creation and procreation is significant for women and mothers for reasons I consider below. The second āyah is instructive for rather different reasons; it reiterates that obedience is due only to God, and should there be a conflict between obeying God and parents, the children have an obligation not to obey the parents. The reference to associating with God things of which a person has no knowledge can be interpreted either narrowly or broadly. However, it is important to be clear that the practice of faith entails not only a specific idea of God but also a specific mode of being in the world stemming from this conception of God; that is, a particular view of God leads one to embrace certain types of moral and spiritual practices, as well as a particular kind of social praxis. As such, the command to disobey parents cannot be read merely as allowing children some space for their privately held religious beliefs.15 Rather, it is a call to them to define their own understanding of divine Truth and, with it, the essentials of a good life. The charge to disobey parents, then, is more significant than it may at first appear, since implicit in it are a number of crucial points. First, and most obviously, it reconfirms the intentional and reflexive nature of faith. The Qurān here assumes that every new generation of daughters and sons will come to divine Truth by means of their own reasoning and knowledge, not by accepting their parents as intermediaries between themselves and

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God, hence blindly following in their footsteps. (As I note in chapter 4, the Qurān criticizes the tendency to cleave to tradition in other contexts as well.) Second, and relatedly, such a view of faith assumes that both men and women are moral agents endowed with free will; thus, both sons and daughters are expected to choose their own path to moral praxis, and both are called upon to disobey their parents should they consider it necessary. By confirming female moral and social agency, this view challenges the fatalism to which women often become inured because of the idea that only men are agents. Third, and most crucially for my argument, the Qurān’s command reveals that it assumes that sons and daughters will, in fact, be free to disobey fathers. The Qurān could hardly assume, much less mandate, disobedience if it viewed as legitimate the idea of the sanctity of the father’s rule or traditional views of fathers as heads of the household. The call to disobedience shows that the Qurān does not consider the father infallible or his authority supreme, and does not regard him as a surrogate for God on earth or his authority as an extension of God’s authority. In fact, it poses the clear and open possibility of the two coming into conflict. Some may argue that this Qurānic teaching pertains only to unbelieving parents, and that it only establishes the legitimacy of breaking with the rule of such parents, as Abraham did, for instance. However, as I argued earlier, the Qurān also opposes rule by believing fathers, and the principle it establishes is the need to obey the God of these fathers, not the fathers themselves, particularly as patriarchies would have us obey them. As such, we can argue that this teaching was not just specific to the Arabs. It embodies a universal principle at the heart of the Qurānic notion of Tawhīd: the primacy of God’s rights and rule over the rights of humans, especially fathers (and husbands), who usually are the ones in patriarchies who pose as God’s surrogates. And yet the Qurān’s command to disobey parents in specific circumstances is not a call to incivility since the āyāt also enjoin care and justice between parents and children. Not only does the Qurān refer to “(the mystic ties of ) Parent and Child” (90:3 [Ali, 1737]), but it also decrees caring behavior between them. Thus, God’s rule does not denigrate parents or their rights; rather, it locates God and parents in their respective spheres. Only in the eventuality of a conflict between them are believers expected to privilege the rights of God over those of parents. This juxtapositioning of God’s rights and parental rights is significant for fathers and mothers for

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different reasons and in different ways. For fathers, it is significant because by making parental rights subordinate to the rights and rule of God, the Qurān displaces the theme of father-­right and paternal privilege in the sense in which Muslim patriarchies define these rights and privileges. For mothers, on the other hand, it is significant for the opposite reason: it not only establishes the specificity and significance of their roles, but as I will now argue, it also incorporates them into the sphere of symbolic reverence associated with God, thereby also elevating them over fathers.

God’s Ru l e and Mothe r/ ho o d God’s rule has radical implications for the real and symbolic rights that mothers enjoy in Islam because the Qurān evokes one of the most symbolically charged and powerful of all concepts, that of taqwá (God-­consciousness),16 to link the reverence humans owe to God and the reverence they owe to their mothers: O [hu]mankind! [have taqwá for] Your [Rabb], Who created you From a single Person [nafs], Created, of like nature, [Its] mate, and from them twain Scattered (like seeds) Countless men and women;— [Show taqwá for] God, through Whom Ye demand your mutual (rights), And [show taqwá for] the wombs17 (That bore you): for God Ever watches over you. The Qurān (4:1 [Ali, 178])

The use of the term womb here may sound instrumentalist or pejorative given the tendency in patriarchies to reduce women to their biology and/or reproductive functions. Indeed, early Western views depict “the womb [as] an animal within an animal” (Aretaeus, quoted in Davis 1997, 47). But in Arabic “the word for womb (rahim) derives from the same root as the words mercy (rahma) and All-­merciful (rahman),” which are attributes the Qurān

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ascribes to God (Murata 1992, 182); all the su¯rahs, barring one, begin by describing God as Rahman and Rahim. Etymologically, then, divine attributes and the womb are related and signify benevolence and compassion. We can thus take the term as affirming both the benevolent nature of procreation and the specificity and significance of motherhood (for which the womb is a metaphor), also reflected in the importance that Muslim tradition attaches to observing the “rights of ‘womb relatives’” (215). By using the words taqwá and rahma, the Qurān brings mothers into the same sphere of symbolic signification as that reserved for God, and in so doing, it privileges them over fathers, to whom it never extends the concept of taqwá. Clearly, taqwá for God and for mothers cannot be of the same nature; however, the fact that the Qurān extends it only to mothers shows that it privileges them in a way that it does not privilege fathers. (The Qurān also gives mothers the same share in inheritance as fathers, and if the deceased has no son, double the father’s share.)18 Some may counter that the Qurān merely reifies patriarchal glorifications of women as mothers and of motherhood. However, historically, patriarchies (especially Christian) have used “sex-­ change metaphors”19 to represent God and pious men as mothers, thus denying the specificity of women as mothers. They have also displaced motherhood through the theme of motherless birth, so dear to misogynists in every religion.20 Moreover, when they do glorify mothers, patriarchies do so in the context of discourses that sentimentalize the son’s feelings for the mother. Also, they represent motherhood as a woman’s only function, thus collapsing wives with mothers inasmuch as a good wife is invariably defined as a fertile mother—of sons. Most significantly, even though patriarchies elevate mothers over women who are not mothers, they do not elevate them over fathers. Not only do they view the father’s role in procreation as being of greater value than the mother’s, but in patriarchies it is the father who remains the real source of power and privilege. The Qurān does not, however, define women in terms of their role as mothers since we cannot assume that all women will in fact become mothers. (Ayesha did not become a mother despite her status as the Prophet’s wife, but that neither diminished her importance in his life nor her appeal as a role model for women.) Nor does the Qurān collapse the roles of wife and mother, as I argue below. Moreover, it protects the specificity of motherhood by locating it in the womb. At the same time, however, the

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Qurān does not describe the mother’s role or other functions related to “child care and rearing . . . as essential created characteristics of the female. Thus, the Qurānic reference is restricted to the biological function of the mother—not the psychological and cultural perceptions of ‘mothering’” (Wadud 1999, 22). (The fact, however, that the Qurān focuses on women’s biological roles as mothers does not mean it dismisses the significance of mother­hood itself.) By mandating taqwá for mothers but not for fathers, the Qurān also elevates mothers over fathers and makes reverence for mothers a sign of righteousness, not just an expression of sentimentality. Finally, even though the Qurān does not describe the mother’s rights in the same terms in which patriarchies define the father’s rights (as ruling over children or spouse), it gives mothers a real and symbolic status that patriarchies do not, and it does not give fathers the same status that patriarchies do. Despite all these facts, many Muslim feminists continue to assail Islam’s position on mothers. For instance, in a work that continues to exercise strong appeal in the West, Fatna Sabbah (1984) argues that Islam’s location of the power to engender life in “a God” instead of in mothers divests motherhood of its “reality”21 and is therefore misogynistic. This reading illustrates a dilemma in which those Muslim feminists become ensnared who want to have it both ways: on the one hand, they want to argue that the association of fathers with God underwrites male privilege, and on the other, to claim that the association of mothers with God undermines the “reality” of motherhood, hence women’s rights as mothers. Such claims are incoherent not only for their doublespeak but also for their hubris inasmuch as they assume that Creation and procreation are the same. They assume that God and women create life in the same way, such that one must do away with the “idea of a God” jealous of women’s reproductive powers22 in order for motherhood to exist. However, juxtaposing God’s rights as Creator with mothers’ rights in procreation is what gives motherhood its specificity. Thus, the Qurān does not assign to God what belongs to mothers (the womb; procreation); rather, God as Creator has powers over everything, hence also over the life that emerges from women’s wombs. There is thus no competition between God and mothers (God creates and mothers procreate, and that, too, with some assistance from men, a fact that Sabbah’s fetishization of motherhood elides), no conflicting jurisdictions, no reason for God to be jealous of women or for the divine order to “liquidate” them, as she insists.

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Daugh ter s and Fathe rs No discussion of parent-­children relationships would be complete that did not refer to the old Arab practice of female infanticide (killing newborn girls, usually by burying them alive in the sand) since the Qurān offers an explicit and revealing commentary on it. Moreover, since some Muslims even today hold that Islam allows fathers to kill their daughters,23 it is appropriate to examine the Qurān’s position on this issue, which quite unambiguously displays its opposition to such patriarchal notions of father-­right. Female infanticide, and the low esteem in which daughters were held in Arab patriarchies, became a focus in the Qurān because of the nature of the practice itself and because the same fathers who were guilty of murdering their daughters were in the habit of freely ascribing daughters to God. The Qurān condemns the murder and the hypocrisy that prompted sacralizations of God as Father and that, too, only of daughters: And they assign to God daughters; glory be to [God]!—and they have their desire [for sons]; and when any of them is given the good tidings of a girl, his face is darkened and he chokes inwardly, as he hides him from the people because of the evil of the good tidings that have been given unto him; whether he shall preserve it in humiliation, or trample it into the dust. Ah, evil is that they judge! (16:55–60 [Arberry, 292])

The Qurān’s condemnation of the practice of ascribing daughters to God does not mean God looks down on daughters for humans, as is clear from the Qurān’s characterization of their birth as good news. However, as it points out, the father reacts to this news with deep aversion: he regards what is good as evil; his face darkens and he chokes with mortification; if he does not kill her, he will only end up keeping her on sufferance, both being evil choices. Is it any wonder, then, that when the Qurān speaks to men of their love of sons, women, and wealth—as a way of reminding them that “Of no profit whatever To them against God” will these be (58:17 [Ali, 1516])—that it makes no reference to daughters? Given depraved ideas about women, is it also any wonder that the Qurān condemns the pagans for feminizing God: “What! For you the male sex, And for [God] the female?” (53:21 [Ali, 1445]).

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Not only does the Qurān condemn fathers for oppressing and killing their daughters, but it also promises that on Judgment Day, God will question “the female (infant), Buried alive . . . For what crime She was killed” (81:8–9 [Ali, 1694]). This is a portentous covenant because on Judgment Day people will be recompensed for “the truth (and meaning) Of their conduct” which they “may have forgotten” but to which “God is Witness” (58:6 [Ali, 1512]). On that day, when sons will not avail fathers, a murdered baby girl’s testimony will seal her father’s fate as a sinner.24 The Qurān’s promise that God will hold fathers to account for killing their daughters, and its avowal that it is equally evil to oppress them in life, should show that girls are not their father’s property and that fathers have no right to ill-­treat them, much less kill them. Had the Qurān given fathers powers of life and death over children, or designated girls their parents’ property, it could not have held fathers or parents to account for murdering or abusing their daughters; nor would it have enjoined on the children the duty of disobeying parents in matters of faith. Thus, Muslims who view children or wives as the father’s or husband’s property fail to consider that the Qurān delineates relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and even masters and slaves in terms that rule out the idea of ownership altogether. In sum, what is significant in the Qurān is not just the right of parents to be shown respect and kindness but also the right of children to life, disobedience, and nurturance—in particular, of the rights of girls to paternal love and care. The Qurān is the only scripture to address the rights of girls in such terms and to raise squarely the problem of fathers’ abuse of daughters, something on which religious and secular patriarchies and traditions are frequently silent. More disturbing still is that this silence has allowed the heinous practice of so-­called “honor” killings of wives, daughters, and sisters by some Muslim fathers and brothers to be associated with Islam today. IV. Wives and Husbands Marriage in Islam is a social and not a religious contract and is premised on the legal equality of men and women. While Muslim patriarchies clearly do not treat women and men as legal equals, making marriage contractual was meant, at least in theory, to give women an equal say in its provisions. In this context, it is true, as some feminists contend, that modern patriarchy is

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based in contractual institutions (Pateman 1988). However, even if patriarchies have reconstituted themselves in this manner, it does not follow that the contract itself is or has to be patriarchal. On the contrary, its introduction by Islam in a traditional tribal patriarchy (some seven centuries before the advent of the contract in Europe) was meant to secure women’s position in that society. By enabling their transition from chattel to persons with legally binding and enforceable rights vis-­à-­vis men, it helped to mitigate some of the most pernicious aspects of patriarchy, such as views of the wife as property/child. As a prenuptial agreement, the contract also allows women to set conditions for a divorce should the marriage end in one. In the past women have used the contract to forbid the husband from taking another wife, to claim the right to divorce, to stipulate the amount of a divorce settlement and agreements about child custody, and so on. It is, of course, a different matter that many women choose not to use the contract in this way, or many men choose not to honor their part in it, even though the Qurān warns us “To fulfill the contracts Which ye have made” (2:177 [Ali, 69–70]). On their part, most Muslim states also choose not to enforce marriage contracts or to punish their breaches by men. Of course, until such problems are remedied, the Islamic marriage will remain Islamic in name only. Fortunately, it is not only through a marriage contract that the Qurān allows women to claim certain rights but also through its teachings about spousal relationships in general. This is because spousal equality in the Qurān is a function not of (identical) entitlements or rights, but of the idea that women and men are ontologically the same/similar. And since the Qurān teaches the principle of the ontological equality of the sexes, it cannot logically teach the principle of the inequality of husbands and wives. We thus need to understand the different rights of both men and women vis-­à-­vis one another in the overall context of the Qurān’s teachings about sexual equality.

S am eness as Basi s of Equa lit y The Qurān confirms the ontic equality of the sexes by teaching that both have the same Fitra, or nature. The reason they have the same nature, it says, is because they originated in the same Self (nafs), and because they “proceed one from another” (2:195 [Pickthall, 78). This theme—an inversion of the Christian claim that women proceed from men—is a recurrent

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one in the Qurān, as Pickthall notes. The idea of the sameness/similarity of human nature finds expression in several āyāt dealing specifically with marriage; for example, God has made for you Mates (and Companions) of your own nature, And made for you, out of them, Sons and daughters and grandchildren, And provided for you sustenance Of the best . . . The Qurān (16:72 [Ali, 675]; emphasis added)

(Note that daughters are as much a sign of God’s grace as sons.) And God created “helpmeets from yourselves that ye might find [suku¯n] in them, and [God] ordained between you love and mercy” (30:21 [Pickthall, 291; emphasis added).25 It is easy, as I say in chapter 6, to forget that the concept of mutual love and sexual fulfillment in marriage is of very recent origins; in the seventh century, it was truly radical.26 It distinguishes the Qurān from the contexts not only of its own times but also from those of ours, given both ancient and modern views of sexual inequality that Otherize women. The Qurān, however, describes the ability of men and women to love one another as a function both of their similar natures and of divine will (the fact that God ordained love and mercy between them). Although the Qurān does not assume that all marriages will in fact be based in love and mercy, it continues to emphasize these ideals even in some unusual circumstances: O you who have attained to faith! Behold some of your azwājikum and your children are enemies unto You: so beware of them! But if you pardon [their Faults], and forbear, and forgive—then, behold, God Will be much-­forgiving, a dispenser of grace. (64:14 [Asad 1980, 871])

As Asad notes, the customary translation of azwājikum as “wives” is wrong since “according to classical Arabic usage [it applies] equally to both the male and the female partners in a marriage.”27 The enmity the Qurān speaks of here is, moreover, a function not of (the wife’s) sex, but of value systems. Families in the early days were often split between Islam and

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polytheism, with people from the same family belonging to both sides. As an earlier āyah in the same su¯rah states, “[God] it is Who created you, but one of you is a disbeliever and one of you is a believer, and Allah is Seer of what ye do” (64:2 [Pickthall, 401]). Even in such cases, however, the Qurān enjoins spouses to be compassionate; in fact, even in cases where men hate their wives, the Qurān charges them to “consort with them in kindness, for if ye hate them it may happen that ye hate a thing wherein Allah hath placed much good” (4:19 [Pickthall, 81]). The Qurān, then, draws on the principle of the sameness and similarity of human nature to define spousal relationships, and the terms in which it describes these relationships suggest that it views wives and husbands as equals. Not only do they have the same natures, but they are also equally entitled to love and suku¯n; moreover, both are held to the same standards of ethical behavior, even in some terribly trying circumstances. Despite these teachings, however, there is a tendency among Muslims to define husbands as guardians over their wives and to characterize them as wife beaters. It is thus necessary to examine the origins and validity of their claims.

Hus ba n ds as “Guardi ans” and “Wife - ­B e ate rs”? Muslims who infer the themes of sexual inequality and husband privilege from the Qurān’s teachings usually do so on the basis of their reading of two āyāt, 4:34 and 2:228. From the first, they infer that men are women’s guardians, even rulers, and from the second, that God has preferred men to women and given them a “degree” above women. However, as the following discussion shows, such a reading not only interpolates meanings into the Qurān that are hard to justify contextually, but it also contradicts the Qurān’s teachings about human equality. Since āyah 2:228 deals with divorce, I consider it later. Here I want to focus on 4:34, which Yusuf Ali renders as: Men are the protectors And maintainers of women, Because God has given The one more (strength) Than the other, and because They support them From their means.

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Therefore the righteous women Are devoutly obedient, and guard In (the husband’s) absence What God would have them guard. As to those women On whose part ye fear Disloyalty and ill-­conduct, Admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); But if they return to obedience, Seek not against them Means (of annoyance). The Qurān (4:34 [Ali, 190]; emphasis added)

There are two separate yet interrelated themes here, the first pertaining to men’s roles as the protectors and maintainers of women, and the second to a husband’s right to beat a disobedient wife. I will consider these themes separately. With respect to the first half of the āyah, Ali’s translation shows that the Qurān describes men as women’s protectors and maintainers, not as guardians or rulers. However, he inadvertently transforms the social responsibility implicit in this charge into paternalism by using the word “strength,” which the Qurān does not use, to qualify what precisely God has given to one more than to the other. In fact, by claiming in his commentary on 2:228 that the man’s duty “to maintain the woman” implies “a certain difference in nature between the sexes” (Ali, 90 n. 255), he transforms an injunction about social roles into a claim about male biology and ontology. Thus, in a series of mediations, he interpolates the themes of sexual differentiation and inequality into these passages. In this sense, Asad’s translation is an improvement: “Men shall take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions” (2:228 [Asad, 109]; emphasis added). As Asad (109 n. 42) points out, the italicized part of the sentence in Arabic reads: “more on some of them than on the others.” As such, this could be a reference to the unequal distribution of God’s bounties between men since, clearly, not all

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men have the same “bounties” and, certainly, not all men have more “bounties” than all women. The problem, of course, is that Asad does not specify the nature of the bounties; however, the Qurān’s reference to “possessions,” as well as its charge to men to maintain women should make it obvious that “bounties” are financial resources. Indeed, since a man gets twice a woman’s share in inheritance in many cases, it is reasonable to assume that these are the resources to which the āyah is referring; and this may also explain why men in certain capacities (sons, brothers) are allowed to inherit twice a woman’s share. Arguably, men can only maintain women by means of financial resources, rather than by means of brute strength, virtue, intelligence, and so on—attributes that Muslim exegetes say God has bestowed in greater measure on men than on women. Such a view then allows some men to interpret this āyah baldly as “Men are the managers of the affairs of women because Allah has made the one superior to the other” (Maududi, quoted in Hassan 1999, 354). However, this exegesis, which establishes the husband as a ruler over his wife or, at the very least, as the head of the household, ignores that the Qurān appoints women and men each other’s awlīya, or mutual protectors, which it could not do if men were in fact superior to women and their “managers.” More to the point, such an exegesis reads into the āyah claims about sexual inequality and male privilege on the basis of three words in it: qawwāmu¯n, which is read as “managers”; qanitāt, read as “the wife’s obedience to her husband”; and nushu¯z, read as “the wife’s disobedience to the husband.” However, all three interpretations are misleading, as a number of Qurān scholars have shown. To understand their critique, it would be helpful to draw on Amina Wadud’s (1999) rephrasing of Pickthall’s translation, which is one of the clearest: Men are [qawwamuna ala] women [on the basis] of what Allah has [preferred] (faddala) some of them over others, and [on the basis] of what they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are [qanitat], guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear [nushuz], admonish them, banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then, if they obey you, seek not a way against them. (4:34 [Wadud, 70])

As Wadud, Azizah al-­Hibri (1982), and Riffat Hassan (1999) argue, linguistically, qawwāmu¯n means “‘breadwinners’ or ‘those who provide a

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means of support or livelihood’” (Hassan, 354). We can thus read the āyah as charging men with maintaining women from their economic resources in which they have been “preferred” (given more of than some women). Although associated with contemporary Muslim women scholars, this reading is of a much older vintage; some exegetes of the classical period, including al-­Tabari, also read the āyah as referring to men’s financial duties vis-­à-­vis women and not to their ontological status as males. Additionally, Hassan (1999, 354) points out that the first sentence in the āyah is meant to be normative rather than descriptive “since obviously there are at least some men who do not provide for women.” (The fact that the Qurān charges the husband with the duty of being the breadwinner does not mean, she says, that “women cannot or should not provide for themselves”; it simply means that the Qurān does not expect women to be the breadwinners.) Moreover, inasmuch as men are only “‘qawwamun’ over women in matters where God gave some of the men more than some of the women, and in what the men spend of their money, then clearly men as a class are not ‘qawwamun’ over women as a class,” concludes al-­Hibri (quoted in Wadud 1999, 71). By this rule, al-­Hibri says (1982, 218), “no one has the right to counsel a self-­supporting woman.” As Fazlur Rahman (1980, 49) also argues, a wife’s economic self-­sufficiency and contribution to the household reduces the husband’s superiority “since as a human, he has no superiority over his wife.” On this note, finally, Zainah Anwar and Ziba Mir-­Hosseini (2012) point out that this is the only time the Qurān uses qawwāmūn and that the term “qiwamah (protection, maintenance),” from which the word derives, “doesn’t appear in the Quran at all.” Furthermore, “in relation to marriage and relations between spouses, two other terms appear over 20 times: maruf (good way, decent) and rahmah wa muwadah (compassion/love).” Given this fact, they question why Muslim family law is grounded in “the twin concepts of qiwamah and wilayah which are . . . understood as having mandated men’s authority over women.” In that context, they also argue that when the Qurān uses the term wilayah in relation to men, it does so in the sense of “mutual support, but never as endorsing male authority over women.” Basically, then, the “DNA of patriarchy” (Anwar and Mir-­Hosseini 2012) in Islam originates in the specific choices medieval Muslim jurists and exegetes made in interpreting the Qurān and not in the text itself or in the Sharīah. Here it is also important to note that even though the Qurān charges the husband with being the breadwinner, it does not designate him head of

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the household, especially as the term has been understood in Western feudal cultures. Such a designation, as I argued earlier, was contingent on traditional patriarchal definitions of the father-­as-­husband and the husband-­ as-­father, to which the Qurān does not adhere. And while most Muslims believe that men are the heads of their households, the Qurān itself does not use this concept or term to speak either about husbands or fathers. What, then, of its reference to wifely obedience and its provision allowing husbands to “idriboo” (from the root daraba), or “beat,” a disobedient wife in the second half of the āyah? Wadud (1999, 70) and Siddique (1990) point out that the Qurān uses the word qanitāt (which most Muslims interpret as “wifely obedience”) in other contexts to refer to human behavior toward God; we cannot therefore assume that it refers to the wife’s conduct alone. Indeed, as Wadud says, the Qurān “never orders a woman to obey her husband. It never states that obedience to their husbands is a characteristic of the ‘better women’”; nor does it make it “a prerequisite for women to enter the community of Islam” (77). The Qurān did not require even the wives of the Prophet to obey him, nor did he compel them to obey him; nor, indeed, did he deal with marital discord by abusing or beating them. Similarly, while exegetes translate nushu¯z as disloyalty and ill-­conduct on the wife’s part, the Qurān also refers to wives who have reason to fear their husbands’ nushu¯z (4:128). As such, if we read the word as disloyalty and ill-­conduct on the wife’s part toward the husband, we must then also read it as disloyalty and ill-­conduct on the husband’s part toward his wife. Of course, there still remains the reference to daraba, which most Muslims read as sanctioning wife-­beating. However, Wadud (1999, 76) clarifies that daraba can mean “to strike” but also “to set an example,” and is not the same as darraba, which means “to strike repeatedly or intensely.” As such, the āyah can be read “as prohibiting unchecked violence against females. Thus, this is not permission, but a severe restriction of existing practices.” Although, as I will argue in a moment, this is not the only way to read daraba even if one interprets it as permission to strike a wife, there are two good reasons to read it as a restriction, as Wadud does. First, we can infer this from another example in the Qurān, that of Job and his wife, as Muslim exegetes have traditionally explained it. In the Qurān, God asks Job to take in his hand “A little grass, and [daraba] Therewith: and break not (Thy oath)” (38:44 [Ali, 1227]). Some exegetes hold that Job was asked to use a sprig of leaves. Although the Qurān itself does not specify who or what

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Job was being given permission to strike, according to Muslim exegetes, it was his wife, who had cursed God and whom Job had sworn to beat on that account. (Note that it was not because she had disobeyed Job.) While this exegesis extrapolates from biblical accounts, if it is correct, it shows that daraba is a symbolic and not a punitive gesture, or rather, the punitive is rendered a token since grass is not meant to inflict injury. (Tradition holds that the gesture should not cause pain; hence some exegetes favor using a folded handkerchief.) Second, we can also deduce that the Qurān uses daraba in a restrictive rather than in a prescriptive sense by examining the historical context of this teaching. At a time when men did not need permission to abuse women, this āyah could only have been a restriction insofar as the Qurān made daraba the measure of last, not the first or even the second, resort. And if the Qurān meant to restrict abuse even during those most abusive of times, it seems a bit perverse to regard this āyah as a license at a time when we claim to have become more, not less, conscious about the nature of abuse. In fact, it is questionable whether daraba actually refers to striking a wife, even symbolically. Rafi Ullah Shahab (1993, 231), for instance, says daraba also means “to prevent.” On his reading, the āyah is telling the husbands to “leave [the wives] alone in their beds and prevent them from going outside of houses.” In support of his reading, he points out that the Qurān provides for similar treatment of lewd wives in 4:15. However, while Shahab reads the āyah as pertaining to lewd behavior, Hassan (1999, 355) has an entirely different understanding, not only of daraba, but of the second half of the āyah as well. She argues that the word “salihat, which is translated as ‘righteously obedient,’ is related to the word salahiat, which means ‘capability’ or ‘potentiality,’ and not obedience.” As such, she takes it to be a reference to women’s child-­bearing potential, suggested also by the word qanitāt, which refers not only to obedience but also to a water container (a metaphor for the womb). She thus reads this āyah as referring to “women’s role as child-­bearers” and argues that only if all the women rebel against this role must they be disciplined by the community, not their husbands. This does not imply random acts of violence, however, because in a “legal context” the word daraba “means ‘holding in confinement’” (Hassan, 355–56). Her reading not only accords with Shahab’s interpretation of daraba as confinement, but it is also more in line with the Qurān’s counsel to husbands to deal kindly with their wives, even those who are their enemies or whom they hate.

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However, one of the most comprehensive interpretations is by Waqas Muhammad (2011), who locates 4:34 within the context not only of the āyāt that precede and follow it but also those (4:128–32) dealing with a husband’s nushu¯z. He translates 4:33–35 as: And do not envy what God preferred/bestowed with it, some of you over others. For the men is a portion of what they gained, and for the women is a portion of what they gained . . . (4:32). And for each We have made inheritors from what the parents and the relatives left, and those you made an oath with you shall give them their portion . . . (4:33). The men are supporters/maintainers of the women with what God preferred/bestowed on some of them over others and with what they spent of their money, so the righteous women are dutiful/obedient; guardians/protectors to the unseen with what God guarded/protected. And as for those women you fear their uprising/disloyalty, then you shall advise them, and (then) abandon them in the bed, and (then) idriboo them. If they obeyed you, then seek not against them a way . . . (4:34). And if you (plural) feared disunion/breach/rift between them two, then appoint a judge from his family and a judge from hers. If they both want to reconcile, then God will bring agreement between them. . . . (4:35). (Muhammad 2011, 14)

To read 4:34 in this broader context allows one to see that the scope of qawwāmūn is limited “to maintenance, i.e., because of God bestowing more on some of them than on others and with what they spent (perfect tense, i.e., an action done/completed) of their money.” In other words, qawwāmūn does not mean “managing one’s wife or being in charge of her.” In fact, continues Muhammad, there is not one example of God addressing the husband/wife relationship in this manner, e.g., all examples involving decisions between marriage partners are in the reciprocal Arabic word form, e.g., ‘taraadaa’ (2:232– 33, 4:24), ‘tashaawar’ (2:233), which means they are mutual. (14)

Like Wadud, he also notes that the Qurān uses the word qanit for devotion and obedience to God in all instances except one (33:31), when it includes obedience to the Prophet in addition to God. Moreover, many

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of these verses mention both men and women (2:116, 2:238, 3:17, 3:43, 4:34, 16:120, 30:26, 33:35, 39:9, 66:5), and one (66:12) speaks of Mary as qanit, which also illustrates that the term means obedience to God, not to a husband (15). Next, Muhammad notes that the Qurān’s allusion to the husband’s fear (takhafoona) of nushu¯z “is in the imperfect form, meaning an action in the process of being done.” This means, he says, that his fear is “an ongoing thing, about something that may or may not take place,” and the context “strongly implies that the husband does not wish to end the marriage, hence him ‘fearing’ and the conflict-­resolution measures that follow” (15– 16). These measures, which are spelled out in 4:35, are to invite arbitration from both their families if the couple is unable to reconcile on their own; the sequence of actions is therefore as follows: fear uprising/disloyalty —> advise them —> abandon them in bed —> idriboo them —> authority feared breach/rift thus appoint arbiters —> reconcile or separate/end. (Muhammad, 20)

It is in this sequence that Muhammad finds the meaning of idriboo because the Qurān encourages the same sequence when it speaks of a wife’s fears about her husband’s nushu¯z (4:128–30). In such a case, too, the husband and wife attempt a reconciliation and, if this fails, then one of them cites the other/situation to the authority who can then get involved. Thus, the sequence of events in 4:34 and 4:128 are identical. All the information reinforces and compliments each other. Interestingly, there may be no other explanation that is possible that could provide such equality and coherence, i.e., idriboo must mean ‘cite/indicate, point out, declare, put/show forth’ otherwise it will create inconsistencies, and any inconsistencies would have to be explained. (Muhammad, 25–26)

This process of reasoning leads Muhammad to conclude that idriboo means that husbands can “cite them” (their wives) to an authority as a way to invite mediation in settling their marital discord. In this context he makes an additional point, which is that even if the husband fears his wife’s nushu¯z, “or even if he is sure of it, and if there are

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no witnesses/evidence, then he must follow the procedure in 24:6–9 and cannot take it upon himself to administer any punishment.” The āyāt in question deal with a situation in which a husband suspects his wife of adultery but does not have witnesses to prove this. Even so, his fear or suspicion cannot be the basis for punishing his wife; rather, he must bring the case before the authorities, and if his wife swears her innocence, the husband has no further legal recourse against her. In just one set of circumstances (verse 65:1) can a husband evict his wife from their home: if she “has committed a clear/evident lewdness/Immorality (fahish mubayyin),” notes Muhammad. Perhaps, he says, some men feel that beating a wife is “less harsh than eviction.” However, this is not the position of the Qurān, which never recommends solving marital conflicts through violence. As Muhammad asks, “Is there any other example in The Qurān in which non-­violence is met with violence?” Consequently, taking daraba to mean “beat/strike” would be the sole example of husband as: judge, jury and executioner; the only example of [a] guilty verdict based on a fear/suspicion; the only clear example of non-­equivalent punishment; the only example of punishment for no actual/proven crime. (Muhammad, 30)

Lastly, Muhammad contests the claim that daraba means “strike/beat” in Qurānic or early classical Arabic. He reviews every single case in which the Qurān uses the word and finds that “there is not a single occurrence in which ‘beat’ is the likely meaning,” because unlike modern Arabic speakers, the Qurān never uses daraba (DRB) to mean hit/punch/smack/strike. . . . Even when body parts are mentioned as what to DRB with or what to do DRB to/upon (e.g., 8:12, 8:50, 18:11, 24:31, 37:93, 47:4, 47:27), it doesn’t mean a physical hit/strike, or at least there is not one clear example showing it does. (Muhammad, 39)

The only times it “can possibly mean a literal hit/strike is when the preposition ‘bi’ (with/by) is used,” says Muhammad, which is why interpreting 4:34 as wife-­beating is a poor interpretation. He also notes that early Muslim commentators who understood daraba to mean “beat/strike” did not base this understanding on the Qurān and that classical Arabic dictionaries do not

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give “beat” in an example without specifying where/what/how/etc. They do not provide one example in which DRB appears with no where/ what/how meaning anything other than “strike (with sword/whip/cane, kill in battle).” None reference 4:34 at all. (Muhammad, 32)

While Muhammad is open to interpreting idriboo as “leave them/separate from them,” he argues that these meanings only work if they do not imply a divorce because, in the event of one, “the contract-­breaking party” would have to compensate the other, and “it would be unfair for the husband to initiate divorce when he has done nothing wrong in this case.” On this note, finally, he makes the important point that since 4:35 refers to the possibility of a couple reconciling, for a husband to beat his wife would give her “a legitimate cause for divorce or compensation” (Muhammad, 27). In ending, it is safe to say that whichever meaning of 4:34 individual Muslims or communities choose will depend not only on specific translations of specific words but also on how they understand the “message of the Qurān,” as Ayesha Chaudhry (2013, 203–4) argues. In this context, she points out that precolonial scholars understood this message in light of a God-­centered social hierarchy, where God’s kingdom on Earth was composed of divinely arranged hierarchical social institutions that were ordered based on their created natures. In contrast, post-­colonial progressive and reformist scholars understand the message of the Qurān in light of a God-­centered world that is fundamentally egalitarian and where humans distinguish themselves from each other through God-­consciousness and meritorious actions.

In Chaudhry’s view, thinking about interpretive differences in this way leads to the rather “startling conclusion [that] depending on which Qurānic verses are emphasized, the Qurān can be successfully used to argue for either a fundamentally egalitarian marital structure or a patriarchal one” (204). What this suggests is that a rereading of this āyah remains a possibility if one chooses to emphasize all those teachings of Qurān that undercut the notion of unilateral husband authority by extolling the virtues of equality, equity, love, forgiveness, suku¯n, and mutuality between spouses. Given the egalitarian nature of such teachings and the example of the Prophet’s life,

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at the very least we need to admit that there is no compulsion to read this āyah as a license to batter wives or compel them to obey their husbands.

Adultery and Polygyn y I have argued so far that the Qurān’s different treatment of women and men does not necessarily mean that it privileges males. I will substantiate my argument by taking as examples the Qurān’s provisions on adultery and polygyny as instances of different treatment that do not work straightforwardly to men’s advantage or against that of women. According to the Qurān, in order for a husband to charge his wife with adultery, he must generally produce four male witnesses of good moral standing who saw the act of sexual intercourse, a stringent and unusual requirement that exegetes argue is meant to discourage men28 from slandering innocent women. (A man who brings a false charge is to receive eighty lashes with the whip and is to have his testimony on all other issues discounted in the future.) However, if a husband cannot produce four such witnesses, he can stand witness himself by swearing an oath four times that he is telling the truth, and a fifth time that he invokes God’s curse on himself if he is lying. His wife then has the right to swear an oath four times that her husband “Is telling a lie,” and a fifth time that she invokes God’s wrath on herself if he is not (24:6–9 [Ali, 897–98]). Rather incredibly, her word is the last; if she is guilty, says the Qurān, God will punish her; however, it gives her husband no further legal rights against her. Clearly, the Qurān here privileges the evidence of a wife over that of her husband and of a woman over that of a man, but Muslims do not read this provision as a sign of inequality and female privilege. I make this point because, on popular Muslim views, the evidence of two women equals the evidence of one man, a “two-­for-­one formula”29 that they derive from another āyah that allows two women instead of one man to witness the transaction of a financial debt. However, there are a total of five types of evidence given in the Qurān, and in only one does it make an allowance for two women, for very specific social reasons. Had this been an across-­the-­board formula in the Qurān, it would not have attached greater weight to a wife’s evidence than to the husband’s in the far more consequential matter of adultery.

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If the Qurān does not privilege males in its treatment of adultery, and can even be said to privilege women, it also does not privilege males in its treatment of polygyny. Odd as it may sound to us today, particularly given its abuses by Muslims historically, in the Qurān, polygyny serves a very specific purpose: that of securing justice for female orphans. Since Muslim exegesis of the Qurān’s position on polygyny is the most notoriously decontextualized of all, it is necessary to quote the whole of the relevant āyah: Give the orphans their property, and do not exchange the corrupt for the good and devour not their property with your property; surely that is a great crime. If you fear that you will not act justly toward the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or [aw] what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial. (4:1 [Arberry, 100]; emphasis added)

Women whom men’s “right hands own” are thought to be war captives, slaves, and concubines, all of whom were part of the social structure of tribal Arab society in the seventh century and for whose equitable treatment the Qurān laid down specific guidelines. Commentators thus read the āyah as permitting men to marry such women by translating aw as “or.” However, Asad (1980, 519 n. 3) renders aw as “that is”; on his reading, the Qurān is referring to women whom men’s right hands possess, that is, their spouses. In his view, then, it is encouraging men to remain married to their spouses. Even if one does not accept his translation, the point is that this āyah mentions polygyny only in reference to wards and orphans. In this context, two points are in order. One is that the Qurān is not giving all Muslim men the right to marry multiple wives, but only those guardians of female orphans who fear they may not be able to treat their wards justly outside of the marriage tie. To me this implies, second, that polygyny is being restricted to the female orphans, a reading that is also supported by the only other verse on the subject, 4:127: And they will ask thee to enlighten them about the laws concerning women. Say: “God [Himself ] enlightens you about the laws concerning them”—for [His will is shown] in what is being conveyed unto you through this divine writ about orphan women in your charge], to

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whom—because you yourselves may be desirous of marrying them—you do not give that which has been ordained for them; and about helpless children; and about your duty to treat orphans with equity. (4:127 [Asad, 129]; emphasis added)

Both verses, then, are warning guardians against trying to cheat their wards, and both mention polygyny in relation only to orphans. (In passing, it seems worth belaboring that polygyny predates Islam and was not uncommon in the seventh century.) In contrast, Asad (1993) and Richard Bell (1991) argue that since the āyah is addressed to the entire community, it does not “necessarily mean that the guardian should himself marry those for the management of whose property he is responsible” (Bell, 108). I am inclined not to agree with them. The Qurān is very clear that polygyny is only permitted in those cases where the guardian feels that he may be unable to do full justice to his charge outside of marriage, the assumption being that marriage gives the husband a stake in the honest management of his wife’s property. Then, too, polygyny is only permitted if it does not result in injustice to the wife. If there is such a likelihood, says the āyah, then a man should marry only one wife. Indeed, the Qurān states that men in polygynous situations are never “able to be equitable between your wives, be you ever so eager” (4:125 [Arberry, 119]). The gap between desire and its fulfillment is large, and as far as polygyny is concerned, the Qurān is frank: despite good intentions, men cannot be just to many wives. This may be because, as the Qurān notes, “God has not made for any man two hearts” (33:4 [Ali, 1102]), implying, says Ali, that a man cannot love two women equally. We thus can read these āyāt as presenting a case against generalized polygyny, which Muslims derive from reading half a line of āyah 4:1. Significantly, the Qurān does not present polygyny as a solution for economic problems, or a wife’s infertility, or the need to fulfill male sexual needs, as Wadud (1999, 84) points out. In fact, if acceptable to the women, it may be a way to protect them and give them sexual access to men at a time when women outnumber men. However, the Qurān itself does not refer to the sexual nature, or needs, of women or men in dealing with polygyny; it refers only to the need to ensure justice for orphaned girls and “helpless children.” Arguably, then, polygyny does not serve a sexual function in the Qurān. Nor does it exemplify male privilege since

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the Qurān limited the number of wives men could marry, restricted multiple marriages to orphans (in my view), and made such marriages contingent on a set of well-­specified and rigorous criteria. If today we cannot think of a polygynous relationship as having anything to do with justice, we should not ignore that this is what the Qurān itself mandated at a time when unprotected women were open to all forms of abuse. Even so, polygyny is not the Qurānic ideal; otherwise, its admonition to marry only once, its assertion that men cannot do justice to more than one wife, and its reference to the oneness of the human heart would hold no meaning. And since, for believers, the Qurān’s teachings cannot be meaningless, it is we who must be willing to reread the āyāt cumulatively as restricting universal polygyny.

D i vo rce and “Degrees” of Ma le P rivile ge It is a commentary on the deeply egalitarian nature of the Qurān that it counsels compassion and tolerance not only within marriage but also in the event of a divorce.30 In fact, it is the Qurān’s teachings on divorce that conclusively establish the value of tolerant and ethical behavior on the part of spouses. If this seems counterintuitive, given that divorces are the least likely events to induce scrupulous behavior on the part of most people, it makes sense for precisely that reason. Prior to examining the Qurānic āyāt on divorce, I want to note, first, that most of these are addressed to men, perhaps because Islam was seeking to change the manner in which and the rate at which men could divorce their wives. Since a wife’s right to divorce was “virtually non-­existent in preIslamic times” and men had almost total powers of repudiation,31 it is logical that the Qurān would address them. Second, while Islam permits divorce, it is also among the things considered most hateful to God (Ali 1988, 221 n. 638). Thus, the Qurān advises couples to attempt family mediation first: “If they wish for peace, God will cause Their reconciliation,” it says (4:35 [Ali, 191]). This recommendation is particularly significant since the preceding āyah (4:34) is read as permission for wife-­beating, which, if that were the case, would be at odds with the Qurān’s valuation of a rapprochement after a state of discord, or nushu¯z. A husband and wife can also reach an agreement between themselves without outside arbitration, and it is in discussing the latter option that the Qurān comes out most clearly in favor of marital harmony:

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If a woman feareth ill-­treatment [nushu¯z] from her husband, or desertion, it is no sin for them twain if they make terms of peace between themselves. Peace is better. But greed hath been made present in the minds (of men). If ye do good and keep from evil, lo! Allah is ever Informed of what ye do. (4:128 [Pickthall, 91]; emphasis added)

Here again, the Qurān categorically recommends marital peace, even in a difficult situation. However, should matters come to a divorce, it is insistent that spouses not forget “Liberality between yourselves” (2:237 [Ali, 95]). The Qurān also repeatedly counsels just and decent behavior on the husband’s part at all stages of the divorce process, ranging from when and how he may divorce a wife to the manner in which he is to maintain and treat her during different stages of the process: O Prophet! When ye Do divorce women, Divorce them at their Prescribed periods,32 And count (accurately) Their prescribed periods: And fear God your [Rabb]: And turn them not out Of their houses,33 nor shall They (themselves) leave, Except in cases they are Guilty of some open lewdness,34 Those are limits Set by God: and any Who transgresses the limits Of God, does verily Wrong his (own) soul. The Qurān (65:1 [Ali, 1562])

And again, When ye divorce Women, and they fulfil The term of their (iddat) [waiting period],

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Either take them back On equitable terms Or set them free On equitable terms; But do not take them back To injure them, (or) to take Undue advantage; If anyone does that, He wrongs his own soul. Do not treat God’s Signs As a jest . . . The Qurān (2:231 [Ali, 91–92])

These āyāt do not require much explanation. The Qurān warns men to treat their wives justly and not to harass or hurt them or turn them out of the house, even during the tribulations of a divorce. One āyah defines injury to an estranged wife as a transgression against the limits of God, and the other calls it wronging one’s own soul; both warn against making light of the parameters established by God. Even if a woman is independently wealthy, the Qurān places on the man the obligation to support her during and after the divorce, and its recommendations are radically enlightened, even by modern standards. A husband must accommodate a wife whom he plans to divorce where you are lodging, according to your means, and do not press them, so as to straiten their circumstances. If they are with child, expend upon them until they bring forth their burden. If they suckle for you, give them their [recompense],35 and consult together honourably. . . . Let the man of plenty expend out of his plenty. As for him whose provision is stinted to him, let him expend of what God has given him. God charges no soul save with what [God] has given him. (65:5 [Arberry, 285])

A husband planning on divorcing his wife thus has an obligation to maintain her in the same way as himself, and both spouses are to settle any issues between them in a mutually agreeable manner. And if a divorced wife gives birth, the Qurān expects that she will want to nurse her baby for two years36 and requires her ex-­husband to maintain her

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“On a reasonable (scale)” (2:241 [Ali, 96]). Neither parent must be made to suffer on account of their child; as the Qurān says, “No mother shall be Treated unfairly On account of her child. Nor father On account of his child” (2:233 [Ali, 93]).37 The baby should also be weaned by mutual consent, a stipulation that acknowledges the role both parents play in child-­rearing. Women going through a divorce, on the other hand, are asked “to wait For three monthly periods” so as to determine if they are pregnant38 (since the father is responsible for providing for the child and mother), and their husbands Have the better right To take them back In that period, if They wish for reconciliation. And women shall have rights Similar to the rights Against them, according To what is equitable; But men have a degree [darajah] (Of advantage) over them. And God is Exalted in Power, Wise. The Qurān (2:228 [Ali, 89–90]; emphasis added)

Since this is the āyah that accords men the famous “degree” over women, which fuels claims about male privilege, it is important to consider different renditions so as to identify some common themes. Asad translates it as follows: And the divorced women shall undergo, without remarrying, a waiting-­ period of three monthly courses; for it is not lawful for them to conceal what God may have created in their wombs, if they believe in God and the Last Day. And during this period their husbands are fully entitled to take them back, if they desire reconciliation; but, in accordance with justice, the rights of the wives [with regard to their husbands] are equal to the [husbands’] rights with regard to them, although men have precedence over them [in this respect]. And God is almighty, wise. (Asad 1980, 50; emphasis added)

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Pickthall is even clearer in his translation: Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves apart, three (monthly) courses. And it is not lawful for them that they should conceal that which Allah hath created in their wombs if they are believers in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands would do better to take them back in that case if they desire a reconciliation. And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above them. Allah is Mighty, Wise. (Pickthall, 53; emphasis added)

The rephrasing of Pickthall’s translation by Wadud renders it clearer still: Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves apart, three (monthly) courses. And it is not lawful for them that they conceal that which Allah has created in their wombs if they believe in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands would do better to take them back in that case if they desire a reconciliation. And [(the rights) due to the women are similar to (the rights) against them, (or responsibilities they owe) with regard to] the maruf, and men have a degree [darajah] above them (feminine plural). Allah is Mighty, Wise. (Wadud 1999, 68)

Though translated as “kindness,” maruf has much wider implications according to Wadud (69). There are, then, four themes in this āyah in its various renditions: the waiting period in a divorce, the possibility of a reconciliation between an estranged couple, the theme of kindness, and the equality of spousal rights, except that the husband has a degree, or advantage, over the wife, the nature of which the Qurān does not specify. Given this fact, exegetes interpret the āyah differently. Wadud reads it as giving husbands the advantage of being able to “pronounce divorce against their wives without arbitration or assistance” (68); wives, on the other hand, need arbitration in order to get divorced. However, as she points out, this stipulation does not derive from the Qurān, which does not say women should have no powers of repudiation; they did not have such powers at the time of its revelation. Asad, on the other hand, reads the āyah as giving husbands the advantage of being able to rescind a divorce; as he says, “since it is the husband who is responsible for the maintenance of the family, the first option to rescind a

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provisional divorce rests with him” (50 n. 216). Since the Qurān also mentions kindness and the possibility of a reconciliation, this may be a more appropriate reading than Wadud’s. Hassan (1999, 357), however, reads the āyah as giving husbands the advantage of being able to remarry without having to wait for a three-­month period. Whichever reading one prefers, however, it is clear that the “degree” does not refer to the ontological status of men as males or even to their rights over women; rather, it is a specific reference to a husband’s rights in a divorce and, from all indications, is meant to encourage more, not less, kindness toward women. In this context, it also is important to clarify that the Qurān does not allow men to divorce wives freely or unilaterally, as they do in most Muslim societies these days. Thus, no āyah supports “the license of divorce presently awarded to males” in Muslim countries (Esposito 1982, 109). In fact, the Qurān not only discouraged divorce, it also outlawed one form of divorce in response to a woman’s pleas to God (Su¯rah 58, “She Who Disputes,” takes its name from this āyah, as I pointed out in the last chapter): God has heard the words of her that disputes with thee concerning her husband, and makes complaint unto God. . . . Those of you who say, regarding their wives, “Be as my mother’s back,”39 they are not truly their mothers; their mothers are only those who gave them birth, and they are surely saying a dishonourable saying, and a falsehood. (58:1 [Arberry 2, 263])

After the revelation of this āyah, Muslim men could no longer revert to zihār divorce, which symbolically collapsed the wife with the mother. Mothers, the Qurān says, are those who give us birth, protecting both wives and the specificity of motherhood. The Qurān also limits the number of times a man can divorce his wife, a ruling prompted by pre-­Islamic practices in which a husband was “perpetually divorcing a wife, pretending to take her back, and then divorcing her again in order to either convince her to relinquish her dower for her final freedom, or to prevent her from remarrying and seeking the protection of another husband” (Esposito 1982, 39). The Qurān not only makes it “illegal to divorce a wife on a false charge whereby the husband might retain some of the property lawfully belonging to her” (Levy 1962, 97), it also limits the number of times a man can divorce his wife to two. After that, the “parties should either hold Together

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on equitable terms, Or separate with kindness” (2:229 [Ali, 90–91]). If a man does make the mistake of divorcing his wife a third time,40 they cannot remarry until she marries another man and is divorced from him (2:230 [Ali, 91]). In effect, while the Qurān allows remarriage “If they mutually agree On equitable terms” (2:232 [Ali, 92]), it makes remarrying and divorce difficult. Too often when Muslims argue that in Islam, divorce is easy and that it privileges males, they either do not understand or they ignore the Qurān’s teachings because if they took these seriously, they would find themselves in one of the most difficult situations, given what the Qurān asks of them.

Di f f erences ver sus In e qua lit y As the preceding discussion reveals, in dealing with the family and marriage, the Qurān treats women and men identically on some issues and differently on others. However, where it treats them differently, it does not necessarily privilege males. On the contrary, most of its provisions seem to be directed at protecting women’s interests. Thus, the Qurān treats both parents identically by counseling children to be kind to them; however, it also treats them differently by privileging mothers over fathers and by requiring children to disobey their parents in specific cases, which undercuts the father’s authority more than it does the mother’s in a patriarchal society. Similarly, the Qurān treats both spouses identically by affirming the similarity of their natures and their right to suku¯n in a marriage; it also holds them to the same standards of loving and tolerant behavior. The marriage contract also assumes their legal equality. However, the Qurān does treat spouses differently on a number of issues. For instance, it privileges the wife’s testimony over that of the husband’s in the case of adultery. At the same time, however, it makes husbands, not wives, breadwinners for the household, and it allows husbands, but not wives, to marry up to four times. However, since polygyny is meant to protect women and not to cater to men’s sexual needs, it is difficult to view it as privileging males. Moreover, while allowing for polygyny under specific circumstances, the Qurān also establishes the primacy of a wife’s right to just treatment, and it is on this basis that it counsels monogamy. Were the Qurān a patriarchal text, it would not adopt the woman’s perspective, whether that of the girl killed by her father, or the female orphan at the mercy of a male guardian, or that of the wife during a vulnerable state (of menstruation), to define and regulate men’s behavior.

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Perhaps the only teaching of the Qurān that shows inequality is āyah 4:34. Of course, to put it this way is to read it from the perspective of the present since the concept of sexual in/equality is a modern one. At a minimum, then, this āyah could not have been evidence of inequality to the Qurān’s seventh-­century audience. Given the prevailing milieu, it could also very well have been understood as restricting violence against women, which the Prophet also did by cautioning men not to strike their wives. Moreover, as Muhammad’s (2011) closely reasoned analysis shows, there is no compulsion to read it as commanding wife-­beating for three reasons. One is that such a reading is not justifiable even on linguistic grounds since there is no self-­evident meaning of daraba in the Qurān. An even more compelling reason is that there is a precedent in the Qurān of how to deal with nushu¯z, and it sets out a specific process of mediation to ­handle it. Last, and for this reason, the āyah departs from all other Qurānic teachings about marriage and is therefore not paradigmatic of its position on the subject. To make it the lynchpin of these teachings, as Muslims have done, is not just irresponsible but also an act of enormous textual, sexual, and epistemic violence. That such violence is attributed to God is even more appalling. What this āyah does reveal, however, is that the Qurān recognizes men as wielding power and authority in patriarchies; however, this is not the same as advocating patriarchy, nor does it make the Qurān a patriarchal text. As I have argued, it does not mandate obedience to fathers/husbands, or authorize rule by the father/husband, or propagate the idea that men are superior to women in their capacity as males. Clearly, men have some advantages, as well as some disadvantages, in their roles as husbands. But there is no narrative in the Qurān that suggests even the remotest parallels between God and husbands or fathers, or men, just as nothing in the Qurān suggests that men are intermediaries between God and women. In light of these teachings, it is also difficult to view its different treatment of women and men as evidence of its anti-­equality stance. For one, as I have emphasized, difference does not always imply inequality, particularly if it is not based in a theory of sexual differentiation; indeed, difference may even be “compatible with [definitions] of similarity” (Ricoeur 1974, 471). As such, the Qurān’s different treatment of women and men does not invalidate its teachings about human equality or similarity. For another, it is important to keep gender differentiation and gender devaluation “analytically distinct” and not to confuse every recognition of gender

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roles as a devaluation of women (Nicholson 1986, 92). The Qurān’s recognition of gender roles is fundamental to its being able to secure women’s rights, especially in situations where they may be vulnerable to injustice, exploitation, or abuse. However, the Qurān does not suggest that women’s vulnerability is a function of their being the “weaker sex”; rather, it ascribes their vulnerability to the existing patriarchal social and sexual divisions of labor. Yet even as it recognizes the existence of such divisions of labor, and thus of gender roles, the Qurān “does not strictly delineate the roles of woman and the roles of man to such an extent as to propose only a single possibility for each gender41 (that is, women must fulfill this role, and only this one, while men must fulfill that role and only men can fulfill it)” (Wadud 1999, 63). This being so, one cannot hold the Qurān itself responsible for how a particular social or sexual division of labor has evolved over time. At best, one can say that it makes some stipulations for a gender inequality that exists, but should not. Thus, the Quran makes certain stipulations about slavery as well, but not timelessly. The assumption is that slavery will be around for a while, so this is how one needs to deal with it until it goes down in history. So perhaps some of its other provisions also cannot be read timelessly.42

Most Muslims, however, continue to read the Qurān’s provisions timelessly, ignoring the egalitarian aspects of its teachings that deal with the rights of women as mothers, daughters, and wives. This may be because, in general, Muslims fail to recognize the ontological basis of equality in Islam, or it may be because they distinguish between religious versus social/legal equality. This distinction also accounts for the very different views that Muslims (and their critics) have of Islam’s position on women. Thus, Muslims who argue that Islam protects women’s rights and accords them a status denied them in the West draw on the theme of religious equality, while critics who view Islam as discriminatory refer to the different rights it extends to women and men. Both views, however, are problematic. The first unlinks the religious and the social spheres even though they are not separable; it also ignores that the Qurān’s view of equality structures its teachings not only about faith but also about relationships between men and women. The second view confuses equality with similarity, and inequality with difference, a confusion against which I hope I have argued persuasively.

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V. Reading in Front of the Text Modern readers view the Qurān’s position on marriage and the family in different ways. Some argue that the Islamic marriage is “life-­affirming rather than life-­denying” (Esposito 1982, 15); that it is conducive to the growth and stability of the family; that it enhances woman’s status “in terms of her rights and obligations as a wife and the mother of a family” (Coulson, quoted in Marsot 1979, 66). Such arguments recognize the historical significance of the change in women’s status from chattel to wives and mothers as a result of Islamic provisions, the most revolutionary of which was the contractual marriage, that recognized women and men as equals. Others, meanwhile, claim that the Islamic marriage is patriarchal, hence oppressive to women (Ahmed 1992). This critique, which assumes that the family is quintessentially patriarchal, also assumes a particular view of oppression. One can begin, then, by asking why some Western and feminist theorists believe that the family has “served only to oppress women and children” (McMillan 1982, 91). The answer depends on whose view of history and which theory one accepts. Marxist feminists maintain that an (avowedly) egalitarian social and sexual system based on free (presumably consensual) sex between women and men was replaced over time by the patriarchal family, and in tandem with the emergence of private property, allowing men to monopolize the products of women’s labor. Thus, “women lost their equal status when they lost control over the products of their work”43 (Leacock 1981, 200). Since this family structure restricted women’s sexual access to men, it also was sexually repressive. The family in this mode of traditional patriarchy was premised on a view of the father/husband as a ruler with powers of life and death over wives/children. Conversely, women were reduced to their biological role of childbearers. Although this form of father-­right passed from the scene, argue Marxist feminists, the patriarchal family and patriarchy did not; they were able to “lawfully” reconstitute themselves by means of contractual relationships (Pateman 1988). Other explanations for why the monogamous/contractual family represses women range from the claim that the private domain of family life (associated with women) is inferior to the public domain of politics and culture (associated with men), to the view that women’s biology and “procreation [are] the substance of female subordination in the late twentieth century” (Hart 1996, 25). However, the association of women with

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biology (nature) by some feminists is ironic given that the “major source of women’s oppression resides in this enforced identity between woman and nature” (Hewitt, quoted in Haddad and Findly 1985, 17). This association allowed theorists like Hegel to claim that whereas men acquire knowledge through reason, women, who live in a natural state, acquire it by “breathing in ideas” (Hewitt, 17). Radical lesbians, on the other hand, regard all heterosexual unions as oppressive because of their view that male nature is innately misogynistic. And then there are those who believe that not just the family and marriage as defined in monotheism but monotheism itself are patriarchal and oppressive. Thus, explanations for why the family and marriage are patriarchal or oppressive range from the nature of the social/ sexual divisions of labor, to women’s biology and reproductive roles, to cultural constructions of God, the family, sexuality, and patriarchy. In light of the broad range of these views, it is difficult to establish the family and marriage in Islam as nonpatriarchal and nonoppressive on all counts. Those who view biology, monotheism, or heterosexuality as oppressive—confusing sex, sexuality, biology, and monotheism with their social constructions—are also unlikely to view as egalitarian a monotheistic perspective that legitimizes heterosexuality and sees the role of childbearing, but not necessarily childrearing, as the woman’s function. However, other views are harder to apply in their totality to the Qurān. For instance, it is difficult to impose the concept of the social/sexual division of labor onto the Qurān inasmuch as the it does not espouse a specific social/sexual division of labor. Similarly, the concept of the public/private as defined in Western mainstream theories also cannot be applied to the Qurān, which views the two spheres differently than Western and Muslim patriarchies do. As such, while Western/feminist theories of the family and marriage may be helpful in distinguishing the Qurān’s position, they are of little help in explaining it. This does not mean, however, that the Qurān’s teachings are incompatible with all modern/Western/feminist theories. Those who argue against “overpoliticizing our most intimate relations and turning the family into the war of all against all to be negotiated by contract” (Elshtain 1981, 337) may find the Qurān’s view of the family egalitarian and nurturing. So will those who believe that for the needs of mothers and children “to be taken seriously, the home—that is, family life—must retain a central place in any society [and] the importance of the women’s role in the home” must be recognized (McMillan 1982, 104). Similarly, the fact that in the Qurān spousal rights

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are not contingent on the sex of the spouse—that the wife is an agent in her own right, entitled to rights and safeguards in marriage and divorce, and that marriage is based on mutuality—may comfort those who are concerned with issues of sexual equality, or equity, or the nondiscriminatory treatment of women. The Qurān’s teachings may also resonate with those who are suspicious of a feminist utopia conceived as “a world in which birth, sex and death no longer exist” (McMillan 1982, 156). Similarly, its teachings may make sense to those who hold that it is no longer “obviously valid to argue that the idea that a mother has to face peculiar problems because of her situation qua mother is an invention of the patriarchal mind” (113). Finally, many Qurānic teachings are likely to reassure those who view the feminist assault on women’s biology and attempt to delink reproduction and sexuality as a revolt against nature, and who call for “social changes which would embrace more fully, and with more justice . . . differences [between women and men] and their consequences for women” (152). Freedom, it is said, “requires order and order requires limits,”44 but it seems many people have grown increasingly suspicious of limits because they have grown increasingly sure of moral uncertainties. However, if we can “reject the idea that all social norms and ideals operate as instruments of domination and control,”45 we may find in the Qurān’s view of rights and responsibilities both order and limits. We may also find that it comes closest to articulating sexual relationships in the kind of “nonoppositional and non-­hierarchical”46 mode that many scholars believe can be liberating for both women and men. Such an assessment assumes, of course, that Muslims will be willing to read the Qurān as a liberatory text, but this remains a questionable assumption. It is not only that Muslim patriarchies subsist on their patriarchal exegesis but also that many secular Muslims, including the newest generation of feminists, oppose the practice of locating norms or authority in a text they consider patriarchal/sexist/androcentric and perhaps not even sacred. To such scholars, readings like mine, which are now associated with Islamic feminism, are manipulative at best. Despite such criticisms, some of these theorists then use my work to dispute the Qurān’s sacrality and/or authority. Accordingly, I examine this genre of scholarship in the next chapter, partly with the intent of responding to its critiques of my own approach to the Qurān.

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Chapter 8

Secular-­/Feminism and the Qurān ▼

S

ince I began this book by critiquing patriarchal interpretations of the Qurān, it seems appropriate to conclude by examining some critiques of its egalitarian ones, like mine, usually labeled Islamic feminism/feminist exegesis.1 This is especially important because the critics—mostly liberal, feminist, and progressive Muslims—are adamant that the Qurān is a patriarchal/androcentric text, and Muslim women have nothing to gain by continuing to appeal to it for “feminist justice”2 or equality. They also consider its egalitarian readings to be “textual manipulations”3 and “hermeneutical acrobatics,”4 and many even question if it is God’s word by drawing on the Mu‘tazilah’s doctrine of the created Qurān. I refer to those who take such an approach as secular-­/feminists because most of them want to secularize the Qurān but not all of them are feminists. In this chapter, I analyze their arguments about the Qurān’s relationship both to patriarchy (section 1) and to God (section 2), while also engaging with their critiques of Islamic feminism. This will allow me to respond to their

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objections to my own approach to the Qurān and also to query theirs (section 3). As a way to put their references to the created Qurān in perspective, I will also explain this doctrine. The point of my review is to draw out the implications of secular-­/feminist scholarship for Islamic theology, Qurānic exegesis, and Muslim women’s struggles for equality from within a Qurānic framework (see also Barlas 2008, 2013, 2016). I. Repatriarchalizing the Qurān Secular-­/feminists repatriarchalize the Qurān in two ways: by endorsing its patriarchal exegesis and by rejecting the content and methodology of its egalitarian readings, which have been subsumed under the homogenizing rubric of Islamic feminism. However, since critics usually conflate the arguments and methodologies of different feminists, I will begin by noting some differences between my predecessors—specifically, Azizah al-­Hibri, Amina Wadud, and Riffat Hassan—and myself. (I should note at the outset that not all the women identify as feminists.) Margot Badran (2002) initially defined Islamic feminism as “a discourse of gender equality and social justice that derives its understanding and mandate from the Quran and seeks the practice of rights and justice for all human beings.”5 This definition, however, says little about the content of al-­Hibri’s (1982), Wadud’s (1999), and Hassan’s (1999) work. Briefly, all three illustrate the connections between method and meaning by rereading the “hierarchy verses,” a very different enterprise than advancing justice or rights-­based arguments. However, while they bring hermeneutical issues to the fore, only Wadud (1999, xii) proposes a “hermeneutics of tawhid”6 that recognizes the Qurān’s internal unity and addresses the dynamics between “Quranic universals and particulars.” She was also the only one (in 1999) to speak of its relationship to patriarchy (she said the Qurān was “neutral” toward it), though she did not define patriarchy itself.7 And, of this group, only Hassan reads the Qurān for equality based on her interpretation of its creation narrative. In contrast, my work seeks to theorize a liberatory Qurānic hermeneutics as well as the Qurān’s relationship to patriarchy, and my basic claim in this context is that it has an egalitarian and antipatriarchal episteme. This is because, first and foremost, it is the speech of an unsexed/ungendered God who abjures patriarchalization; as such, Muslims cannot draw on images of God to justify theories of male privilege, as religious patriarchies do. Second, many Qurānic verses suggest that

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the totalizing authority that men claim over women in patriarchies too easily degenerates into transgressions against God’s sovereignty (shirk) and women’s rights (zulm), both of which the Qurān condemns. Finally, the Qurān does not ascribe gender inequalities, hierarchies, or dimorphisms to sex (biology) or to sexual (biological) differences in the manner of contemporary patriarchal theories of male privilege. (I take this absence of sexual differentiation in the Qurān to be conducive to sexual equality.) Of course, meanings of Islamic feminism have changed over time, and many feminists now say their task is “to separate patriarchy from the reading of Islam’s sacred texts” (Mir-­Hosseini 2015, 36). This description, however, postdates my reading and its association with the kind of Islamic feminism Badran defined, of which it is not at all representative. The secular-­/feminists who take issue with my reading, and with Islamic feminism in general, do so because they read the Qurān as a patriarchal text, as most Muslims do. Of course, to say it is patriarchal is not necessarily to assert that it can only be read as such or that this is how it should continue to be read.8 Yet this is precisely what these theorists either say outright, or imply, by calling the Qurān’s voice and norms incontrovertibly patriarchal while simultaneously discrediting its egalitarian readings. For instance, Ebrahim Moosa (2003, 125) argues that “Glossing the [Qurān] with antipatriarchal virtues is not the warrant of liberation or egalitarianism,” and it is preferable to listen to the text “in its patriarchal voice.” He also faults egalitarian readings for making “too much of a few verses” that deal with “reciprocal rights and duties between unequal spouses” by taking these to mean “that the Qurān advocates egalitarianism as a norm.” He says one must “pretend to be blind to the welter of evidence that suggests an outright patriarchy as the textual norm” in order to accept such readings. In fact, he considers them “nothing short of hermeneutical acrobatics or a hermeneutics of wishful thinking.” Moosa also disputes the “fiction that the [Qurān] actually provides the norms, and we merely ‘discover’ the norms,” and calls those who look to it for norms and authority text “fundamentalists.” The reality, he says, is that “we ‘make’ the norms in conversation with the revelatory text.” In the same vein, Kecia Ali (2006, 133) warns feminists not to be “blinded by the commitment to equality,” which she says is just “a peculiarity of some modern Muslims . . . [and] not necessary for justice.” She feels feminists conflate Islam and the Qurān and wonders why some of us think that “deference to a specific idea of the Qurān’s authority . . .

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[is] the criterion of ‘observant’ Muslimness” (quoted in Barlas 2016, 149; this is her view of my own position). She also cautions against “presenting egalitarian verses in isolation from their broader scriptural context” and says this is “both fundamentally dishonest and ultimately futile” (153). Her own “honesty,” she confesses, “requires me to concede the strength of some scriptural interpretations positing a privileged role for males in family and society” (125). Indeed, she sees “a basic asymmetry in God’s speech” since “God is speaking to men, about women” (116). Ali then goes on to describe the Qurān as a “thoroughly androcentric text” because it privileges “male sexual agency” (131–32) and says “one must ask whether the egalitarian vision of gender justice that I and others would like to see diverges from God’s understanding of essential human nature” (133). In fact, she concludes, the Qurān’s “treatment of women as sexually passive and men as sexual actors, of women’s bodies as Other and men’s bodies as normative, poses a challenge to understanding the text as purely divine and transcendent” (2008, 96). The last in this genealogy, Aysha Hidayatullah (2014, 136), insists that “the Quran itself must be held responsible for its sexist and harmful readings,” reversing my argument that it is not responsible for how we read it. She also accuses “feminist exegetes” (Wadud and me) of having undertaken “complex interpretive maneuvers” and “textual manipulations” in our efforts to prove that the Qurān “somehow coheres with our notion of gender egalitarianism” (xx). She calls this “inadequate and at times disingenuous” and says it leads us to a dead end (152). She also criticizes us for having imposed “contemporary conceptions of sexual equality on a sacred text revealed in a pre-­modern society where such a notion was hardly a concern” (131). She emphasizes that equality is not “fully reconcilable with the Quranic text” (147), whose inclinations “may be irreparably non-­egalitarian from our contemporary perspective” (152). Once we admit this, she declares, “feminist positions can no longer be based conclusively on the Quranic text itself ”; in fact, “we have reached the end of this strand of feminist interpretations of the Quran” (172–73).9 In addition to depicting the Qurān’s egalitarian exegesis as manipulative, dishonest, futile, blind, and so on, critics also dispute the value of its methodologies. For instance, in Ali’s view (2008, 90), the “strategies of historical contextualisation and principle-­extraction” cannot be applied to the Qurān’s provisions on sex, partly because its “approach to sexual contact may be said to be, in a key sense, ahistorical” (92). She admits

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that “Sexuality and sexual desire” are “historically produced,” and one could plausibly argue that the Qurān’s stance on issues like female sexual agency is just “descriptive for the time,” not normative; however, she does not believe this is so because “Quranic discourse privileges male experience and highlights male agency” (96). We also cannot rely on “principle-­ extraction” to interpret the Qurān’s provisions on sex, she argues, because principles like love are “disconnected from the specific guidelines the Quran . . . establishes for sexual conduct” (90). Besides, Ali feels that its “Androcentric language also constitutes a real barrier to any supposed principle of mutuality” between spouses. Moreover, if we were to try and apply principles like love to its provisions on sex, she says it would raise “the problem of competing principles” because while “love and mercy” between spouses may allow “mutuality in sex,” on what grounds would we “prefer this description of the spousal tie over the qiwama . . . mentioned in 4:34 or the ‘degree’ men have over women in 2:228?” She ends by saying we cannot resolve such questions “by privileging principles over specifics” (97–98). Another critic of Islamic feminism is Raja Rhouni, who draws on some of Ali’s arguments and also advocates the view that the Qurān is not a sacred text, which Hidayatullah then repeats. Rhouni (2010, 15) begins by saying that she considers “equality as the core of Islam and the androcentric language of the Quran as minor,” but that she does not approve of Islamic feminists who read it as an egalitarian text. As she sees it, they reinterpret “verses to invest them with a more modern and more egalitarian meaning, on the one hand,” and on the other, revert to “a historical and contextual reading when no progressive meaning can possibly be invented”; that is, they choose to give “a more progressive, or egalitarian, meaning to a verse and presenting [sic] it as the truth” when they can, but when they run into a “semantic dead-­end,” they fall back on “the idea that such and such verse needs to be contextualized in order to discover its contingency” (14). As an example of an approach that “uses contextualization as a mere strategy . . . to rescue an insufficient and unconvincing interpretive method,” Rhouni offers Wadud’s Quran and Woman (1999), which Wadud now says involved some “interpretative manipulations” on her part (quoted in Rhouni, 265). Rhouni then contrasts this with Wadud’s second book, Inside the Gender Jihad (2006), in which Wadud admits the “sexist language in verses that ‘promote’ male sexual dominance” (265), a shift Rhouni attributes to Wadud’s view that “Whatever ‘the word of God’ means, the Quran is

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not God. Words are fallible.” While applauding Wadud for having revived the Mutazilah’s doctrine of “the ‘createdness of revelation,’” Rhouni says she does not go far enough because, “in spite of her important rethinking of the concept of ‘revelation,’” Wadud continues to treat “the Quran as a normative text” (268–69). (As I argue below, Rhouni misunderstands the doctrine of the created Qurān.) Lastly, Hidayatullah (2014, 133–34) notes that reading the Qurān historically cannot “prevent its androcentric meanings” because “the presumption of male control over women is entrenched within [some] verses to such an extent” that recognizing the “patriarchal historical context of revelation does not alleviate” their impact. She also finds it unhelpful to read the Qurān intratextually because doing so does not prove that it treats “men and women as equally self-­determining agents” in all instances (135). Having disposed of feminist exegesis and its methodologies, she asks, If, as Ali notes, it is not enough to simply posit that “the Quran is egalitarian and antipatriarchal” and to blame interpretations that deviate from that perspective entirely on “misreadings,” where else are the exegetes to turn? What can the exegetes do without undermining the Quranic text? (138)

Hidayatullah answers these questions by saying feminists need to ask if the Qurān is God’s word; thus, like Ali, she also takes her own reading of the Qurān—and her critique of its feminist exegesis— as the basis for questioning its sacrality. Though short, this overview gives some clear insights into secular-­/feminist arguments about the Qurān’s patriarchalism and critiques of its feminist exegesis. As far as the assertion that the Qurān has one set of fixed meanings and one fixed historical context, it breaks no new ground since most Muslims already take this to be the case. More to the point, such a claim flies in the face of the entire discipline of hermeneutics as I have tried to demonstrate in this book. And as for secular-­/feminist criticisms of Muslim and Islamic feminists, many of these reveal what I can only call bad faith. For instance, these theorists routinely portray feminists as blind and selective by accusing them of making “too much of a few verses” that espouse the “supposed principle of mutuality” between unequal spouses. The reality, however, is that most Islamic feminists focus on the “hierarchy verses” in their readings and almost never only on the egalitarian

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ones. Moreover, the egalitarian verses do more than espouse an empty view of mutuality; they affirm that men and women are ontologically equal, God’s subjects in their capacities as vice-­regents on earth, and one another’s guides, guardians, and custodians. Such teachings, it should be apparent, cut at the very roots of male supremacy. Then, too, secular-­/feminists call the Qurān patriarchal on the basis of the equally few “hierarchy verses” that they like to present in isolation from the Qurān’s foundational teachings about equality. Indeed, their arguments are rife with double standards and contradictions. Thus, Ali’s “honesty” obliges her to admit that the Qurān privileges male sexual agency, but then she says “even the most straightforward” readings do not rule out “equally compelling feminist interpretations . . . when historical context is considered and when critical principles of justice, kindness, and love are taken seriously” (2006, 133). Yet she herself refuses to contextualize the Qurān’s verses on sex or to read them in light of principles like love. She also calls on feminists to debunk its patriarchal readings, but makes its progressive ones sound dishonest and futile.10 Likewise, Rhouni (2010, 15) takes “equality as the core of Islam” but then criticizes feminists who read the Qurān for equality. However, if there is no equality in the text, how can it be at the “core” of Islam? Hidayatullah (2014, 152) searches for female sexual agency and feminist justice in the Qurān while calling its inclinations “irreparably non-­egalitarian from our contemporary perspective,” and criticizing feminists for reading it in light of modern theories of equality. (Yet, as I argue below, she also criticizes us for failing to apply postmodern theories of gender to it.) Moosa says “we ‘make’ norms in conversation with [the Qurān]” but then derides feminists who have attempted to do precisely that as acrobats (125). Then, too, the very people who want feminist justice naturalize the Qurān’s patriarchal exegesis which legitimizes injustices against women and even represent their own reiterations of this exegesis as exercises in feminist bravery and honesty. On a more substantive note, many of these theorists do not seem to understand what it means to historicize the Qurān or to read it intratextually. Thus, Hidayatullah worries that contextualizing the “hierarchy verses” cannot lessen their import or prevent their androcentric meanings and that reading the Qurān intratextually does not prove that it treats women and men identically in every situation (135). However, it is not the task of methodology to prevent certain meanings, nor are intratextual readings meant

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to demonstrate that the Qurān treats men and women identically. As for the reasons Ali gives for why we cannot apply the strategies of “principle-­ extraction” and historical contextualization to the Qurān’s provisions on sex, they are simply baffling. She says: (a) the Qurān’s stance on female sexual passivity may have been consonant with seventh-­century norms, but (b) we cannot historicize it because the Qurān privileges male sexual agency (92). However, there is no connection between those two positions, which means that what Ali is actually saying is that because the Qurān is androcentric, it is ahistorical. Here I should reiterate that androcentrism refers to the treatment of maleness and masculinity as the standards for defining women’s sexual roles. Ali, however, does not give any examples in defense of her argument but simply notes that the Qurān treats these roles differently on occasion. Moreover, even if it is true that the Qurān treats women as being sexually passive while privileging male sexual agency, this does not make its stance on sex ahistorical; actually, quite the reverse. After all, people in the seventh century are unlikely to have known the concept of female sexual agency, and the privileging of male sexual agency predates the Abrahamic religions. Moreover, while she calls the Qurān’ provisions on sex ahistorical, Ali also says that if we were to apply the principle of love to them, it would mean “privileging principles over specifics” (98), which implies that the provisions are historically specific, not ahistorical. But then she argues that the reason we cannot apply principles like love to these provisions is because it would raise “the problem of competing principles” (97), which implies that the provisions are principles.11 On a related but separate note, Ali’s explanations for why we cannot apply principles like love to the Qurān’s discussions of sex are equally confusing. She says the Qurān itself does not do so, though, in a different context, she argues that it is necessary to step “outside the text . . . to fill in the gaps for oneself in a way that is compatible with, if not explicitly present in [its] core guidance” (98). If she were to do so herself, she could apply the concept of sukun, if not love, to sex in marriage since, after all, the word means mutual sexual fulfillment; instead, she writes off the “supposed” mutuality between spouses as being inconsequential. She also ignores the fact that Muslims have picked between principles throughout their history, which is how they have managed to suppress all that is egalitarian in the Qurān. Indeed, she herself derives the principles of male sexual agency, female sexual passivity, sexual hierarchy, androcentrism, and so on from those provisions while rejecting the strategy of “principle-­extraction.”

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Besides, if we must choose between principles, why not pick the better one, as the Qurān itself urges us to do? Lastly, even if some provisions are principles, this does not mean one cannot historicize them since principles can be culture-­and history-­bound. For instance, one set of āyāt on “veiling” links it to a slave-­owning society in which the Muslims were under siege at the time of its revelation. This is why one needs to know the reasons a scripture gives for a principle, because if the reason is “culture-­bound, then the principle may be also” (Virkler and Ayayo 2008, 206). In chapter 6, I note that ideas about sex have always been culture-­bound and open to change over time, and I mentioned the one-­sex and two-­sex models as examples. One could say the same thing about concepts like female sexual agency and consensual sex: that they, too, are history-­and culture-­bound, and not everyone accepts them in all societies even today. It is thus doubly problematic to interpret the Qurān from the standpoint of a minority trend in contemporary feminism. At the very least, this predisposes one to seeing male sexual agency in āyāt where it may not necessarily exist (see section 4), or which may lend themselves to an “‘un-­meant’ meaning,” as Anthony Thiselton (2009) calls it. Speaking of the Bible, he argues that if exegetes fail to grasp the situation behind the text, the meaning may escape us. Can this text mean what it is sometimes taken to mean within a tradition of religious pietism? In a purely descriptive sense it can. But is this a textual meaning when everything in the context excludes such a meaning on the part of the text, the narrator, and the speaker? (23)

It is all the more necessary to contextualize textual meanings because the “historical, cultural, philosophical, and linguistic gaps” between the world a scripture describes and our own “block a spontaneous, accurate understanding of God’s Word” (Virkler and Ayayo, 20). However, secular-­/feminists do not seem to be interested in this exercise, perhaps because many of them see little value in rereading a text they believe is not or may not be sacred. II. A Theology and Anti-­theology of the Qurān Although secular-­/feminist scholars unquestioningly endorse the Qurān’s relationship to patriarchy, most of them question its relationship to God, some in the name of adhering to the Mu‘tazilah’s doctrine of the created

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Qurān. It may be helpful, therefore, to start by briefly clarifying the premises of this doctrine.

T h e Mu ‘taz i l ah and th e Cre ate d Qurā n The Mu‘tazilah, known as the originators of rationalism in Islamic theology (in the eighth through tenth centuries AD), did not produce “a synthetic scheme of thought [or] a unified body of belief,” but focused instead on interpreting “certain inherited doctrines in favour of a particular view of divine nature” (Netton 1989, 4). Some historians say they relied for their views on the Greek schools with which they were familiar (Netton 1989). Others, however, point out that they vigorously opposed “the Aristotelian version of the idea of God” (Goldziher 1981, 89). But on one thing there is consensus: that it was their view of God’s unity that led the Mu‘tazilah to speak of the Qurān as “the created word of God, who is its uncreated source” (Fakhry 1997, 116). Although they believed that God’s laws could be substantiated “without necessarily either leaning upon or repudiating the authority of Scripture,”12 they “stood firmly on the ground of the Muslim revelation” (von Grunebaum 1970, 92) themselves. Indeed, as “scripturalists” (van Ess 2006, 161), they even questioned the hadith (Goldziher, 88), which they felt “could only introduce chaos into the sacred text” (van Ess, 161). Lastly, like other Muslim exegetes of their times, they also distinguished between clear and ambiguous verses in the Qurān, and interpreted the latter metaphorically when reading them literally generated tensions. For instance, they took its allusions to God’s “hand” to be allegorical since the Qurān says God is incomparable. This was how they sought to protect conceptions of God from the anthropomorphisms resulting from literal readings of the Qurān. As they saw it, one could only protect God’s “immaculate unity” (von Grunebaum, 94) by ridding it of all “human attributes” (Netton, 331). (I mention their efforts to de-­anthropomorphize God in chapter 4.) At the heart of the Mu‘tazilah’s conception of God, then, was God’s “absolute unity and righteousness,” which they felt was “demonstrable” from the Qurān (von Grunebaum, 92). To them, God’s righteousness meant “God must necessarily be just; it is impossible to conceive of an act of will on the part of God that fails to meet the stipulations of justice” (Goldziher, 90). And to them, God’s oneness meant that God’s attributes

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were identical in God. That is, God had no attributes or “hypostatic Knowledge in any way distinct from himself ” (Watt 1985, 50). Thus, when they spoke of God’s essences and attributes, like speech and knowledge, they described these as being ancillary and in this sense not coeval with the Divine Substance and thus not eternal a parte ante. Any other conception implied the deification of the Word and hence the association (shirk) of a second divine being and the destruction of the Islamic idea of God. (von Grunebaum, 94)

Consequently, they argued that God’s speech, “like God’s hearing or His power, could not possibly be a hypostasis of the divine being” (Nagel 2000, 109; emphasis added). That is, God’s speech could not be of the same divine substance as God, and saying otherwise was tantamount to multiplying God (Watt, 49). (Notably, the Qurān does not label God’s “speaking” to humans as an attribute.)13 In seeking to “explain the notion of the ‘speaking God,’” says Ignaz Goldziher (98), they came up with the “singular mechanical theory” that when a prophet “feels the divine revelation acting upon him through his sense of hearing,” what he hears is not God’s voice; rather, The sound is created. When God wishes to manifest Himself audibly, He causes, by a specific creative act, speech to occur in a material substratum. That is the speech which the prophet hears. It is not the immediate speech of God, but rather a speech created by God, manifested indirectly, and corresponding in its contents to the will of God. (emphasis added)

As this line of reasoning shows, the Mu‘tazilah focused on God’s locutionary acts, though not as a way to claim that God’s speech is not God’s speech. They simply maintained that God had created this speech in time, in contrast to the traditionalist view that it was “an eternal attribute of God, which as such is without beginning or intermission, exactly like His knowledge” (Goldziher, 97). This amounted to saying that revelation, as the “manifestation of the speaking God . . . did not originate in time, by a specific act of God’s creative will, but has existed from all eternity. The Quran is uncreated” (Goldziher, 97; emphasis added). To the Mutazilah,

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however, calling God’s speech “uncreated” was like saying it was “identical with God,” making it seem that there were “two eternal beings, God and the Quran” (Nagel, 109). However, this argument never devolved into voicing doubts about the Qurān’s status as revelation. Among the rationalists, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) questioned the Mu‘tazilah’s arguments and methodology, albeit in relation to their view that “the world is created in time.”14 This proposition, Averroes writes, is based on the claim that bodies are composed of indivisible parts, that the part which cannot be subdivided is created in time and that bodies are created by its creation. However, the method whereby they showed how the indivisible part, which they call the indivisible substance, is created in time is an abstruse one which many of the well-­experienced in the art of logic cannot understand, let alone the public. (2001, 19)

If the world is created in time, Averroes continues, then “it must necessarily have a Maker who created it,” but “We can neither say that this Maker is eternal or created” (19–20). His own view was that God “is not created, because a created being would be in need of a creator, and this one of another creator, and the matter would go on to infinity” (20). Having considered both propositions, he comes to the rather obvious conclusion that “what those people imagined to be a proof, is not really one” (27). Eventually, the esotericism of their school alienated some of the Mu‘tazilah as well, but in the meantime, the Abbasid caliph, al-­Ma’mun, had adopted their theory of the created Qurān as official state policy (Fakhry 1997, 19–20). The Mu‘tazilah’s “theological views” had always been linked to “the politics of the day” (Watt 1985, 46), and their doctrine opened up the eternally thorny question of whether state rulers or the ulama should have the authority to interpret the Qurān. If, as the Mu‘tazilah held, the Qurān was created, then God could presumably have created it other than it is, whereas, if it is uncreated it presumably expresses something of his own being which is unchangeable. If the Quran could have been created other than it is, the work of the ulema in interpreting it loses much of its authority; and a divinely-­ordained imam (caliph) would be entitled to say how the law was to be changed. In practice this would almost certainly mean more power for the caliph’s ministers and secretaries. (Watt, 35)

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In any event, al-­Ma’mun not only failed to coerce the ulama into adopting this doctrine (see chapter 3, n. 26), but his failure put a “decisive end [to] any notion of a caliphal role in the definition of Islam” (Hinds 1996, 243).

S ec u l a r -­/ Fem i ni sts and th e “Re tho ught” Qur ā n It appears to have become quite customary for some Muslim scholars today to declare, in the Mu‘tazilah’s name, that “Whatever ‘the word of God’ means, the Quran is not God. Words are fallible” (Wadud, quoted in Rhouni 2010, 265). Or, that “the Quran is not God; the word of God can never be God” (Moosa 2003, 125). Some, like Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, go further by arguing that the Qurān is not (or should not be read as) a sacred text or, in fact, even as a text. Since both Rhouni and Hidayatullah endorse his views, I will start by summarizing them. According to Abu Zayd (2006, 91), “as long as the Quran is dealt with only as a text—implying a concept of author (i.e., God as divine author)—one is forced to find a focal point of gravity to which all variations should be linked.” He says this “automatically implies that the Quran is at the mercy of the ideology of its interpreter,” thus leading to a “crisis of interpretation and counter-­interpretation” in Muslim societies (98). The only way to avoid the crisis, he continues, is by distinguishing between “the Quran as the word of God, on the one hand, and as a text on the other” (53). To understand this distinction, it may be useful to compare Abu Zayd’s position with Arkoun’s about the various “levels of signification” of the Qurān (see chapter 2, figure 3). To recap, Arkoun (1994, 37) maintains that Muslims have conflated the Word of God (Archetype), the Qurān as discourse (revelation), the Qurān as text (mushaf ), and Qurānic exegesis, and he maps these levels along both a vertical and a horizontal axis. The vertical depicts “the movement by which God revealed a part of the Heavenly Book to human beings” and is “symbolic of the `descent’ of revelation and the climb back toward transcendence.” The horizontal, on the other hand, signifies “the human operations” leading “from the Quranic discourse” to the mushaf and its exegesis. (In Arkoun’s view, one can only unpack these levels by “demys­ ti­fying and demythologizing the phenomenon of the Book/book.”) Yet he concedes that “the sense of the divine that shapes and moves religious consciousness cannot do without a material vehicle”; this is the mushaf that believers like him “touch, carry, read, and interpret.”

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Abu Zayd (2004, 9), however, cuts out the vertical axis and retains only the horizontal, which he say “is embedded in the structure of the Quran and was manifest during the process of communication itself.” He describes this process as “dialoguing, debating, augmenting, accepting and rejecting, not only with [sic] the pre-­Islamic norms, practice and culture, but with [the Qurān’s] own previous assessments, presuppositions, assertions etc.” (11). The only way we can recognize this process, he continues, is to shift “our conceptual framework from the Quran as ‘text’ to the Quran as ‘discourse,’” such that we can see it as “a space of Divine and Human Communication” (98). This phrase seems to be borrowed from Christian theologians who describe the Bible as “divine-­human communicative action” in delineating its relationship to a deity who is both fully human and divine.15 Absent this view of the divine, this phrase loses its meanings and certainly cannot be applied to the Qurān, which Muslims take to be the word of the one God. Consequently, shifting their “conceptual framework” along the lines Abu Zayd advocates would amount to a theological heresy in Islam. Abu Zayd, however, is not convinced that the Qurān is in fact God’s word. He writes that, while Muslims see it as “a fixed religious text . . . once it has been subjected to human reason,” it “becomes a concept”; that is, the Qurān “loses its fixedness as it moves and its meanings proliferate.” As for “the original sacred text,” he says all we know is what the Qurān “itself mentions and which always comes to us via a historically changing humanity” (Abu Zayd, quoted in Mahmood 2006, 337–38). Having raised doubts about the Qurān and its references to its Archetype, Abu Zayd then goes on to describe sacred texts as “nothing but linguistic texts, belonging to a specific cultural structure and produced in accord with the rules of that culture” (339). This is how he separates “metaphysical intention” from the Qurān, argues Saba Mahmood; for without the transcendent any longer locatable within it, the Qurān can be read like “literature or poetry—its meaning open to infinite play but also to historical determination” (339–40). It is Abu Zayd’s secular view of the Qurān that Rhouni and Hidayatullah reference in their own arguments. Thus, Rhouni (2010, 260) reprises Abu Zayd’s argument that the Qurān should be seen as originally a “discourse involving divine and human communication rather than a divinely authored text that has been revealed to all humanity regardless of its context of production, or historicity.” She says instead of treating them as “repositories of truth,” Muslims should “assert the historicity of foundational texts” (272). By the term historicity, however, she seems to mean

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two opposite things. On the one hand, she thinks historicizing the Qurān means denying its sacrality. But on the other, she thinks such an approach “does not contradict” its “sacred or transcendental dimension,” which is clear from how Muslims have used the occasions of revelation, the asbab al-­nuzul, to “present the text in its historical background” (16). Ultimately, though, she sides with the Mu‘tazilah who, she argues—quoting John Esposito—thought that “the Quran’s doctrine, as being the Word of God, should not be understood literally, ‘for how could both God and His word be eternal and uncreated?” (quoted in Rhouni, 248). Rhouni takes this to mean that the Mu‘tazilah disputed the Qurān’s divinity, and that it is therefore not “un-­Islamic” to revisit “the concept of the ‘Word of God’ or ‘revelation,’” (252) like Abu Zayd and Wadud are doing. In fact, she says that without transcending “the theological limitations in Islam,” it is not possible to show that the Qurān’s androcentrism is “historical and contextual rather than eternal and divine” (252). On her part, Hidayatullah (2014, 176–77) repeats Abu Zayd’s and Rhouni’s contention that the Qurān is “a ‘discourse’ instead of a text,” and says this gives feminists “another helpful avenue . . . to rethink the nature of divine meaning.” She also says that recognizing the Qurān’s “framing within the time of its revelation . . . [is] by no means new, following from the well-­tread path of early theological debates about the createdness of the Quran” (173). Having made this case, however, she goes on to argue that “we ought not to continue to appeal to and thus reinforce the authority of a text that cannot definitively support our demands for feminist justice” (193). In fact, its failure to deliver justice should lead us to ask if it is even God’s word. She reasons that those who read it as an egalitarian text may be thinking that because God is just, the “Quran must also be just” (194). However, she continues, if we cannot be sure that the text upholds the justice we seek, then we are left to question whether the Quran is really a divine text. If we do not question the divinity of the Quran, then we are left to question whether God is just. (Hidayatullah, 194)

Hidayatullah thus goes from wanting to historicize the Qurān to wanting Muslim women to choose between its own divinity and God’s justice, a conceptual leap that mirrors that of Ali, who also takes her own reading of Qurānic provisions as the basis for questioning its transcendental status.

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As may be apparent, such ways of thinking about the Qurān bear no family resemblance to Mu‘tazilah theology; to the contrary, they amount to an anti-theology that rejects the Islamic belief that the Qurān is God’s sacred word. Minimally, those who advocate this position do not seem to recognize that what makes the Qurān sacred is its status as God’s speech, not whether or not it supports our demands, “or on how often, or even if, we appeal to it or, for that matter, on how we choose to interpret it” (Barlas 2016, 114). For this reason, no observant Muslim would agree to cutting out the vertical axis in Arkoun’s model, as Abu Zayd does. Besides, if the point of doing this is to illustrate the Qurān’s responsiveness to Muslims and their history, we can do so without questioning its sacrality. Thus, the Qurān itself says it was revealed to the Prophet because God wished to speak to the Arabs at that point in time; innumerable āyāt are addressed to the changing historical fortunes of the early Muslims; God banned a form of divorce in answer to the pleas of a wife; and God even reproached the Prophet’s actions on a couple of occasions. It seems, then, that more may be at stake for Abu Zayd in denying the Qurān’s sacrality than merely a desire to recover its communicative aspects. In this context, Mahmood (2006, 338) argues that the efforts of scholars like Abu Zayd “to dislocate the originary Quran” as well as “traditional hermeneutical methods” fits into post-­9/11/2001 policies of the United States to promote a form of secularism in Muslim societies that can create a “religious subject who is compatible with the rationality and exercise of liberal political rule” (344). She mentions a Rand Corporation report (2003) that describes the “beliefs, attitudes, and modes of reasoning” of traditionalist Muslims as being incompatible with modern democracy; in particular, (1) their belief in the divinity of the Quran and a failure to regard it as a historical document; (2) their failure to realize that Muhammad was a product of his time whose life offers little of practical value to solving the exigencies of modern existence; and (3) their inability to denounce the juristic tradition for its deficient and contradictory character. (Mahmood 2006, 334)

In secular reformers like Abu Zayd, Mahmood says, U.S. officials have found allies who agree with them that Muslim societies have been unable “to achieve critical distance between the divine text and the world” (338). One does not need to agree with Mahmood in order to hear the echoes

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of the “Rand report’s contention that the Quran is a human rather than divine text” (337) in Abu Zayd’s work, as well as in that of Rhouni and Hidayatullah. In passing, I should note that, in addition to the theological problems with Abu Zayd’s argument, it reveals little understanding of hermeneutics and texts. For instance, his belief that one can avoid interpretive differences by treating the Qurān as a discourse assumes that discourses are not open to different interpretations. Moreover, he thinks that what makes the Qurān a text is its authorship, and that this, in turn, generates a crisis of interpretation. However, his claim that a feminist will read it as a feminist text and a communist will read it as a communist text confirms that people read texts from their own standpoint epistemologies, which have no bearing on a text’s authorship. Although this means that one cannot ensure interpretive consensus, Abu Zayd does not explain why consensus is necessary in the first place. He also ignores that, far from an interpretive crisis in Muslim societies, there is complete consensus on the Qurān’s patriarchalism, which forecloses the kind of democratic hermeneutics he advocates. Meanwhile, Rhouni and Hidayatullah misconstrue the doctrine of the created Qurān, and they go seamlessly from their own readings or, rather, from their critiques of its feminist readings, to disputing its sacrality. In Hidayatullah’s case, it puts her in the awkward position of taking a stand on God’s justice and the Qurān’s divinity based on a “feminist exegesis” (Wadud’s and my readings) she rejects. Thus, she argues that the Qurān’s feminist exegesis fails to prove that it is not a patriarchal text, but she also calls our exegesis “textual manipulations,” and therefore an unreliable indicator of the Qurān’s inclinations (Hidayatullah 2014, xx). Yet she takes our (alleged) failure to find equality in the Qurān as proof that it cannot support feminist justice, which then leads her to question its own status as a divine text. In other words, she questions/rejects the Qurān’s divinity on the basis of readings she also questions/rejects. (Frankly, one does not need evidence to make the case that the Qurān cannot deliver feminist justice since scriptures are not feminist texts. Yet this does not keep believing feminists from regarding their scriptures as sacred.) In response to my critique that she has posed a “false theological paradox” by pitting God’s word and justice against one another (Barlas 2016, 114), Hidayatullah (2016, 137) clarifies that the paradox results from “treating the Quran as a repository of norms.” When we do this, she says, we treat it “as saying things for us . . . instead of claiming the human

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authority to privilege some meanings of the Quran over others when the text does not offer clear support for doing so” (137). This is why she thinks that reassessing “the revelatory nature of the text [will allow] for interpretive roles beyond extraction.” As she puts it, whereas “Barlas seems to view the problem of deriving unjust meanings from the Quran as well as its solution as hermeneutical, I understand both to be primarily theological ”; that is, “interpretive contradictions . . . [are] symptoms of a problem with how we understand what kind of revelatory text the Quran is . . . since the problem is theological, so must its solution be theological” (137). However, this explanation is severely wanting. First, it conflates theological and hermeneutical differences. After all, both the Muslim mainstream and secular-­/feminists read the Qurān as a patriarchal text even though the former believes it is God’s word and many of the latter do not. Conversely, I read the Qurān very differently from the Muslim mainstream, though we all take it to be God’s word. In short, interpretive differences or consensus have little to do with whether a text is sacred or secular. Second, Hidayatullah does not explain how feminists will be able to privilege some meanings over others by reassessing the Qurān’s revelatory status, unless she thinks they will have more interpretive leeway if they do not take it to be sacred. But one cannot just graft whatever ideas one wants onto texts since each text offers only a limited field of interpretive possibilities.16 Third, there are several contradictions between what Hidayatullah argues in her book and what she says in response to me. In the book, she faults feminists for reading the Qurān for equality on the grounds that there is no clear textual support for doing so, but in her response she says she wants the “authority to privilege some meanings of the Quran over others when the text does not offer clear support for doing so” (137). In her book she says we should stop treating the Qurān as God’s word because it cannot give us “feminist justice,” but in her response she says she wants feminists to reassess its revelatory status so they can deal with unjust interpretations. In her book she declares that the era of feminist readings of the Qurān has come to an end and says women should stop reifying the Qurān’s authority by appealing to it, but in her response she says feminists should have the authority to reinterpret it. However, if women should stop shoring up the Qurān’s authority, why bother reinterpreting it, much less reassessing its “revelatory status,” whatever that means? On another note, it is not true that I consider the problem of “unjust interpretations” to be a hermeneutical issue alone, as Hidayatullah says. To

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the contrary, I argue that imputing a sexual bias to God’s word as a way to justify injustice against women is “not just a hermeneutic failure, but also a theological one” inasmuch as it projects bias onto God (Barlas 2002, 12–13). However, my argument assumes that there is a relationship between God and God’s word; thus, my “theological solution” to unjust interpretations is to be more scrupulous in aligning our readings of God’s word with our conceptions of God so as to avoid attributing injustice to God. Hidayatullah reproduces my sentence almost verbatim as her position, but in order to make the opposite claim: that we need to deal with unjust interpretations by questioning if the Qurān is God’s word; that is, we need to sever the connection between God and God’s word. As for her dilemma of “rejecting Quranic divinity on the one hand or God’s justice on the other,” it seems to result from assuming that we can only read certain verses as male privileging, as David Finn (2017, 111) argues. However, “if she is to be taken seriously,” he points out, she cannot insist that [the verses] are incapable of rereading. And so her argument comes to this: “If certain verses are read as unjustly male-­ privileging, then either the Book as so read is not God’s Word or God as so understood is unjust.” Thus read, her argument is a perfect reductio of the contention that some verses counsel injustice. (111)

My own view is that Hidayatullah does believe that certain verses cannot be reread, as do a majority of Muslims, including secular-­/feminists. However, I agree with Finn (110–11) that her dilemma fails in the end because it does not “exhaust all possible alternatives.” Besides, as he says, “no believer can contemplate the horns of a dilemma that obliterates the foundations of faith” (111). This is why most Muslims are unlikely to share her optimism that her opening up the Qurān’s sacrality to dispute has also opened the door to freedom for them. III. Un-­reading Patriarchy from the Qurān Thus far I have given examples of secular-­/feminist critiques of Islamic feminism that reify the Qurān’s patriarchal exegesis. Here I respond to Ali’s and Hidayatullah’s objections to my own reading of certain Qurānic provisions while also questioning theirs. For analytical ease, I have divided the issues into three broad categories.

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Equal i t y, Mutual i t y, Hi e ra rchy Ali’s (2006, 132) main critique of my reading is that it “simply posit(s)” the Qurān’s egalitarianism while treating interpretations that arrive “at different conclusions” than mine as not being “a legitimate reading or a faithful explication” of the text. Further, she says that my “work operates under the assumption that the existence of mutuality and reciprocity in intimate relationships are incompatible with hierarchy; since the former clearly exist in the Quran, the latter cannot” (132). Lastly, Ali claims that I “swiftly [dismiss] the argument that one can ‘distinguish between religious and social/ legal equality’” (116). She argues that in rejecting this Barlas must attempt to explain away numerous verses that suggest or command differential treatment for males and females. (She does so in part by making the second point that difference is not always unequal.) Others have argued, persuasively, that the Quran does present such a distinction, but that the ontological equality of all human beings takes precedence over the earthly, temporally bound regulations that privilege men over women.

Similarly, Hidayatullah (2014, 164) writes that feminist exegetes think “the mutuality of the sexes ordained by the Quran must translate into the social equality of the sexes,” and that we see “any suggestion of hierarchical difference between the sexes [as] . . . shirk (a violation of the oneness of God)” (159). However, none of these claims is true. For one, I do not just posit that the Qurān is egalitarian and antipatriarchal, but explain why throughout this book. Also, while I sometimes refer to the Qurān’s patriarchal exegesis as misreadings, I do so on hermeneutical grounds; specifically, in terms of the idea that some interpretations are not contextually legitimate. Further, I do not dismiss the distinction Muslims make between religious, social, and legal equality but argue against it because it has the expedient result of ignoring Qurānic teachings that emphasize the ontic equality of the sexes.17 Then, too, I am one of the “others” who privilege teachings that affirm the equality of men and women over those addressed to seventh-­century conditions. Most importantly, I do not claim that the “mutuality of the sexes must translate into [their] social equality.” To the contrary, I say exactly the reverse: that their ontic equality enables mutual recognition. (The phrase “mutual recognition” is 256

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G. W. F. Hegel’s, who used it to refer to intersubjectivity.) To be clear, I locate this equality not in mutuality but in the Qurān’s account of human creation (ontology), as well as in the absence of sexual differentiation in the text. Finally, what I call shirk is not a gender hierarchy but the kind of authority men claim over women in patriarchies. In brief, my arguments about sexual equality, mutuality, and gender hierarchy are not framed in the terms Ali and Hidayatullah attribute to me. I also want to question their own claims about mutuality and hierarchy in the Qurān, starting with Ali’s that there is an “ever-­present tension in [it] between egalitarianism and hierarchy” (116). One can, of course, read it as such, but for those who do not believe that God’s word is contradictory, the challenge is “to seek an exegetically justifiable way of resolving any seeming discrepancy” in it.18 To that end, I would argue that it is only when we impose contemporary Western feminist standards on the Qurān that we see a hierarchy in it, as Hidayatullah notes in critiquing my approach to the text. We also see this tension when we fail to question its patriarchal exegesis, or to historicize the “hierarchy verses,” or to apply principles like love to the Qurān’s teachings on sex. For different reasons, I question the opposite assertion by Hidayatullah that “mutuality between the sexes does not necessarily preclude or contradict hierarchical division between them” (160). She explains that, in contrast to Wadud and myself, she takes “patriarchal characteristics to be central to many of the Quran’s hierarchy verses” and is not convinced that reading them literally “necessarily conflicts with the Quran’s mutuality pronouncements” (165). As such, she feels there may be “no tension to resolve between the two sets of verses” since there is no “reason to assume that male control over women in the Quran would conflict with its values of kindness and mutuality between men and women” (165). Having made this case, Hidayatullah then claims that sexual inequality in the Qurān presupposes the ontological inequality of men and women: as she puts it, “the functional inequality of men and women in the Qurān perhaps cannot exist except as an effect of ontological inequality,” thus signifying “a permanent difference of being” (171). However, this is a troubling series of conjectures. First, as she herself says, “it is our contemporary ideas about equality and justice that prompt us to see a dissonance between evidence for male-­female mutuality and evidence for male-­female hierarchy in the Quran” (115). Arguably, then, she could read the Qurān differently if she did not apply contemporary ideas to it. Second, like Ali and Moosa, she

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also reduces some radical Quranic teachings to banal and wishy-­washy “mutuality pronouncements,” such as those which call women and men one another’s awlīya. Such a charge, I have argued, subverts the roots of male authority, which may be why Muslim patriarchies have passed over it in favor of the claim that men are women’s guardians. Most egregiously, however, Hidayatullah attributes a “permanent difference of being” (171) to the Qurān, basically rewriting its account of creation. To put this in context, I had noted that there is no “hierarchy of being” in the Qurān since God created women and men from the same self (Barlas 2002, 138). The concept of an ontological hierarchy has its origins in the Bible’s account of Eve’s creation from Adam’s body, which many Christian exegetes take as signaling a “difference of being” between men and women. However, one can only ascribe such a difference to the Qurān by transposing the biblical account onto it. This Hidayatullah is willing to do in order, it seems, to be able to deny that there is any equality in it.

M a le Sex ual Agency and Se x/ Ge n d e r Another critique Hidayatullah (2014, 164) levels at my reading is that it minimizes the Qurān’s privileging of male sexual agency and control over women. Both she and Ali locate this privilege in verses 2:223 and 2:187. Thus, Ali (2006) reads the former as showing that the Qurān’s discussions of intimacy “contain no appeal for female freedom to act” (131) and treat women “as matter to be acted upon” (130); she also takes the latter as validating “male agency and female passivity” in initiating sex (129). Hidayatullah restates these claims in the generalization that “men, not women, are in control of sexual relations since they . . . are the only active participants in determining the parameters of sexual conduct with them” (135). While this is the dominant Muslim interpretation of both verses as well, it ignores that 2:223 is basically telling husbands when not to approach their wives for sex (during their menses), and that 2:187 is telling them when they may. Neither is a command, and neither says anything about husbands’ right to initiate sex or to be “the only active participants” in it. In fact, the Qurān’s emphasis on a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship between wives and husbands suggests otherwise. As for Hidayatullah’s charge that women are not “in control of sexual relations” in the Qurān, women have rarely been in control of such relations in most societies we know of. This, then, raises the question of why she would apply such an unrealistic yardstick to the

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Qurān. Moreover, neither she nor Ali explains why they mine the Qurān for signs of female sexual agency given their own argument that modern ideas like sexual equality could not have been a concern to a premodern society. By their own logic, therefore, one could say that a commitment to the idea of female sexual agency is just a peculiarity of some modern feminists and is not necessary for justice; after all, as Ali herself contends, one can have justice without equality. Hidayatullah and I also differ in our understanding of the Qurān’s approach to the relationship between sex and gender. My own view is that there is no concept of sexual differentiation in the Qurān (Barlas 2002, 148). I base this partly on Wadud’s (1999, 8) observation that it “does not propose or support a singular role or single definition of a set of roles, exclusively, for each gender across every culture.” Hidayatullah, however, criticizes Wadud and me for having “ignored theoretical issues around gender essentialisms, binaries, and social construction” and for having used “‘gender’ as a synonym for ‘women,’ neglecting to address the male gender or the ‘queering’ of gender” (129). However, if there is no concept of gender or sexual differentiation in the Qurān, how could we have addressed gender binaries, essentialisms, the queering of gender, and so on? Ironically, even as she takes us to task for not having read the text in light of postmodern views of gender, she reproaches me for having imposed modern theories of sexual equality on it. On a related note, Hidayatullah also disputes my statement that the Qurān “does not advocate a specific social or sexual division of labor” (Barlas 2002, 90). She says that if Wadud and I are correct that the Qurān “compensates women for their biological function as child-­bearers by advising men to play some supportive role for them, then it is not in fact true that [it] . . . never associates sex with a specific division of labor” (156). As she see it, men’s supportive roles as women’s qiwamah are meant to balance the women’s roles as childbearers; this being so, she says, men’s role “follows directly from a biological difference the Quran recognizes between men and women (i.e., the ability or inability to bear children).” This is definitely not my position since I see no evidence that the Qurān compensates women for childbearing. Besides, tasking a father with supporting a child is not the same as compensating his wife for bearing the child. More importantly, childbearing is an indivisible biological function and not a sexual division of labor. Here I should reiterate that while the Qurān recognizes both sexual specificity and sexual differences, it does not

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assign any gender symbolism to sex itself. That is, it does not say that biological males have X gender attributes and biological females have Y gender attributes. This being so, it is difficult to ascribe a “division of labor” to the Qurān that takes the connection between sex and gender as a given.

M en a s Sub j ects, Wom en as Obje cts? A final secular-­/feminist critique of the Qurān I want to consider is that women are the objects and not the subjects of divine discourse. In defense of this claim, Ali cites Farid Esack’s observation that the Qurān’s “essential audience is males,” while women “are essentially subjects being dealt with—however kindly—rather than being directly addressed” (quoted in Ali 2006, 125–26). However, whereas Esack calls women “subjects” even in such instances, Ali argues that the Qurān objectifies and otherizes them. Neither one, however, defines what they mean by “subjects.” However, if what makes men subjects is that the Qurān speaks to them, then it speaks to women as well. If, on the other hand, what makes men subjects is that the Qurān speaks to men about women, then those āyāt are less than 0.1 percent of the text. Moreover, it speaks to men “in the present or present continuous tense, as if they already are in authority over women, and not in the imperative or future tense, as if they should always be so” (Barlas 2008, 25; italics in the original). For the Qurān to have recognized where authority resided in the patriarchy to which it first spoke is not evidence that God treats women as objects. After all, God made both men and women khalifa (vice-­regents) and one another’s awlīya (custodians, guides, protectors). If anything, the Qurān’s teachings about moral individuality assume that men and women are both “epistemological, thinking subjects” and selves who are the “locus of subjective experience”;19 that is, individuated, self-­reflexive people capable of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. If Ali has a different understanding of what it means to be a subject, she should clarify it. Or, she could explain why both subjects and objects would be called khalifa and awlīya. It seems to me that secular-­/feminists read the Qurān in the expectation that it should have treated women as secular societies do today or that it should have abolished patriarchy. Perhaps this is why they have a difficult time admitting that its teachings altered the gender hierarchy of seventh-­ century Arabia in ways that were supportive for women. Conceivably, the new religion of Islam could have left the existing matrix of male power intact,

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or it could have deepened and extended men’s dominion over women, especially if patriarchy has “God on its side” (Millett 1970, 51). Instead, the Qurān gave women some inalienable rights while tempering and restricting those of men. Among other things, it spoke directly to women; allowed them to inherit property and forbade men to inherit them; admitted their evidence in legal cases and even gave a wife the final say if her husband accuses her of adultery on his own witness; tasked husbands with caring for their families and to be just to their wives, divorced wives, and orphans in their care; made polygyny contingent on ensuring the welfare of female orphans and, in my reading, limited it to the orphans; gave both spouses a say in the marriage contract; instructed men, not just women, to remain chaste and behave modestly in the public arena and even to lower their gaze; told husbands not to approach their wives during menstruation as a way to protect the women; banned an existing form of divorce on the protests of a wife; promised men and women identical rewards and (for the most part) the same punishments; prescribed eighty lashes for a man who slanders a woman while not saying anything about a woman who slanders a man; gave women the right to pledge their allegiance to the Prophet directly; and included fathers in its injunctions about childbearing and rearing while warning that God will call those to account who kill their girls. More crucially, the Qurān taught that women and men originate in the same self, are God’s representatives on earth, and are one another’s guardians. In sum, it attenuated the rights men could claim over women, augmented those of women, and affirmed their ontic equality. As for the “hierarchy verses,” as I noted in chapter 6, they reveal an “infinity of traces”20 of the patriarchy in which the Prophet was born. It was not a patriarchy that Islam established. Besides, the meanings of these verses shift if we contextualize them or choose to interpret some words differently. Then, too, the Qurān does not say that these verses should take precedence over others which affirm the equality of men and women. And while one can make a theological and hermeneutical case for why verses that embody universal principles should take precedence over those addressed to specific historical conditions, there is no good reason to do the reverse. The only defense I have heard is that the “hierarchy verses” advocate patriarchal norms because the Qurān was revealed to a patriarchy. This argument, however, raises some problems. First, these verses do not make normative or ontological claims; for example, that husbands are entitled to certain rights because men are ontologically superior to women or

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because they are biologically males. Second, the fact that the Qurān recognized a historical contingency (patriarchy) does not make the contingency itself normative (a principle). In fact, as I have argued, “what is historically contingent (particular) cannot be prescriptive (universal)”: What is prescriptive in the Quran is not history, society, or patriarchy, but principles that overwhelmingly tend toward love, sukun, equality, kindness, mutuality, and concord between spouses. If the Quran advocates such ethical norms even to a patriarchy, it must be because the norms are universal, not patriarchy. (Barlas 2008, 25)

Lastly, the tribal patriarchy in which the Qurān was revealed is now extinct, and it is a strange thing to believe that an omniscient God would have failed to consider such an eventuality and would have made it and its practices binding on Muslims until eternity. After all, the Qurān also speaks about slavery but does not prescribe it, nor do Muslims today read the relevant verses as being normative. From a theological perspective alone it is untenable to tie the Qurān to a seventh-­century society since doing so denies the wisdom of an all-­knowing God and the Qurān’s universalism. It takes nothing away from the Qurān’s sacrality to recognize that some of its injunctions were directed at practices and institutions that may have once been normative but have long since vanished into time. Conclusion Basically, secular-­/feminists recycle the mainstream Muslim claim that the Qurān is patriarchal and androcentric,21 but without defining either term. Even the scholars who dispute my claim that the Qurān is ­antipatriarchal do not engage with my definition of patriarchy or with my theological and epistemological approach and interpretive methodology. In fact, most of them reject rudimentary hermeneutical principles and strategies in their own work and often without understanding what these entail. As I have noted, many of them think that historicizing the Qurān means tying it to a seventh-­century patriarchy as a way to fix its meanings and/or deny its sacrality.22 Then, too, the women refuse to use the strategy of principle-­ extraction to interpret its provisions on sex on various pretexts even as they attribute negative “principles” to it, such as the idea that the Qurān otherizes and objectifies women.

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Their position on the Qurān’s divinity, on the other hand, violates basic theological tenets, and adopting it would put one outside the pale of Islam. Moreover, their justifications for disputing its divinity make no logical or analytical sense. For instance, there no logical reason to dispense with the Qurān’s sacrality (the vertical axis) in order to recuperate its dialogical aspects (the horizontal axis). In fact, without one, the other loses its meaning since the two, together, are meant to illustrate the relationship between revelation and its human interpretation and reception. There is also no connection between scriptural exegesis and a scripture’s relationship to the divine. As such, the fact that the Qurān is not “fully commensurable” with modern ideas of equality or sex—why would one expect it to be?—does not mean it is not God’s word. As for whether God is just, that is, indeed, a premise of Islamic theology, including the Mu‘tazilah’s. Of course, we may differ in our understanding of justice since it is not a fixed and static concept, but no observant Muslim would deny God’s justice or question God’s understanding of essential human nature. Actually, there is no such thing as “essential human nature” since how human beings think and what we believe are susceptible to the forces of history and cultural socialization. This should be obvious from how our understanding of concepts such as gender justice, female sexual agency, and so on have changed over time. What secular-­/feminist scholarship offers, then, are not new interpretive insights into the Qurān but a denial of its authority and even its status as God’s word, along with a series of pejorative judgments about its teachings from the standpoint of secular modernity and feminism. Of course, if these are the standards for judging scriptures or, for that matter, texts written before the advent of Western feminism and secularism, it is safe to say they will all be found wanting. However, it is bad historiography to evaluate the past in light of the present, and that, too, merely in order to be able to state the obvious: there are differences between then and now. Using secularism as the staging ground for criticizing sacred texts also ignores that patriarchies exist in secular societies as well, and that they too propagate theories of sexual inequality. In fact, what religions are said to ascribe to God (male authority and sexual inequality), secular societies impute to biology (the idea that biological differences make women and men unequal). This may be secularism’s take on the Bible’s hierarchy of being, but my point is that the ubiquity of male supremacy is a problem in secular societies too, notwithstanding the civil rights and freedoms their

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citizens enjoy. Simply put, no society has clean hands when it comes to discrimination and violence against women. As for Muslims, they now seem to use the “hierarchy verses” as alibis for keeping women locked into seventh-­century modes of male authority even though the world has changed. It seems rather naïve to blame this on Islam because, if they wanted to, Muslims could draw on the generous and revolutionary impulses that underwrote the Qurān’s changes to gender relationships fourteen centuries ago to do likewise today. Instead, most Muslims go on treating these verses as if they were sacrosanct and the only measure of religiosity, while others now use them to dispute the Qurān’s own sacrality. However, if we are to actualize the potential of our own sacred text, it seems to me we will need to rethink our own approach to it. Almost a thousand years ago, Abu Hamid al-­Ghazali argued that Muslims needed to be able to judge between different interpretations of the Qurān and that this required them to first establish among themselves a mutually agreed-­upon criterion for determining the validity of logical proofs that enjoy the recognition of them all. For if they do not agree on the scale by which a thing is to be measured, they will not be able to terminate disputes over its weight.23

I am not sure what logical proofs would look like in a Qurānic hermeneutics, but I have illustrated the liberatory possibilities of one that takes a just and unsexed/ungendered God as the focal point of its theological framework.

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Verily We have brought The Truth to you: But most of you Have a hatred for Truth. The Qurān (43:78 [Ali 1988, 1340])

M

y objective in writing this book was to try to recover the scriptural basis of sexual equality in Islam, which has been obscured by Muslim views of it as a religious patriarchy that ostensibly “professes models of hierarchical relationships and sexual inequality” and puts a “sacred stamp . . . onto female subservience” (Mernissi 1996, 13–14). What I have questioned in this context is not whether Islam or, more specifically, the Qurān lends itself to patriarchal readings, but whether we should continue to regard such readings as its only legitimate ones given their own history, theology, and hermeneutics. To this end, I began by specifying the nature of sexual/textual politics in early Muslim societies and the complex mix of processes that yielded the Qurān’s earliest patriarchal exegesis. I do not claim to have explained Muslim history or why it unfolded in the ways it did. However, I argued that the manner of its unfolding was central to how Muslims came to define religious epistemology and methodology, and thus also to why they came

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to read the Qurān as a male-­privileging text. In addition, I underscored the need to respect the Qurān’s own history so as to avoid tying it to a long dead medieval Arab patriarchy. The theological and hermeneutical aspects of my argument seek to illustrate that the Qurān’s episteme is egalitarian and antipatriarchal, and I made this argument in three steps. First, I located the hermeneutic keys for reading the Qurān in the nature of divine ontology; that is, in the Qurān’s claims about who God is. For instance, if the Qurān describes God as just and as never doing zulm to another (transgressing against their rights), then it seems reasonable to assume that God’s speech cannot advocate zulm either. In other words, how we read the Qurān cannot be divorced from how we think about God. Yet generations of Muslims have imputed zulm against women to the Qurān by reading it as a patriarchal text while professing belief in a just God. It may be that many people do not see a contradiction in this because they do not view patriarchy itself as a manifest case of zulm. However, we know from our history that patriarchies have allowed men to transgress against the rights of women in particularly heinous ways. Clearly, definitions of rights and of zulm are subject to change over time, but my point remains: interpretations of the Qurān that violate God’s self-­disclosure are theologically unsound and should not be treated as inviolable. Far from being peripheral to how we interpret the Qurān, then, theology matters (Abou El Fadl 2002, 104) in and to a Qurānic hermeneutics. My second move was to argue against the hermeneutically indefensible idea that the Qurān has only one set of unchanging meanings. It is indefensible because language itself is polysemic and because what we read a text to be saying depends on who reads it, how, and in what contexts. I thus used the notion of textual polysemy (the idea that texts can be read in multiple modes) to critique interpretive reductionism/essentialism (the claim that the Qurān can only be read in one patriarchal mode). Next, without relinquishing my commitment to textual polysemy, I argued against interpretive relativism (the view that all readings are equally correct). I did so on the grounds that we need to apply commonly accepted hermeneutical criteria to interpret the Qurān, one of which is the Qurān’s own counsel to adhere to “the best” in its teachings. Given the long history of the Qurān being read as male-­privileging, I also applied a precise definition of patriarchy to it. If, as I argue, patriarchy is a continuum at one end of which are representations of God as Father

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and of fathers/husbands as rulers over women and children, and at the other end, the notion of sexual differentiation that privileges males while Otherizing women, then the Qurān does not support patriarchy. In fact, many of its teachings seem overtly antipatriarchal. This is clear from how it describes God, what it says about the rights of parents and spouses, and how it treats sex/gender. Among other things, I argued that the very nature of divine self-­disclosure not only rules out viewing God as Father/male but also theories of father/husband-­right that allow men to claim forms of authority over women that encroach on divine sovereignty. In fact, I suggested that patriarchal authority borders on shirk. On a different note, I argued that missing from the Qurān is the concept of sexual differentiation and “thought by sexual analogy”;1 that is, the tendency to decipher all phenomena in terms of the organization of sexual differences. In this context I noted both that the Qurān does not use the concept of sexual differences (or sameness) to discriminate against women and that it treats sexual equality as if it were ontological—an aspect of being itself. It is such teachings, I believe, that allow Muslim to theorize a truly radical praxis of sexual equality, if they want to. Unlike those who blame Islam’s “uncompromising monotheism” for women’s oppression, or who believe that its emphasis on God’s rights narrows the scope of human rights by undercutting the idea of popular sovereignty, I also argued that Islamic monotheism is liberatory. This is because a belief in God’s oneness can serve to liberate women from the depredations of male authority by dislocating father-­/husband-­rule and theories of male sovereignty that are at the root of women’s oppression. In other words, privileging the rights of God is the condition for protecting the rights of women within different social and sexual relationships. As for theories of popular sovereignty, we know that they coexist with patriarchy and sexual inequality. Consequently, the problem as I see it lies not in monotheism itself or in Islam’s emphasis on the rights of God, but in how we conceive of both. My own approach, I feel, allows us to think of God’s unity and rights in liberatory ways, thus enabling Muslim women to struggle for equality from within the framework of Islamic monotheism and the Qurān’s teachings. I have, of course, been selective in my argument, as Muslims (like other people) are generally “selective in terms of which of their body of unalterable truths they emphasize.”2 Disturbed by the gap between what “can be safely inferred from the Quran itself and what has frequently been read into

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it,”3 I set out to absolve the Qurān itself of culpability for what Muslims have, or have not, read into it. This does not mean I did not consider the alternative argument: that the problem is not how we read it, but the very nature of some of the Qurān’s teachings. Fearing an “absence of doubt”4 and spurred on by skeptical critics, I wondered whether the Qurān itself is responsible for how we read it. After all, why should a text not be responsible for how it is read, and why should it not anticipate the possibility of its misreadings, hence abuse?5 Particularly if meaning is located in the text itself, as I have argued, is not the text accountable for the meanings we retrieve from or ascribe to it? I want to address these and related questions by way of this postscript to my work, which I do not see in any way as being conclusive or having been concluded. The problem with blaming the Qurān for how we read it is that its auto-­hermeneutics serves as a guide to how not to read it and, by the same token, for making certain types of interpretive choices rather than others. That the Qurān anticipates the possibilities of its own misreadings is evident from its observation that “Those who pervert the Truth in Our Signs are not hidden from Us” (41:40 [Ali, 1298]). Such perversions, in the Qurān’s telling, reflect both moral and hermeneutical failures. Thus, it condemns those who for personal gain “conceal God’s revelations in the Book And purchase for them A miserable profit,” and warns them that “They swallow into themselves Naught but Fire” (2:174 [Ali, 68]). How people conceal revelation becomes clear when, referring to the Law given to Moses, God condemns the fact that “ye make it into (Separate) sheets for show, While ye conceal much (Of its contents)” (6:91 [Ali, 314]); that is, concealment occurs when we read God’s message piecemeal and selectively, and in a decontextualized way. This also emerges from the warning the Prophet is asked to convey to “those who divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts),—(So also on such) As have made the Qurān Into shreds (as they please).” As God warns them, “We will, of a surety, Call them to account, For all their deeds” (15: 90–93 [Ali, 653]). Reading without regard to the principle of textual holism results both in concealing God’s message and distorting it, and who—asks the Qurān—“Is more unjust than those Who conceal the testimony They have from God?” (1:140 [Ali, 56]). To the same end, it condemns those who “change the words from their (right) times And places” (5:44 [Ali, 255), thereby reframing their meaning. It is equally condemnatory of those who privilege its allegorical āyāt over those of clear meaning as a way to “seek Causes of dispute in the

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Book” (2:176 [Ali, 68]). In this context, the Qurān also reproaches people “who know not the Book But (see therein their own desires),” and it says “they do nothing but conjecture” (2:78 [Ali, 38]). For perhaps this reason, the Qurān makes a distinction between itself and its exegesis, thus also between religion and our knowledge of it. Finally, the Qurān asks us to look for its best meanings, and while it leaves it to us to define what such meanings might be, it recognizes that not all the meanings we can derive from it will be appropriate, and that our notion of the best is itself likely to change over time. Thus, the Qurān itself opens up the possibility for each new generation of Muslims to recontextualize it. In short, the Qurān attempts to avert the possibility of misreading it by advocating some textual/moral strategies and cautioning against others. This is why I see no contradiction in arguing that while the text is the source of meaning, it is our responsibility as readers to create meanings that cohere with our conceptions of God. This is not to say that the Qurān’s meanings are self-­evident; if they were, the text would not urge us to search for the best in it. I feel such an endeavor brings into play not only our interpretive methodology but also our relationship to God’s word—that is, whether we take it to be divine speech or not. Of course, a belief in the Qurān’s sacrality cannot, by itself, yield better interpretations. After all, Muslims have a 1,400-­year-­long history of reading it as a patriarchal text, and I take issue with their readings; at the same time, however, if we read “the Quran as God’s word, which reflects God’s being,” we can go on struggling with it in order to open it up to ever better interpretations (Barlas 2016, 149). If, for the sake of argument, we were to hold the Qurān responsible for how we read it—on the grounds, for instance, that it uses allegory (even though it states that allegorical and clear verses must be read in conjunction), or because it uses words that have multiple meanings (even though it asks us to look for the best meanings), or because it sanctions certain practices that can lead to abuse (even though its teachings also allow us to distinguish the specific from the universal within it)—what would that say about our own role in interpretation? What would that mean for a theory of our own ethical responsibility to read for the best meanings? To what extent would a theory of textual responsibility (one that places the onus of our interpretive choices on the text itself ) absolve us of the moral and ethical responsibility to do what is right? Could we have a hermeneutics, much less a hermeneutical spiral, if we assumed that meaning emerges from the

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encounter between human and textual subjects, but that the burden of misreading it lies on the text alone? Moreover, if “we always read texts ‘out of ’ a praxis and ‘into’ a praxis,”6 are we not accountable for the praxes out of which, and into which, we read? Is it also not true that “we can have perfectly orthodox understandings of what Scripture is about and yet use these texts in the most perverse and sinful ways?”7 Is the problematic of reading just a textual/interpretive one, then, or also an ethical/moral one? In raising these questions, I am obviously suggesting that a theory of textual responsibility would free us from having to account for the knowledges and the social contexts of knowledge production that we create. It would also elide the fact that reading and knowledge creation are never free of conscious and subconscious ethical and moral choices. The Qurān holds that morality (as well as evil) lies in making certain types of choices rather than others. In effect, morality is not the absence of evil, or of ambiguity, or of temptation; it is the willingness to choose what is right in the face of ambiguity, and temptation, and evil in the interest of leading morally purposive lives as individuals and as communities. It is in light of this view that I feel we can best understand the Qurān’s concern with interpretive issues since we can only live in responsible and ethical ways if we also read it ethically and responsibly; and we can only read it responsibly and ethically if we (want to) live morally and religiously faithful lives. This is why hermeneutical choices are always also moral and ethical ones. A theory of textual responsibility, however, would free us from even having to contemplate such choices, and to that extent, it would undercut the Qurānic view of human beings as potentially deliberative and morally reflexive agents, able to choose right over wrong. When I initially raised these questions,8 I had not read Abdolkarim Soroush’s first book, which became available in English just as I was finishing mine. I cite his work here both because it confirms some of my arguments and because it opens up some of my claims to question. Is “there a connection,” Soroush (2000, 76) also asks, “between a theory and its historical and practical unfolding?” To what extent are faulty practices attributable to the adherents of a doctrine rather than to the doctrine itself? As he says, “If we are going to maintain that an actual system springing from an idea has no relationship to the idea whatsoever, why then identify that system with that idea at all?” To Soroush, it is clear that we cannot absolve a doctrine “from the responsibility of allowing . . . abuses” (78). As he puts it, “False interpretations and improper conclusions, however sincerely drawn,

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are still, indubitably, fruits of the doctrine” (84). In his view, then, Islam itself “allowed both false righteousness and true virtue.” As he notes, while the “seed of religion resists contamination . . . the plant that grows out of that seed opens a canopy for the virtuous and villainous alike” (86). Yet Soroush also wonders if we should in fact “hold ideologies responsible for everything done in their name. . . . Is the history of a doctrine identical with the doctrine?” (81). In some ways, he suggests that it is. For instance, he argues that if it were possible to interpret Islam all over again, its interpretive history would “not assume different forms or contents nor [would it] inaugurate a radically new history” (86). Such a theory of historical determinacy would imply, of course, that a doctrine and its history are inseparable. It would also, more dangerously, undercut our view of humans as moral agents by making it seem that we are merely caught in the “hinges of history” (to borrow Ashis Nandy’s term),9 unable to do much about it. Eventually, Soroush cannot bring himself to embrace a view that undermines the idea of human agency and, with it, the idea of morality given that in the absence of agency, one cannot be moral. Thus, he recovers the idea of agency by, among other things, distinguishing between Islam and its practice/readings on the grounds that even though the “last religion is already here . . . the last understanding of religion has not yet arrived” (37). Indeed, he distinguishes not only “between religion and our knowledge of religion,” but also “between personal knowledge of religion and religious knowledge” (34). This distinction allows him to posit religion as a complete and perfect system and our knowledge of it as incomplete and also temporally and culturally bound, and to advocate, on this basis, for the latter’s continual reform. In fact, at the heart of his interpretive philosophy is the claim that religious knowledge is subject to “contraction and expansion” and that this flux is a natural part of the history of religion (34). (In this way, Soroush rehabilitates the role of human agency in history, even as he avoids making it infallible.) It is the failure to distinguish between religion and religious knowledge, as well as to register the ways in which the latter changes, he argues, that causes the most grief to Muslim “revivalists”: Everywhere they turned they were haunted by agonizing questions: What is your claim and goal anyway? What is the “defect” in religion that you propose to repair? What error or ailment has befallen it that it has provoked this empathy and reformist zeal? What essential subject

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has escaped the Prophet’s mind, what good or evil has religion left out that now demands your help in explicating or teasing out? And, anyway, if religion really does harbor such flaws and faults, why are you still committed to it? (Soroush, 31)

These are all questions my critics, both Muslim and non-­Muslim, have asked me, and I have not always known how to respond to them. Soroush, however, makes it clear that we cannot answer such questions as long as we fail to realize that “as a branch of human knowledge,” religious knowledge is also “incomplete, impure, insufficient, and culture-­bound” (32). And to the extent that this is so, “rehabilitating religious thought; correcting misreadings; . . . redirecting religion towards its essence; rectifying misunderstandings; and tearing asunder the veils of ignorance and ill will are among the duties of the faithful and, as such, they are part of the history of religion” (86). Thus, both misinterpretations of religion and attempts “to replace one understanding of religion with another” (33) are equally part of the history of any religion, including Islam. This is the end toward which I have offered a reading that I hope will, one day, allow Muslims to contest the Qurān’s patriarchal exegesis, if nothing else. I am, of course, aware that such a possibility is remote in my lifetime given the nature of most Muslim states and my own standing in Muslim communities. Repressive states, as I noted earlier, are unlikely to yield up their monopoly on religion given the many uses to which they can put it. As for me, I belong to no interpretive community and am not a male or a recognized scholar of Islam; in fact, the chances of being accepted as a scholar by most Muslims if one is not a man and an Arabic speaker are slim to begin with. However, as a Muslim woman, I have a great deal at stake in contesting repressive readings of the Qurān and in affirming that in the absence of formally ordained interpretive communities and clergy, “all Muslims may qualify” as interpreters of religious knowledge, or mujtahid (Esposito 1982, 126). For a mujtahid, knowledge (ilm) can originate in revelation and reason, “observation as well as intuition . . . tradition as well as theoretical speculation” (Sardar 1985, 102–3). All these forms, however, only acquire equality in “a single matrix of values” when it is underpinned by a moral imperative10 rooted in the idea of God’s Unity, or Tawhīd. Before all else, therefore, mujtahids are imbued with a sense of God-­consciousness, and their right to interpret religion derives not from social approval but from the depths of their own religious convictions and

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from the Qurān’s exhortation to believers to exercise our own intellect and knowledge in interpreting it. But few Muslims today are willing to be a mujtahid. This could be because religious knowledge remains the monopoly of a handful of men, and the costs of trying to break their grip on it are very high. Or it could be that few Muslims believe they have the right or authority to reread the Qurān, even though increasing numbers are starting to realize that its patriarchal exegesis is oppressive to women. The majority, however, seems to have become habituated to reading the Qurān as a patriarchal text and feels no need to contend with moral, ethical, or hermeneutical questions— or even to question its own readings. Thus, most Muslims seem to believe that a “text is a text is a text and that the text in question is always already patriarchal” (Barlas 2016, 117). Indeed, for most observant Muslims, such a view has become the foundation of their faith, while for many secular-­/ feminists it has become foundational to their efforts to dislodge the Qurān from the heart of Islam and thus also of faith. Hence, their criticisms that looking to it for norms and authority is text fundamentalism, their strictures against taking God to be its author, their difficulty in believing that it is “purely divine and transcendent,” their dread of propping up the authority of “certain texts,” their assertions that the Qurān is not a sacred or universal text, and their presumption that one can only accept it as such at the cost of believing that God is unjust. In this context, I find it particularly troubling that some secular-­/feminists legitimize their heterodox views about the Qurān’s sacrality by appealing to the Mu‘tazilah’s doctrine of its createdness in the name of following a “well-­tread path” in Muslim tradition. Irrespective of whether or not one agrees with the Mu‘tazilah’s ideas, all they claimed was that God had created God’s speech. Such a view was meant to protect God from what they saw as intolerable human accretions. They never took it upon themselves to “rethink” God’s word right out of Islam. Indeed, it can never be the task of Islamic theology or Qurānic hermeneutics to do so since there could never have been, and there can never be, an Islam without the Qurān. If we know that God is one, uncreated, does not beget, is not begotten, is unique, just, and so on, it is from the Qurān. Then, too, it is only through the Qurān that we know the fundamental tenets of Islam, such as what constitutes faith and moral behavior, what we owe to God and to one another, and the limits we must observe in this behavior. And it is because the Qurān was revealed to him that we call the Prophet

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Muhammad a prophet; this, too, because the Qurān designates him as such. All the secondary religious texts of Islam, all its five schools of law, all the mystical practices that celebrate the Creator, all of these follow from, and in the wake of, the Qurān; they do not precede it. This is why one cannot be an observant Muslim without taking the Qurān to be God’s sacred and inerrant word. Yet, it is in the name of this sacred word and communal solidarity that Muslims go on tolerating women’s abuse by continuing to draw on the works of jurists, scholars, and exegetes of the medieval period without questioning them. My own view is that we cannot, in good conscience, hold these men responsible for having made arguments that are not viable today. Rather, Muslims are accountable for adhering blindly to choices and arguments that we know from historical experience have undermined the Qurān’s egalitarianism and thus also solidarities between Muslim men and women. This is why I feel we should be willing to rethink our own knowledge of Islam and, in particular, of its Scripture; to remain wedded to old traditions is to fail to see that the “stunning beauty of the truth . . . lies beyond the veil of habits,” as Soroush (112) so exquisitely puts it. For believers, the ultimate truth is God’s word, of which God says, “We did not bestow the Qurān on thee from on high to make thee unhappy, but only as an exhortation to all who stand in awe [of God]: a revelation from [God].”11

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Gl os s a ry

ahādith—usually refers to narratives of the Prophet Muhammad’s life and praxis aql—intelligence awlīya—protectors, guides, persons in charge (of one another) āyah—(pl. āyāt) sign; used for verse of the Qurān azbāb al-­nuzūl—occasions of revelation of Qurānic verses dīn—religious faith conceived of as a way of life fiqh—jurisprudence Fitra—intrinsic nature hadīth—(pl. ahādith) tale/narrative; generally a record of the Prophet’s life hijāb—head veil ijmā—social consensus ijtihād—process of critical reasoning ilm—knowledge insān—human (but often translated as “man” by Qurān scholars) Islam—willed submission (to God) Jāhilī/Jahiliyya—pre-­Islamic Arabic society jilbāb—cloak kalām—dogmatic theology khilāfah—vice-­regent, trustee, moral agent nafs—self, person naql—imitation, imitativeness Rabb—Cherisher and Sustainer; a commonly used Qurānic word for God Sharīah—Islamic law shirk—violation of the doctrine of God’s Unity, or Tawhīd sunnah—customary practices; capitalized when referring to the Prophet’s practices Sūrah—Qurānic “chapter” tafsīr—to clarify; used to refer to exegesis, or interpretation, of the Qurān taqwá—God-­consciousness; the hallmark of moral individuality in Islam

Glos sa ry

Tawhīd—doctrine of God’s Unity Ummah—community of believers usūl al-­fiqh—rules of jurisprudence wahy—revelation by (divine) inspiration zulm—doing harm to others by transgressing against their rights

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No t e s

Chapt er 1 1. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qurān: Text, Translation and Commentary, 2nd US ed. (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qurān, 1988). The first number in Qurānic citations refers to the chapter (su¯rah) and the second to the verse (āyah). The Qurān is speaking here of those who rejected God’s signs; in Arabic, one of the words for “signs” is āyāt. 2. “Traditional” here refers not to the Islamic tradition but to definitions of patriarchy as a tradition of father-­rule. 3. Islam means “submission to God’s will,” and Muslim refers to “someone who submits voluntarily to God’s will.” By this definition, Muslims predate Islam inasmuch as the prophets revered by Jews and Christians (and by Muslims) submitted their wills to God’s. I discuss the importance of maintaining the distinction between Islam and Muslims in the text below. 4. Hermeneutics is defined as the theory, method, and philosophy of interpretation; its subject matter includes how we interpret texts, what counts for a con/textually legitimate reading, and the role of pre-­understanding in the interpretive process. See Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (New York: Routledge, 1980); and Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 5. In the text below, I explain why I define patriarchy in this way. 6. By this term, feminists mean to convey the relationship between sex/gender and reading. See Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985). 7. Of course, we need to keep in mind the extremely low levels of literacy among women in most Muslim societies. 8. The word ijtihād refers to the Islamic hermeneutics of critical reasoning and rethinking, especially in law (see chapter 3). 9. C. Fawzi El-­Sohl and Judy Mabro, eds., Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 18.

Notes to Pag es 4–8

10. Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (New York: Methuen, 1980), 4. 11. This is Fatna Sabbah’s claim in Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (New York: Pergamon, 1984). 12. I borrow this phrase from Athalya Brenner, “Women’s Traditions Problematized: Some Reflections,” in On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-­Specific and Related Studies in Memory of Fokkelien van Dijk-­Hemmes, ed. Bob Becking and Meindert Dijkstra (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 55. 13. This is how Kate Millett characterizes monotheism in Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 51. 14. I have borrowed this term from Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 15. Josef van Ess, “Verbal Inspiration? Language and Revelation in Classical Islamic Theology,” in The Quran as Text, ed. Stefan Wild (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 189. 16. This is Fazlur Rahman’s phrase in Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 17. In particular, I engage with some of Amina Wadud’s arguments in Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and with Leila Ahmed’s in Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 18. See chapter 6 on this point. 19. For my critique of Leila Ahmed’s claim that this period was egalitarian, see “Texts, Sex, and States: A Critique of North African Discourses on Islam,” in The Arab African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. R. Kevin Lacey and Ralph M. Coury (New York: Peter Lang, 2000). 20. For Muslims, the unfixability of meaning does not indicate an absence of truth, as it does for postmodernists. See my paper “Muslim Women and Sexual Oppression: Reading Liberation from the Quran,” in Macalester International 10 (Spring 2001). 21. In Ali, Qurān, 1031. 22. By the term conservatives I mean those Muslims who adhere to the notion of the canon’s closure and therefore do not favor new developments in religious knowledge. Although this is not a very helpful term, it is less charged and misleading than alternatives such as “orthodoxies” or “fundamentalists.” 23. Al-­Baydawi, quoted in Barbara Stowasser, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” in Muslim Women, ed. Freda Hussain (New York: St. Martin’s, 1984), 26. 24. Stowasser, 26. 25. Stowasser, 13. 26. My argument applies only to Sunni Islam and not to Shia. I use the term canon to refer to the body of religious knowledge (tafsīr, ahādith, Sharīah ) that

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was formulated before the fourth Islamic century (tenth century CE) since Sunnis generally believe that the gate of critical reasoning, or ijtihād, was closed at this time. Because one closure enabled the other, I sometimes refer to “the closure of the canon” even though what was considered closed was not the canon per se, but interpretive methodology (see chapter 3). Nonetheless, these closures not only impacted Qurānic exegesis, but they also account for the remarkable continuity in Muslim religious thinking over the course of fourteen centuries. This is why I favor a historical approach to studying this thought. 27. By “critical scholars” I mean those who rely on critique, reason(ing), and a questioning/re-­appropriation of tradition rather than blindly accepting it as canonical. 28. This reference to the Bible seems equally true of the Qurān. See C. Boff, “Hermeneutics: Constitution of Theological Pertinency,” in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (New York: Orbis, 1991), 34. 29. Wolterstorff (1995) uses this term in another context in Divine Discourse. 30. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980). 31. Rahman, xi. 32. Kenneth Cragg, The Event of the Quran: Islam in Its Scripture (Oxford: One World, 1994), 116. 33. The Middle Ages doesn’t carry much meaning in relation to Muslim history, according to George Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). However, D. A. Spellberg, among others, calls Muslims the “true inheritors of a medieval process of Islamic interpretation”; see Politics, Gender and the Islamic Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 195. On the misogyny of the Middle Ages, see Caroline Walker Bynum “‘ . . . And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman (Boston: Beacon, 1986). Leila Ahmed offers a compelling analysis of how this misogyny found its way into Islam in Women and Gender. 34. For a discussion of the mutuality of this process with respect to Jews and Muslims, see Steven Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis Under Early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Hava Lazarus-­Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 35. The phrase is that of Rashaand Sass, a student in my seminar “Sexual/ Textual Politics in Islam” at Ithaca College in 1996. 36. Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History (Karachi, Pakistan: Central Institute of Islamic Research, 1965).

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Notes to Pag es 10–13

37. Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite (New York: Addison-­Wesley, 1991). 38. Cragg, Event of the Quran, 14. 39. This āyah is addressed to Moses and refers to the law given to him (the “Ten Commandments”). 40. This is how Ricoeur defines a text in Hermeneutics. 41. I put the word “Islamic” in quotes since I assume that it is reasonable to regard only those norms and practices as Islamic that do originate in or are sanctioned by its own Scripture. 42. Jean Bethke Elshtain (1981) describes the historical form as a mode of production based on landholding in which All of life was suffused with a religious-­royalist ideology which was patriarchal in nature. A kingly father reigned whom no man could question for he owed his terrible majesty and legitimacy to no man but to God. All lesser fathers within their little kingdoms had wives and children, or so patriarchal ideology would have it, as their dutiful and obedient subjects even as they, in turn, were the faithful and obedient servants of the fatherly-­lord, the king. In terms of this view, patriarchy and male domination are not the same. (213) In using this definition, I mean to emphasize only the idea of father-­right, broadly conceived, not to generalize the model of feudal Europe. See Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 43. As Gail Ramshaw (1995) notes, Martin Luther said, “God the Father is the model of all father figures who require obedience” (77). Such representations of God have had consequences for relationships between women and men, as well as for their self-­images (18). See Ramshaw, God beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-­Language (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). 44. In her later works, Zillah Eisenstein concedes that difference does not mean inequality. See The Female Body and the Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). On various interpretations of equality, sameness, and difference, see Susan J. Hekman, Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990); Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Nicky Hart, “Feminism and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality, ed. Nikki Keddie (New York: New York University Press, 1996); and Elizabeth Fox-­Genovese, “Procreation and Women’s Rights: A Response to Nicky Hart,” in Debating Gender, ed. Keddie. Meanwhile, “Simple equality principles

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Notes to Pag es 13–2 2

have also proven inadequate for feminist practice in the area of sexuality,” writes Angela Miles (Integrative Feminisms: Building Global Visions, 1960s–1990s [New York: Routledge, 1996], 49). 45. Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976), 105. 46. I focus on these aspects of divine self-­disclosure because I have not yet explored others and because I view them as being foundational to the Qurān’s descriptions of God. 47. Judith Antonelli, In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah (London: Jason Aronson, 1995), xxxiii. 48. Rabb refers to Creator and Cherisher, and is the word for God that the Qurān uses as consistently as Allah. 49. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 212. Ricoeur, of course, is speaking of texts in general. 50. Read as a totality, argues Ricoeur, a text offers only a “limited field of possible constructions” (213). What this means is that only some readings can be considered contextually plausible. 51. R. Marston Speight, “The Function of Hadith as Commentary on the Quran, as Seen in the Six Authoritative Collections,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Quran, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 64. 52. Ibn Kathir, quoted in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Qurānic Hermeneutics: The Views of al-­Tabari and Ibn Kathir,” in Approaches to History, ed. Rippin, 56. 53. Ibid. 54. For the tensions that result from this method and how to resolve them, see Mustansir Mir, “The Sura as a Unity: A Twentieth Century Development in Quran Exegesis,” in Approaches to the Quran, ed. G. R. Hawting and Abdul-­Kader A. Shareef (New York: Routledge, 1993). 55. Intrinsic to all hermeneutical projects is the conundrum of the role of pre-­understanding in structuring our expectations of, and encounter with, the interpretive process, or what Martin Heidegger called the problematic of the hermeneutic circle. See Bleicher, Hermeneutics; and Ricoeur, Hermeneutics. 56. Mernissi, The Veil. The same Muslims who uphold this tradition as evidencing women’s progressive role in early Muslim communities condemn their attempts today to approximate that role; history, it seems, is merely an alibi for them. 57. Rosemary Ruether, RRR, Sexism, and God Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 24. 58. On the appropriateness of interpreting sacred texts in terms of authorial-­ intent discourse, see Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse; T. Longman, “Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation,” in Foundations of Contemporary

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Interpretation, ed. Philips Long et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996); and Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, trans. Robert W. Yarborough (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994). 59. Many Muslims do not view the translated Qurān as real. However, as the Qurān itself says, the archetypal or real Qurān remains with God. As such, reading the Qurān, “whether in Arabic or any other language is only an approximation of the original located with God, toward the understanding of which we can approach but cannot ultimately fully attain,” as an anonymous reviewer of this manuscript wrote in support of my argument. Second, to believe that the Qurān is real only in Arabic is to confuse linguistic with epistemic privilege. The truth is that reading the Qurān in Arabic does not fix its meaning or eliminate exegetical differences, as Muslim history attests (see chapters 2 and 3). I believe the doctrine of the Qurān’s universalism means that it is real and knowable in all languages. 60. Ali is Shia, but his work has been adopted as the official translation of the Qurān by the Wahabi Saudi regime, which is venerated for its religious leadership by Sunni Muslims the world over. 61. F. Bonner and L. Goodman, “Introduction: On Imagining Women,” in Imagining Women: Cultural Representations and Gender, ed. F. Bonner et al. (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), 1–2. 62. Rahman, Islamic Methodology, 77. 63. Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 167. Hodgen’s reference is to Western anthropology’s view of the Other as subhuman and barbaric, which remained unchanging in its core beliefs despite changes in knowledge. “Then, too, those who were faithful to tradition were cushioned from criticism,” she says (168). 64. Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 10. Chapt er 2 1. Since ijtihād and innovation were discouraged after this time, it provides a cutoff point for examining the formative influences on the production of knowledge and the canon. 2. The first figure refers to the Islamic calendar and the second to the common era. 3. This is Paul Ricoeur’s definition in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 145. 4. This usage derives from Hugh Silverman, Textualities: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (New York: Routledge, 1994), 81.

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5. Julia Kristeva coined this term to indicate how sign systems are transposed onto one another. See Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985), 156. 6. For a review of this literature and its role in fostering misogyny, see Fedwa Malti-­Douglas, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-­ Islamic Writing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Afaf Lutfi Al-­Sayyid Marsot, ed., Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam (Malibu, CA: Undena, 1979). 7. The tafsīr, ahādith, Sunnah, and Sharīah are not equal, however, and the Sunnah functions both as text and as extratextual context of reading. I discuss the Sunnah in chapter 3. 8. F. Denny, “Islam: Quran and Hadith,” in The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, ed. F. Denny and R. Taylor (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), 95. 9. C. Fawzi El-­Sohl and Judy Mabro, Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality (Oxford: Berg, 1994). 10. Ibid. 11. The Qurān, however, is not a law book in the sense of being “a collection of prescriptions providing a legal system,” as John Esposito notes in Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 2. I discuss the ways in which laws derived from the Sharīah depart from the Qurān’s teachings in chapter 3. 12. Schacht, quoted in W. Walther, Woman in Islam (Montclair, NJ: Abner Schram, 1981), 21. 13. Commentators note differences in style and content of āyāt in these two phases. According to Faruq Sherif, eighty-­eight su¯rahs are Meccan and twenty-­six Madinan; thus 73 percent of the Qurān’s content is said to have been revealed in the Meccan stage. (The Prophet migrated to Madina because of opposition to his message in Mecca.) See Sherif, A Guide to the Contents of the Quran (London: Ithaca, 1985). In section 2 of this chapter, I discuss attempts to rethink Islam by distinguishing between these two phases. 14. Kenneth Cragg counsels reading the Qurān from back to front in order to be in historical step with revelation. Indeed, he refers to the Qurān as “history.” See Cragg, The Event of the Quran: Islam in Its Scripture (Oxford: Oneworld, 1994), 114. 15. It was Abu Bakr, the first caliph, who had the Qurān written down, but alongside his copy “existed other collections which belonged to private individuals,” says Sherif (A Guide, 10). Each one regarded their copy as the most authentic, and it was left to Uthman to undertake “the task of providing a unified, authoritative text which would eliminate all competing versions” (10). For the argument that the Qurān was compiled in an integrated manner under the Prophet’s

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direction, see Mohammad Khalifa, The Sublime Quran and Orientalism (London: Longman, 1983). Khalifa does note that at the time of the Prophet’s death, there was no written copy. 16. The Arabic word kitab means “book,” “script,” “message,” or “record.” As Farid Esack points out, it is “only towards the end of the process of revelation that the Quran is presented as Scripture [kitab] rather than a recitation or discourse.” See Esack, “Quranic Hermeneutics: Problems and Prospects,” The Muslim World 83, no. 2 (April 1993): 123. 17. This confusion dates from the time when the Mu‘tazilah’s attempts to designate the Qurān as created, or within history, were defeated in the third/ninth century. See George Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). I briefly discuss the doctrine of the created Qurān in chapter 8. 18. Of revelation, Toshihiko Izutsu says that insofar as it is God’s speech, revelation is something mysterious and has nothing in common with ordinary human linguistic behavior; and insofar as it is speech, it must have all the essential attributes of human speech. See Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964), 154. 19. This figure is the work of Ulises Ali Mejias. 20. Cragg, Event of the Quran, 19. 21. Ian R. Netton, Texts and Trauma: An East-­West Primer (London: Curzon, 1996), 5. 22. Sachiko Murata (1992) says the Qurān “itself encourages interpretation going beyond the merely phenomenal level,” and it also “points out that its own words are similitudes or likeness or analogies” (127). Hence, “Islamic cosmological thinking has been based on the idea that things are pointers and not of any ultimate significance in themselves” (25). See Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992). 23. Here I am adopting Hourani’s description of three different classes of texts in Reason and Tradition. 24. In the Qurānic sense, argues Fazlur Rahman (1980), “abrogation” means that some āyāt were replaced by others at God’s command; i.e., it is a historical development. Naskh “does not mean the juristic doctrine of abrogation,” which was developed later and was “an attempt to smooth out apparent differences in the import of certain verses” (90). See Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980). Khalifa (Sublime Quran), incidentally, notes that the word naskh is mentioned only once in the Qurān and refers to the cancellation of biblical law by the law given to the Prophet. 25. Jay Harris, “‘Fundamentalism’: Objections from a Modern Jewish Historian,” in Fundamentalism and Gender, ed. John S. Hawley (New York: Oxford

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University Press, 1994), 158. As Harris notes, even among Jewish “fundamentalists” who view their scripture as “a strictly monosemic text,” traditional exegesis is based on a “commitment to a polysemic text”; however, while both Jewish “fundamentalists” and Muslims view their Scripture as the inerrant word of God, Muslims do not claim, as the former do, that its interpreters are “capable of inerrantly ascertaining the inerrant claims of Scripture” or that it is monosemic (158). 26. The story of the Queen of Sheba, argues Jacob Lassner (1993), is a “test case of how Jewish memorabilia penetrated the literary imagination of medieval Muslims” (5). For instance, the Targum Sheni view her as “a threat to the natural order of the universe [whereas no] such dangers are manifest in the Quranic account” (40). Indeed, the Qurān says she is given “something of everything,” like Solomon, including a magnificent throne. However, many Muslim exegetes understood such references to mean not that she had the same gifts as Solomon, or the license to rule, but that “she had the requisite implements for rule” and that her throne was “great because of its dimensions” (77). One wonders then, says Lassner, whether Jewish themes could have percolated into early Muslim tradition as part of an internal discourse among Jewish converts seeking reassurance for having chosen Islam, and/or as part of an informal dialogue between them and former co-­religionists with whom they wished to remain in contact (125). See Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 27. Zuleikha was the woman who tried to seduce Joseph and whose husband condemned her “guile,” which has generated a lot of misogynist tafsīr. Indeed, Fedwa Malti-­Douglas (Woman’s Body) argues that Muslim misogyny has its literary origins in the story. See also Shalom Goldman, The Wiles of Women, the Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995). As Goldman says, though the woman’s actions “are condemned in this story, the concept of kayd [guile] is generalized and applied to all women”; in effect, “‘women’s guile’ is viewed as an inherent female characteristic against which men must be warned, and if possible, protected” (47). Such a reading is unwarranted since it is not the Qurān that accuses her of guile, and since it does not extrapolate from her behavior to women in general. 28. Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 177. 29. See chapter 3 for a full discussion of all these issues. 30. This does not mean that Muslims have not challenged tradition or attempted to rethink it. See Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 31. Lassner, Demonizing the Queen, 6. 32. See chapter 3 on the (re)writing of Muslim history.

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33. I examine the ahādith and their content and contexts here. I will discuss the Sunnah in the next chapter, in part because the Sunnah provides the context for the ahādith and is not, strictly speaking, a text. 34. Muhammad Z. Siddiqi, Hadith Literature: Its Origins, Development and Special Features (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993). 35. See G. H. A. Junyboll, The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature: Discussion in Modern Egypt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969). 36. F. E. Peters points out that the institution of the Caliphate, associated with Islam, came into being through consensus (ijmā) and that the caliph remained “not a religious leader but the leader of a religious community.” See Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 121. 37. See Levy, Social Structure, on the consensual aspects of the Arab-­Muslim conquest. 38. The phrase is from C. Belsey, Critical Practice (New York: Methuen, 1980), 28. 39. This is the general definition of hegemony. See T. J. Jackson-­Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” American History Review 90, no. 3 (1985): 577. 40. Junyboll, Authenticity of the Tradition, 12. 41. Junyboll, 13–14. 42. Junyboll, 18; italics in the original. 43. Naeem Inayatullah encouraged me to think about the differences between biblical/European and Qurānic notions of time and their implications for an Islamic worldview and my own analysis. 44. According to Izutsu (God and Man), however, the Qurān does not label God’s “speaking” to humans as an attribute. 45. Not all Muslims share(d) this view. The Mu‘tazilah, as noted later, held that the Qurān was created by God, but they were overtaken in the third/ninth century by Sunni traditionalists who held that it was the uncreated Word of God. See Hourani, Reason and Tradition. 46. There follows a list of male relatives before whom women need not observe these restrictions. I consider the meaning of these āyāt in chapter 6. 47. In al-­Baydawi’s view, then, what rendered the female body pudendal was not its sex but the social class of its “owner”! This strange view may have something to do with his misunderstanding of the function of the jilbāb (see text below). 48. These āyāt do not mean that the Qurān condones the sexual abuse of female slaves; to the contrary, it explicitly bans it. Nor does it mean, as al-­Baydawi assumed, that the bodies of slaves were different from the bodies of free women in not being pudendal. The Qurān makes the distinction between slaves and free women based not on their bodies but on social practices. See further discussion in the text.

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49. Indeed, a su¯rah, an-­Nur, was revealed in defense of Ayesha’s honor (just as the Su¯rah Maryam was revealed to defend the honor of Mary); in both cases, God “spoke” on behalf of women. 50. Farid Vajidi, quoted in Mazhar ul Haq Khan, Purdah and Polygamy (New Delhi: Harman, 1983), 173. Chapt er 3 1. My aim is only to identify some broad historical trends that explain increasing methodological conservatism; it is not to offer a history of Muslim societies. Readers looking for a historical chronology or a nuanced and differentiated analysis of Muslim history may want to pursue some of the sources cited in this chapter. 2. Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 8. 3. Brown, 43. I explain in the text why this view is problematic. 4. Such a view of the Sunnah is, however, inappropriate from a strictly Qurānic perspective for reasons I consider in chapter 4. 5. Brown, Rethinking Tradition, 138. 6. While this is Fazlur Rahman’s summary of Western views of the Sunnah, he accepts them as correct. See Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History (Karachi, Pakistan: Central Institute of Islamic Research, 1965). 7. See Louise Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 8. F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 245. 9. As I argue in chapter 4, the Qurān’s idea of obedience to the Prophet seems to differ from that of most Muslim traditionalists. 10. See chapter 2 on this point. 11. I disagree with Rahman on this point since the problem, as I see it, lies not so much with the ahādith (which also reflect ijtihād and ijmā) as with al-­Shafi’s redefinition of the relationship between ijtihād and ijmā, as Rahman himself points out in Islamic Methodology. 12. Taqlīd means unquestioning acceptance of precedent; some scholars reject the consensus of earlier generations because it is based on taqlīd. However, Brannon Wheeler suggests that there is room for creativity even in taqlīd (Applying the Canon in Islam: The Authorization and Maintenance of Interpretive Reasoning in Hanafi Scholarship [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996]). 13. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 99. 14. John Burton, The Collection of the Quran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 15. Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism, xi.

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16. Despite their abstract theological nature, many controversies arose from political questions such as the emergence of Shiism, argues Dominique Sourdel in Medieval Islam (London: Routledge, 1979), 84–85. Thus, “the schisms which took place in the heart of Islam . . . often took on dramatic dimensions in so far as their character was political as well as religious” (97). 17. Sourdel, 80. 18. The Mu‘tazilah favored the use of reason and rationality in religious inquiry and emphasized free will; the Ashari, on the other hand, emphasized God’s omnipotence and will, and the idea of predestination; they were also more bound to tradition and authority. Historians commonly hold that they and the Kharijites (who advocated submission to authority) provided Sunni Islam with its theological and political content. State rulers favored many of these themes; for instance, the Umayyads endorsed the precept of determinism since “they feared that a stress on human freedom and initiative might unseat them” (Rahman, Islamic Methodology, 99). 19. In fact, the Muslim legal tradition’s tendency to view “the Quran as a law book and not [as] the religious source of the law” has done the greatest damage to women, according to Fazlur Rahman (Major Themes of the Quran, 47). 20. However, as Reuben Levy (1962) notes, the Sharīah’s provisions are “widely neglected” in such areas as “marriage, divorce and the distribution of inheritance” (244). See The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962). 21. For a full discussion of Taha’s position (which I outline in chapter 2), see M. M. Taha, The Second Message of Islam (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987). 22. John Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 106. 23. See chapter 1 on this point. 24. I define as “real fundamentalism” this unquestioning faith in the legitimacy of one’s own interpretive authority. 25. Josef van Ess, “Verbal Inspiration? Language and Revelation in Classical Islamic Theology,” in The Quran as Text, ed. Stefan Wild (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 189. 26. The “inquisition,” or Mihna, consisted of religious tests being administered by the courts to scholars, and while some scholars were flogged and jailed, the Mihna did not remotely resemble the Spanish Inquisition. It was launched by al-­ Ma’mun, who believed in the doctrine of the Qurān’s createdness and repudiated a link between the people and the Prophet’s Sunnah. 27. Some ulama were less concerned with the state’s preservation than with their own; thus, when the Mongols—led by Hulagu—sacked Baghdad in the seventh/thirteenth century, a Shia alim gave a fatwa (religious decree) to the effect

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that a just infidel ruler was better than an unjust Muslim ruler. See Etan Kohlberg, A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Tawus and His Library (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992). 28. This concept borrows from the works of Antonio Gramsci which I discuss in detail in Democracy, Nationalism, and Communalism: The Colonial Legacy in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). 29. Jacob Lassner (1980) argues that the “centralization of power and the cultivation of new political attitudes” was meant “to create for all public elements, a vested interest in the orderly process of government” (244). See Lassner, The Shaping of Abbasid Rule (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). As Sourdel (Medieval Islam) points out, the autocratism of society “cannot be said to be truly inspired by the principles of Islam; rather it was the result of the political order set up in Islamic countries” (159). 30. Collingwood, quoted in Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 289. 31. Of course, interpretive power by itself cannot explain the persistence of certain interpretations. In this context, what Fedwa Malti-­Douglas (Woman’s Body) says of Ibn al-­Batanuni, an Arab writer known for his misogyny, seems to be generally true: “His misogynist recasting of sacred history can only operate because the cultural forces behind it are extremely strong” (7). 32. This is Ricoeur’s summary of Gadamer’s position in Hermeneutics. 33. The word “blasphemy” (tajdif ) does not occur in the Qurān, nor does the punishment of death for apostasy, which derives from the ahādith. See Mustansir Mir, Dictionary of Quranic Terms and Concepts (New York: Garland, 1987). Chapt er 4 1. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qurān: Text, Translation and Commentary, 2nd US ed. (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qurān, 1988), 669. 2. See also Asma Barlas and David Raeburn Finn, Believing Women in Islam: A Brief Introduction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019). 3. Zillah Eisenstein, Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 90. 4. Anne McGrew Bennett, From Woman-­Pain to Woman-­Vision (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 7. 5. Penelope M. Magee, “Disputing the Sacred: Some Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Religion,” in Religion and Gender, ed. Ursula King (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 107. 6. Caroline Walker Bynum, “‘. . . And Woman His Humanity,’” 1. There is, however, another way to look at God’s designation as Father: as being symptomatic of the “return of the repressed on the instinctual level” (Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 487). God’s representation as not only father but also as spouse, argues Ricoeur, disassociates fatherhood from the act/concept of begetting: “By means of this

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strange mutual contamination of two kinship figures, the shell of literality of the image is broken and the symbol is liberated. A father who is a spouse is no longer a progenitor (begetter), nor is he any more an enemy to his sons; love, solicitude, and pity carry him beyond domination and severity” (489). “Fatherhood is thus placed in the realm of a theology of hope” (490). Far from being easy, says Ricoeur, naming God “Father” “is rare, difficult, and audacious, because it is prophetic, directed toward fulfillment rather than toward origins” (491). 7. Ian Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (New York: Routledge, 1989). 8. Below and in chapter 6, I explain why this is significant to the Qurān’s approach to sex/gender. 9. The God of Abraham is also the God of the Qurān and hence of Muslims, as I argue below. 10. See chapter 7 on this point. 11. This is one of the Hebrew views of God, but it has been applied to Islam by some Muslim feminists like Fatna Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (New York: Pergamon, 1984). I critique Sabbah’s arguments in “Texts, Sex, and States: A Critique of North African Discourses on Islam,” in The Arab-­African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. Kevin Lacey and Ralph Coury (New York: Peter Lang, 2000). 12. In Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 8. 13. The concept of (God the) Father in Christianity only arises because of the concept of (Christ the) Son, argue Carl A. Raschke and Susan D. Raschke, The Engendering God: Male and Female Faces of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995). However, in Islam, the question of Christ the Son does not arise. 14. According to Netton, all Muslims share this paradigm. See Netton, Allah Transcendent. 15. Such a view is a far cry from depictions of “the eternal feminine” in terms of “hyperemotionalism, passivity, self-­abnegation, etc.,” as Mary Daly puts it in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon, 1978), 15. 16. And, yet, Murata sees no problems with recognizing, and even reifying, gender dualisms in her own work by using the concepts of yin and yang to describe God’s Reality and by assuming that Muslim constructions of gender are unproblematic. 17. Many Muslim philosophers and Sufis recognized the presence of the feminine and masculine principles in both women and men, but they theorized femininity and masculinity in ways that, instead of promoting a polar view, introduced duality into them. For instance, Rumi held that a woman also has masculine qualities, but these are the negative masculine tendencies of the soul as incarnate in

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Iblis (the devil). And a “man” has feminine qualities, the positive feminine attributes of the soul at peace with God (see Murata, The Tao of Islam, 317). 18. I assume that men also lose out in being defined in hyper-­masculine terms. 19. This view arises in misreading the Qurān’s position on human nature and sexual rights and relationships, which I discuss in chapters 6–8. 20. This is Rosemary Radford Ruether’s phrase in Sexism and God-­Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983). 21. I have drawn on Dawne McCance for this idea and definition. See McCance, Posts: Re-­Addressing the Ethical (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996). 22. See Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, for a discussion of this metaphor. 23. In Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Quran (Gibraltar: Dar al-­Andalus, 1980), 76 n. 50. 24. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 23. It may be true, as Pateman argues, that the contract is a “modern means of creating relationships of subordination” (118). However, it does not follow from this that the contract itself is patriarchal, as her argument seems to suggest. In this context, I am wary of those definitions of patriarchy that are so generalized as to have little specificity. Also, if we see everything as a reworking of patriarchy, we cannot ever hope to dislodge it, nor in fact to recognize challenges to it, such as those that I believe the Qurān poses. 25. Chapter 5 further develops my arguments about Abraham’s story while also contrasting it with the biblical one, as well as with its interpretations by Ibn al-­‘Arabi, Søren Kierkegaard, and Jacques Derrida. 26. A tradition says the Prophet appointed a woman to be imām of her household. See Kaukab Siddique and Jane I. Smith, “Women, Religion and Social Change in Early Islam,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. Yvonne Y. Haddad and Ellison B. Findly (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985), 31. 27. According to Asad (The Message of the Quran), it was Abraham’s understanding and not necessarily God’s will that led him to make the near sacrifice. 28. Incidentally, Lot’s and Noah’s wives were punished for their ingratitude to God, not to their husbands, as should be obvious from the Qurān’s accounts. 29. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980). 30. The Qurān’s references (e.g., 21:7) to men as prophets only clarify that human beings (bashar/rijaalin), and not angels, were sent as prophets since the words bashar/rijaalin have three meanings: man, humans, and complete person, all of which are “used in the Arabic language for both sexes.” See Rafi Ullah Shahab, Muslim Women in Political Power (Lahore, Pakistan: Maqbool Academy, 1993), 18. To claim that since the Qurān does not mention women prophets, it does not deem women worthy of prophethood is simply to conjecture. If the

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Qurān’s silence on this issue can be read as indifference, it can also be read as an awareness of historical conditions. Clearly, in patriarchies, women prophets would have been at greater risk than men, all of whom suffered torment at the hands of their own people. 31. Khadijah’s wealth did not alter the Prophet’s status, however, since he did not inherit from her and lived in poverty until the end of his life. See Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962). 32. The fact that the Prophet is viewed as a role model for both sexes, argues Barbara Metcalf, is a “telling indication of the extent to which women and men are regarded as essentially the same, however different their social places.” See Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s “Bihishti Zewar”: A Partial Translation with Commentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 242. 33. Ibid. 34. Levy, Social Structure, 201. 35. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, 242. 36. See Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); and Fedwa Malti-­Douglas, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-­Islamic Writing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). 37. As Wiebke Walther points out, when the verses about the Prophet’s wives were revealed, he gave them a choice to remain with him or to leave; he “won them over with diplomacy and kindness” and not “by insisting on male superiority.” See Walther, Woman in Islam (Montclair, NJ: Abner Schram, 1981), 75. 38. The presence or absence of one diacritical mark, then, can change the meaning of an entire āyah. See M. H. Sherif, “What Is Hijab?,” The Muslim World 77, nos. 3–4 (July-­October 1987). 39. Barbara Stowasser, “The Mothers of the Believers in the Hadith,” The Muslim World 82, nos. 1–2 (January-­April 1992): 14. 40. See George F. Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). However, as Fazlur Rahman argues, there is no reason for Muslims to believe in their own “theoretical infallibility.” See Rahman, Islamic Methodology, 77. Chapt er 5 1. This chapter is a substantially revised version of an essay that originally appeared in Religion and the Body, edited by Tore Ahlback and published by the Donner Institute for Research, Åbo, Finland, June 2011, and is reprinted with permission from the Donner Institute. I am grateful to Ulises Mejias and Michelle

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Lelwica for their questions, which allowed me to refine some of my arguments, and to Kelly Rafferty for her help with proofreading and the bibliography. 2. I retain the word “Abraham” since that is how most English translations of the Qurān refer to him. 3. This may be because missing from the Qurān are what Jeffrey Weeks calls the tortuous “Judeo-­Christian disquisitions on the sins of the flesh.” See Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 65. 4. Muhammad Asad refers to the Arabic word as “work” in one of his translations and as “endeavor” in another. Both translations are called The Message of the Quran; the first was published in Gibraltor (Dar al-­Andalus, 1980) and the second in Pakistan (Dar ul Uloom, n.d.). 5. Neither version allows one to determine Isaac’s age with any certainty. Some Jewish commentators believe that Isaac may even have been in his thirties, so this depiction of Abraham as an infanticidal father seems overdrawn. 6. The phrase is Søren Kierkegaard’s, from Fear and Trembling, Repetition, translated by Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 21. Edward Mooney points out that this is just “a narrative construct, a fictional ideal-­type” that allows one to tell faith from fanaticism. See Mooney, Knights of Faith and Resignation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991), 83–84. Even so, the ideal-­type has the effect of reducing a prophet to a knight. 7. Lippman Bodoff, however, argues that one “cannot prove” Abraham’s intention to kill his son. See Bodoff, The Binding of Isaac, Religious Murders, and Kabbalah (New York: Devora, 2005), 40. Bruce Chilton, on the other hand, counters Kierkegaard’s portrayal of Abraham by pointing out that in the Bible his character has “the staying power of a weathervane.” See Chilton, Abraham’s Curse (New York: Doubleday Religion, 2008), 201–2. 8. See Jerome Gellman for why Isaac’s potential murder does not violate Kierkegaard’s view of the ethical. Gellman, The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 8. 9. In my reading (below), I explain why this role is not a purely formal one. 10. This is, of course, not implied in the Qurānic text. 11. Incidentally, these arguments occur not in his chapter on Abraham, but on Isaac, even though al-­‘Arabi believes that it was Ismail whom Abraham set out to sacrifice. 12. For a more systematic and nuanced comparison of al-­‘Arabi and Kierkegaard, see M. H. Askari, “Ibn-­e Arabi and Kierkegaard,” translated by M. U. Memon, Annual of Urdu Studies, no. 19 (2004): 311–35. 13. I clarify my definition of patriarchy and also offer my reading of Abraham’s story in a more careful and nuanced way, but also with some different emphases,

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in Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), especially chapters 1 and 4. 14. Even if Muslims differ in their understanding of submission, the concept itself is integral to their self-­definition. 15. That is why, argues Chilton, “nothing takes away from the emphasis in the Muslim Aqedah that the test Ibrahim faced was ‘obvious’” (Abraham’s Curse, 161). 16. There is only one Muslim feminist reference to this story, but it makes the patently counterfactual claim that “unlike Isaac in the biblical narrative, the son in this [Qurānic] story does not know that God had commanded his father to sacrifice him.” See Riffat Hassan, “Eid al-­Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) in Islam,” in Commitment and Commemoration, Jews, Christians, Muslims in Dialogue, ed. Andre LaCocqe (Chicago: Exploration Press of the Chicago Theological Seminary, 1994), 131–50. 17. Michelle Lelwica, personal correspondence, 2010. 18. One of the earliest advocates of this view was Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). 19. Translation of the Arabic word Rabb. 20. I borrow this phrase from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996). Chapt er 6 1. In Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qurān: Text, Translation and Commentary, 2nd US ed. (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qurān, 1988), 178. 2. Susan Hekman, Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 79. 3. Barbara Stowasser, Women in the Qurān: Traditions and Interpretations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 37. Stowasser is referring here to Muslim attitudes, but this view of the psycho-­social difference between the sexes lacks a Qurānic referent, as does the view of the principle of absolute sex/gender equality as “subversive,” as she herself points out. 4. See Toril Moi’s discussion of Helene Cixous in Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985). I discuss in chapter 4 why binary modes of thinking run counter to Islamic ideas of God’s unity, or Tawhīd. 5. The tradition of assigning reason to men is a mixed one since ecclesiastical and biblical teachings also hold that “man’s reason is depraved.” See Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, trans. Robert Yarborough (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), 25. 6. Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 43. 7. Stowasser uses this term in Women in the Qurān.

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8. For a discussion of the concept of mutual recognition and its relevance to democratic relationships, see Alan Gilbert, Democratic Individuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). I find the term useful for identifying certain themes in the Qurān. 9. For instance, Jan Hjarpe holds that Muslim apologetics are carried out in one of four ways: comparing the real treatment of women through Western/ Christian history with Islamic ideals; by arguing that, when correctly applied, the “Islamic pattern of life allows women a decent and secure position”; by claiming that the “Islamic view of women corresponds to their nature and genetical characteristics”; and by insisting on judging “true Islam” (of the Qurān and Sunnah) rather than the real treatment of Muslim women. In my own view, however, it seems reasonable to distinguish between theory and practice (Hjarpe’s second objection). See Hjarpe, “The Attitude of Islamic Fundamentalism towards the Question of Women in Islam,” in Women in Islamic Societies: Social Attitudes and Historical Perspectives, ed. Bo Utas (Copenhagen: Curzon Press, 1983), 15. 10. See Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 11. I use the concepts of sameness/similarity interchangeably though not all theorists consider them identical. See Zillah Eisenstein, Female Body and the Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 12. For various meanings of nafs, see Zafar Ansari, “Introduction,” and Absar Ahmad, “Quranic Concepts of Human Psyche,” in Quranic Concepts of Human Psyche, ed. Z. A. Ansari (Lahore, Pakistan: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1992). While God created the first pair without parents, no other human was created without a mother, but Jesus was created without a father. What this might mean for theorizing the role of both parents is an area that Muslims do not seem to have explored. 13. See Riffat Hassan, “An Islamic Perspective,” in Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Karen Lebacqz (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1999); and Amina Wadud, Qurān and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 14. Mahmud M. Taha, The Second Message of Islam (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987). 15. This argument is also spurious because angels, who were created prior to humans, do not enjoy any epistemic/symbolic privilege over them in the Qurān. 16. I argue against this idea in chapter 4. 17. As many of my students at Ithaca College (Fall 1999) pointed out, however, this notion does not do justice to the Qurān’s view of humans, which can best be presented by means of a nonsequential equation. To them, the fact that B follows A already suggests a hierarchy.

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18. For different types of oaths and their significance in the Qurān, see Ali, Qurān, 1784–87. 19. Margaret Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 446. Hodgen uses this phrase to describe European constructions of the Other, but scriptural exegesis also uses time to establish a hierarchy of being between women and men. 20. Hodgen, Early Anthropology, 446. 21. I believe the doctrine of man’s alienation from God, symbolized by the Fall, leads to Otherizing not only women but also non-­Christian Others; that is, at the core of Western/Christian theories of alterity is the displacement onto non-­Western/non-­Christian people of this sense of alienation from God. For a compelling analysis of the Qurān’s approach to religious difference, see Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 22. C. A. O. Nieuwenhuijze, Paradise Lost: Reflections on the Struggle for Authenticity in the Middle East (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 69. 23. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 101. 24. The concept of dīn is far richer than the term faith conveys since it indicates a mode of existence, a way of life; I use the word faith only because it is more familiar to Western readers. 25. In Islam, women and men must say the same prayers at the same times; I clarify this point because in Judaism, for instance, women are obligated to pray “but not at fixed times or with fixed content as men are.” See Judith Antonelli, In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah (London: Jason Aronson, 1995), 181. 26. The Qurān makes clear that its use of the term garden is a similitude; it also points out that there is no “crookedness” in its use of similitudes. For a discussion of the Qurānic metaphor of the garden, see Ali, Qurān, 1464. 27. See Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney for why diversity connotes degeneration in Western religious and secular discourse (International Relations and the Problem of Difference [New York: Routledge, 2004]). In particular, see chapter 2. 28. On this basis, neoconservatives question multicultural agendas in the United States. 29. This problem is not limited only to anthropology, however, and seems to be a function of liberalism itself. For the limits of mutuality in dialogue because of liberal relativism, see Asma Barlas, “Muslim Women and Sexual Oppression: Reading Liberation from the Quran,” Macalester International 10 (Spring 2001). 30. The phrase is from M. Mac an Ghaill, Contemporary Racisms and Ethnicities: Social and Cultural Transformations (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), 50.

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31. For an excellent study of religious differences/pluralism in Islam, see Lamptey, Never Wholly Other. 32. I borrow the phrase from Carol Gilligan, “Remapping the Moral Domain: New Images of Self in Relationship,” in Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education, ed. Carol Gilligan et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 33. I examine this claim in chapter 7. 34. Since the Qurān’s teachings about sex are linked to its teachings about marriage, readers might want to read sections 1 and 2 in chapter 7 before returning to the following discussion. I should also clarify that this is a relatively simple discussion of an enormously complex topic; my point is merely to emphasize those Qurānic teachings that are conducive to theorizing sexual equality or which allow us to challenge ideologies of male privilege, hence patriarchy. 35. See Antonelli, In the Image of God, 227, 229. L. E. Goodman points out that the Torah’s prohibitions arise not in the idea of impurity but in the “mingling of blood with eros,” which “may overlay images of violence upon our sexuality.” Also, as he notes, impurity is assigned to the period, not to the woman. See Goodman, God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 225. 36. See Antonelli, 227, 229, for a different reading of this prayer. 37. However, as Reuben Levy notes, Muslim jurists have “hedged” about this permission with restrictions. See Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 79. Both women and men had to free their slaves before marrying them. See Robert Roberts, The Social Laws of the Qoran (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1971), 16. 38. For my critique of Geraldine Brooks’s characterization of the “Muslim paradise,” see Barlas, “Muslim Women and Sexual Oppression.” 39. That the Qurān is concerned only with “private parts” becomes even clearer when it clarifies that women need not cover in front of “children who have not yet attained knowledge of women’s private parts.” Similarly, women who are “past childbearing and have no hope of marriage” can “put off their clothes, so be it that they flaunt no ornament; but to abstain is better for them.” See A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Allen and Unwin, 1955), 50, 55. 40. The Qurān then lists the men before whom such precautions are not necessary, and these include men one cannot take as future sexual partners (husbands). 41. Al-­Baydawi, quoted in Barbara Stowasser, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” in Muslim Women, ed. Freda Hussain (New York: St. Martin’s, 1984), 27. 42. Such a view assumes that Muslim men can remain moral only if they are deprived even of the sight of a woman. If this is the premise, then Muslim men can never hope to develop morally since even if they cannot see the women in their own communities, women of other cultures, especially of the West, will always be visible to them.

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43. As I argue in my critique of Ahmed, tribes also comprise men. See Asma Barlas, “Texts, Sex, and States: A Critique of North African Discourses on Islam,” in The Arab-­African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. Kevin Lacey and Ralph Coury (New York: Peter Lang, 2000). 44. See Fatna Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (New York: Pergamon, 1984). For my critique of Sabbah, see Barlas “Texts, Sex, and States.” 45. Montgomery Watt, Companion to the Quran (Oxford: Oneworld, 1994), 41. 46. One can also read this āyah as assuming sexual control in men, who also are forbidden in another āyah from sexually abusing their female slaves. This is in contrast to Muslim misogynist views of an out-­of-­control male sexuality, shared also by some Jewish rabbis who sanctioned the rape of war captives on the grounds that men could not control themselves. As an illustration of this view, they also credited King David with having had four hundred sons by women captives of war. See Antonelli, In the Image of God. 47. Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 187. 48. I have borrowed this expression from Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction (New York: Routledge, 1990). 49. As noted earlier, some Muslim exegetes, extrapolating from Joseph’s story, endow women with kayd, allegedly a form of female guile or destructive intelligence. Thus, Fedwa Malti-­Douglas, in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word, argues that the “misogynist vision in Islam (and subsequently in the medieval Arabic literary consciousness) has its literary roots in the Joseph story in the Quran [that speaks of ] women’s guile” (19). On the basis of this view, many exegetes also posit a “consistent and under-­lying binary opposition operating between woman and [God]. . . . A sort of oppositional paradigmatic relationship exists between woman and God, as though closeness to one precluded closeness to the other” (59). Even some modern Muslim scholars take the story as being representative of the eternal feminine (see Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam). In the Qurān, however, it is the husband of the woman bent upon seducing Joseph who uses the phrase about guile; it is not the Qurān’s idea of female nature. Ironically, the same woman (Zulaikha) is a sympathetic figure in classical Muslim thought as the symbol of longing and unrequited love. See Annemarie Schimmel, “Eros—Heavenly and Not So Heavenly—in Sufi Literature and Life,” in Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam, ed. Afaf Lutfi Al-­Sayyid Marsot (Malibu, CA: Undena, 1979). 50. There are, of course, some attributes that are unique to men in their capacity as human beings rather than, say, as angels; for instance, they have the ability to reason and make moral choices, but this ability extends also to women.

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Chapt er 7 1. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 33. As an example of a strict patriarchy, Millett cites Islam because “in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia the adulteress is still stoned to death” (43). This is a rather sloppy argument because, among other things, she takes it as a given what whatever Muslims do is, by definition, Islamic. For the record, however, stoning to death does not derive from the Qurān; a tradition says the Prophet prescribed it, in keeping with Jewish law, for punishing a Jewish man and woman taken in adultery. 2. Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 213. 3. I explain why many of the Qurān’s teachings are egalitarian even when read in light of modern Western/feminist insights. 4. Islam treated marriage as a social contract in the seventh century CE, whereas it would not be until the fourteenth century that it would acquire this form in Europe. In Islam, the contract includes conditions for its termination (divorce), which was not the case in the European marriage contract until the nineteenth century. See Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). 5. I do not deal with the issue of concubinage since the practice is no longer in vogue or accepted, and I treat the Qurān’s provisions on the subject as having been historically specific. 6. See Jean Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 7. For the argument that the public/private separation does not explain women’s oppression, see Linda Nicholson, Gender and History: The Limits of Social Theory in the Age of the Family (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). For differing cultural notions of the public and private, and the problems with viewing them as fixed categories, see Shirley Ardener (ed.), Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps (Oxford: Berg, 1993). 8. Barbara Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation with Commentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 7. 9. As Elshtain (Public Man) argues, recasting the public/private as the spheres of production/reproduction transforms their meaning. Central to this model, associated with Marxists and feminists, is the view that the family is a basic economic unit, and that women were universal objects of exchange even though much evidence suggests otherwise. 10. Fazlur Rahman argues that while the Qurān does envisage “a division of labor [and] difference in functions,” it is not “against women earning wealth and being economically self-­sufficient; indeed, the Prophet’s first wife, Khadijah,

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owned a business and the Quran recognizes the full and independent economic personality of a wife or a daughter.” See Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), 49. However, the fact that the Qurān recognizes different functions does not mean it endorses them. 11. See Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 12. I discuss the father’s obligations toward daughters in the text below. Incidentally, the Sharīah makes the father liable for much more: He has to maintain his infant child, whether or not he has custody; the infant child of a son who cannot afford to maintain the child himself; a disabled or student son; an unmarried daughter of any age; and a widowed or divorced daughter if ill. See John Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982). 13. Clearly, this verse is inclusive of women. 14. This seems to be a reiteration of the moral of the Abrahamic narrative. 15. This distinction is expressed in Christianity in terms of the separation of Church and state, or as a distinction between what is God’s due and what is Caesar’s; the Qurān, however, does not make such distinctions. 16. Taqwá, as I argue in earlier chapters, is the foundation of faith and moral personality. 17. While the Qurān locates procreation in the womb (female body), Muslim misogyny has sought to sever the connection between wombs and mothers, and also between woman’s body/sexuality and procreation. Fedwa Malti-­Douglas (Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word, 109) argues that the “dream of a world without sex is tied in the Islamic mental universe to that of a world without woman. The wish to separate creation or procreation from sexuality brings the Islamic view close that of its Christian cousin.” (I would disagree only with the use of the word Islamic since this is a Muslim predilection.) In fact, such views predate Christianity; as Elshtain argues, Plato’s ideal was also “a kind of parthenogenesis where male elites could give birth to themselves” (in Pateman, Sexual Contract, 89). 18. Rafi Ullah Shahab, Muslim Women in Political Power (Lahore, Pakistan: Maqbool Academy, 1993). As he notes, the woman’s share is less than a man’s in only one case: that of daughters. Of course, Muslim exegetes never read this provision regarding mothers as meaning that one woman equals two men. 19. See Kari Vogt, “‘Becoming Male’: A Gnostic, Early Christian and Islamic Metaphor,” in Women’s Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Foremothers, by Kari Borresen and Kari Vogt (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic, 1993). 20. Malti-­Douglas (Woman’s Body, 109) cites a number of influential Muslim works on this theme. For instance, Ibn Tufayl proposes a male utopia in which women grow on trees, while male couples (brothers) represent an ideal social relationship.

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21. At times, Sabbah’s view of motherhood suggests that women can create life at will; given this view, it is not surprising that she feels women can only be invested with power in a God-­less and father-­less universe. This is, however, a feminist inversion of the misogynistic fantasy of the world without women that she criticizes. See Sabbah, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (New York: Pergamon, 1984). 22. Such a view projects onto God male fears of women’s sexual and reproductive powers. See Elshtain, Public Man. 23. In a 60 Minutes documentary on Iran aired on May 10, 1998, a cleric claimed that a father who had killed his daughter had acted in accordance with Islam’s teachings. However, the Qurān does not give parents the right to kill their children. This is in contrast to a tradition in the Torah that allows rowdy sons to be put to death with their parents’ consent. See Judith Antonelli, In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah (London: Jason Aronson, 1995). 24. Exegetes who argue that the Qurān attaches less significance to a woman’s evidence than it does to a man’s never consider the implications of this āyah, however. 25. The Qurān’s idea of mutual love and care between spouses also infuses its teachings about Paradise when it promises believing families togetherness; however, it clarifies that everyone in the family is responsible for their own praxis. 26. According to Antonelli (In the Image of God ), the Judaism of the Old Testament also emphasizes the concepts of loving and honoring one’s wife. 27. M. Asad, The Message of the Quran (Gibraltar: Dar al-­Andalus, 1980), 871 n. 11. 28. In the Qurān, this punishment is specifically for men, even though commentators do not distinguish between women and men. See Mustansir Mir, Dictionary of Quranic Terms and Concepts (New York: Garland, 1987). In this context, it is significant that God also revealed two su¯rahs (Maryam and An-­Nur) in defense of the honor of Mary and Ayesha, both of whom were subjected to male slander. 29. See Amina Wadud, Qurān and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 30. There are different types of divorce in Islam, including divorce by the man, the woman, mutual, and judicial (awarded by the court). Within the first type of divorce, there also are different models. See Ramola Buxamusa, “The Existing Divorce Laws Among Muslims in India,” in Muslim Women: Problems and Prospects, ed. Zakia A. Siddiqui and Anwar Jahan Zuberi (New Delhi: M. D. Publications, 1993). See also John Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982). 31. Esposito, 29. 32. The time period that women have to wait for the divorce to become effective is called the iddat, discussed further in the text.

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33. This injunction is in contrast to the practice in Judaism of the man writing down the divorce, giving it to his wife, and then “send[ing] her away from his house.” See Antonelli, In the Image of God, 466. 34. Some Muslim men, ever in search of ingenious openings, use the pretext that their wives are lewd to expel them from their homes, ignoring that the Qurān lays down strict guidelines for charging a woman in this way, as I note in the text that follows. 35. This practice is not only egalitarian for women, but it also protects children. As Elizabeth Fox-­Genovese argues, whenever “men have been unwilling or unable to [pay women to be mothers], women have tended to have abortions, commit infanticide, abandon or give up their children for adoption, or struggle along the best they could.” As well, “Growing acceptance of single motherhood [is] liberating men from any stake in children at all.” See Fox-­Genovese, “Procreation and Women’s Rights: A Response to Nicky Hart,” in Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality, ed. Nikki Keddie (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 55–56. 36. This does not mean that mothers are to lose custody of their child after two years, as most Muslims believe. 37. Taking custody away from women on the grounds that they cannot support their child/ren violates the Qurān’s teachings since it unfairly discriminates against the mother. Moreover, in Islam, the father is charged with the upkeep of the child whether or not he has custody. 38. The emphasis attached to paternity is taken as a sign by many feminists of patriarchal repression. However, as Antonelli points out, “knowledge of paternity is a necessary pre-­requisite for the demand that men take responsibility for the consequences of sex” (In the Image of God, xxv; italics in the original). A similar logic applies in Islam where the father’s heirs are charged with the responsibility of taking care of his child/ren and divorced wife, should he die. 39. For a discussion of this form of divorce, see Ali, The Holy Qurān, 1510 n. 5330. 40. Many men have adopted the practice of pronouncing divorce three times at one sitting, which makes it irrevocable. This is simply an abuse of the Qurān’s teachings. 41. Here I understand the reference to be to sex, not to gender. 42. I am indebted to Demir Barlas for phrasing it this way in our private correspondence. 43. This is a questionable view. In ancient Athenian society, for instance, women’s low status did not derive from men’s control over the products of their labor, and it certainly does not in many Muslim societies where women do not or are not allowed to do waged labor. 44. Pateman, Sexual Contract, 32.

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45. Laurie Shrage, Moral Dilemmas of Feminism: Prostitution, Adultery and Abortion (New York: Routledge, 1994), 165. 46. Elshtain, Public Man. Chapt er 8 1. Aysha Hidayatullah’s term for Amina Wadud’s and my readings; since she refers to us as “feminist exegetes,” in responding to her, I also sometimes use that term, though I do not speak for Wadud. See Hidayatullah, Feminist Edges of the Quran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). I continue to resist this label for reasons I specify in chapter 1. See also Asma Barlas, “Engaging Islamic Feminism: Provincializing Feminism as a Master Narrative,” in Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, ed. Anitta Kynsilheto (Finland: Tampere Peace Research Institute, 2008), 15–24. 2. Hidayatullah, xxxvii. 3. Hidayatullah, xx. 4. Ebrahim Moosa, “The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” in Progressive Muslims, ed. Omid Safi (London: Oneworld, 2003), 125. 5. This was her earliest definition, in Al Ahram Weekly, January 17–23, 2002; for an amended one, in 2006, see http://​weekly​.ahram​.org​.eg​/Archive​/2006​/781​ /cu4​.htm (accessed November 24, 2017). 6. The principle of God’s unity. 7. This was Wadud’s initial position in Quran and Woman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). She has since called patriarchy a form of shirk. See Amina Wadud, “Islam beyond Patriarchy through Gender Inclusive Quranic Analysis,” Musawah (2009): http://​www​.musawah​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/Wanted​-­­AW​ -­­Summary​.pdf (accessed October 30, 2016). 8. Mahad Olad, email correspondence, November 11, 2017. 9. Such a statement makes one wonder why her book is titled Feminist Edges of the Quran, and why she refers to herself as well as to Wadud and me as “feminists” and “we” when she so fundamentally disagrees with us. 10. In response to my pointing this out (Barlas 2016, 116), Ali explains (2016, 123–24) that what she calls dishonest and futile is “not the project of egalitarian interpretation itself [but] interpretations that rest on ‘systematic avoidance’ of scriptural passages with seemingly patriarchal plain sense meanings.” However, this is not what she says in her original sentence. 11. Here I should note that Ali also rejects historicizing the Qurān’s stance on slavery. She asks, “[W]here is God’s justice in permitting slavery in the first place, if slavery constituted an injustice and a wrong in the seventh century, just as it would and does in the twenty-­first century?” (55). She answers her own question by saying that since God also “orders Muslims to combat injustice and oppression,” the “only possible response” to its position on slavery “is to suggest that the

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Quranic text itself requires Muslims to sometimes depart from its literal provisions in order to establish justice.” However, it is not true that the only possible response in this situation is to depart from its “literal provisions”; a more accurate response would be to say that in the seventh century, people did not regard slavery as unjust, as we do in the twenty-­first century; besides, the Qurān does not call slavery just. 12. Kenan Malik, The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics. https://​kenanmalik​.wordpress​.com​/2014​/09​/17​/a​-s­­ nippet​-­­of​-­­the​-­­quest​-­­islams​ -­­lost​-­­traditions/ (accessed November 23, 2017). 13. Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964). 14. Ibrahim Najjar, Faith and Reason in Islam: Averroes’ Exposition of Religious Arguments (London: Oneworld, 2002). 15. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2002), 155. 16. I make this point in chapter 1. 17. For a compelling defense of why the social and the spiritual realms are inseparable, see Sa’diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 18. Henry A. Virkler and Karelynne Gerber Ayayo, Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 30. 19. I have borrowed these phrases from Jessica Benjamin, Like Subjects, Love Objects (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 12. 20. The phrase is Antonio Gramsci’s; quoted in Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1979), 25. 21. Of course, most Muslims do not use this language, but they take the Qurān to be male-­privileging. 22. For instance, Christians have historicized the Bible for centuries without negating its “supernatural status.” See Dirk van Miert, Henk Nellen, Piet Steenbakkers, and Jetze Touber, eds., Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 6. 23. Quoted in Sherman Jackson, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al-­Ghazali’s Faysal al-­Tafriqa Bayna al-­Islam wa al-­Zandaqa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 106. Po stsc ript 1. Ellman in Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985), 32. 2. M. E. Combs-­Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 89.

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3. Neal Robinson, Discovering the Quran: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (London: SCM, 1996), 29. 4. Alves, quoted in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 23. 5. Naeem Inayatullah pointed out to me that this line of argument is suggested by Ashis Nandy’s discussion of utopias in Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). 6. Miguez-­Bonino, “Marxist Critical Tools: Are They Helpful in Breaking the Stranglehold of Idealist Hermeneutics?,” in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (New York: Orbis, 1991), 77. 7. James J. Buckley, “The Hermeneutical Deadlock between Revelationalists, Textualists, and Functionalists,” Modern Theology 6, no. 4 (July 1990): 331. 8. I completed most of this manuscript in 1999 and wrote the postscript to the first edition in January 2001 and the postscript to this one in April 2018. 9. Ashis Nandy, Intimate Enemies: Loss and Recovery of the Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). 10. I have borrowed this phrase from Munawar Ahmad Anees, “Illuminating Ilm,” in How We Know: Ilm and the Revival of Knowledge, ed. Ziauddin Sardar (London: Grey Seal, 1991), 14. 11. In Asad, Message of the Qurān, 20:1–4, 470.

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322

I n de x

Abbasid state, 40, 75–77, 85–91, 93, 248 Abduh, Muhammad, 52 Abdullah, 126 Abraham —breaking with father and father’s god, 115–118, 122 —and father-right/rule, 114–118, 121, 123 —made imām not patriarch, 114, 119–120 —sacrifice of son: al-Arabi on, 135, 137, 138, 140–142; author’s reading of, 142–149; Biblical account (Isaac), 8, 134–136, 142–144, 148–149, 293nn5, 294n16; Kierkegaard on, 140–141; Qurānic account, 120–121, 136–137 —search for God, 114–115 Abu Bakr, 130, 283n15 Abu Huraira, 52 Abu Layla, Muhammad, 36 Abu Zayd, Nasr Hamid, 94, 249–253 Adam, 160, 163–164, 176, 258 additive knowledge construction, 84 adultery: with chaste women, 180; eviction for, 220; stoning for, 68, 299n1; wife’s defense against charges of, 222, 231, 261 ahadīth (singular hādith), 9, 34, 40, 43–53, 70–72, 177 Ahmed, Leila, 2, 10, 45, 48, 53, 90, 129, 186, 197, 234 al-Arabi, Ibn, 103–104, 124, 135, 137, 138–142 al-Baydawi, 8, 48, 58, 286n47

al-Bukhari, 50 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, 9, 69, 84, 264 al-Hibri, Azizah, 214–215, 238 Ali (cousin of Prophet), 127 Ali, Kecia, 239–244, 255–259 al-Khafafi, 58 Allah: and Abraham, 142; as all-knowing, 226; creating children in womb, 229; meaning of, 104, 109; and men as managers, 214; menstruation taboo and purification, 187–188; in pre-Islamic society, 39; as Seer, 212; in supreme, active control of universe, 141; women as partner of, 174 allegorical (obscure) āyāt, 17–18, 38, 103–104, 122, 246, 268–269 allegory, 40, 122, 246 al-Mamun (caliph), 86, 248–249 al-Shafi, 43–44, 47, 69, 72, 76, 83, 88 al-Suyuti, 8, 38 al-Tabari, Muhammad, 8, 41, 58, 163, 215 Ames, Roger, 106 androcentrism in Qurān, 107, 109, 191, 237, 240–244, 251, 262 angels, 291n30, 295n15 An-Naim, Abdullahi, 75, 77–79 anthropomorphizing God, 15, 98, 104– 105, 107–110, 113, 246 antipatriarchal episteme, 12–13, 16, 85, 154, 238 Antonelli, Judith S., 302n38 Anwar, Zainah, 215 aql (intellect), 63 Arabic as language of Qurān, 18, 24, 38, 163, 220

In dex

Arberry, A. J., 24 Archer, Leonie, 176 Aref Ali Nayed, x Aretaeus, 205 Aristotelian justice dictum, 156 Arkoun, Mohammed, 35–36, 41–43, 45, 47, 52, 66, 249, 252 Asad, Muhammad, 24, 128, 211, 213– 214, 223–224, 228–229, 293n4 Asad, Talal, 36 Ashāb al-Hadīth (texts and traditions), 77 Ashāb al-Ray (critical reasoning), 77 Ashari, 77, 288n18 Askari, Muhammad Hasan, 137–139 authority of religious sources, 68–71 Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 84, 248 awlīya (mutual protectors), 172–174, 214, 258, 260 āyāt: 2:223, 187; 3:14, 186; 4:34, 212– 214, 218–221, 225, 232, 241; allegorical (obscure), 17–18, 38, 103–104, 122, 246, 268–269 Ayayo, Karelynne Gerber, 245 Ayesha, 182; age of at marriage, 130–131; ahādith transmission of, 48–49; attempted slander against, 59; as role model, 206; sūrah in defense of, 287n49, 301n28 Ayoub, Mahmoud, 38, 40–41 azbāb al-nuzūl (occasions of revelation), 55 azwājikum, 211

and “supernatural,” 304n22; Islamic traditions derived from, 43, 48; patriarchalization not inherent in, 23; textual meaning of, 245 binary opposition of sexes, 2, 105, 154, 156, 159–162 Blankinship, Khalid, 86 Bodoff, Lippman, 293n7 body: gaze and, 183–186; Greek typology on, 158; Jewish, Christian beliefs regarding, 59; not central to Qurān, 134–135 Bonner, Frances, 183 Bonvillain, Nancy, 188 Borresen, Kari, 177 Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab, 36, 54, 80, 98 “bounties,” meaning of, 111, 213–214 Brockett, Adrian, 77 Brooks, Geraldine, 182 Brown, Daniel, 68–69, 71, 76, 85, 91 Burton, John, 40, 41, 80–81 Calder, Norman, 40–41 caliph as “God’s deputy,” 86 Carson, D. A., 25 chastity, 178, 180–183, 261 Chaudhry, Ayesha, 221 childbirth as punishment, 43, 163 children: disobedient to parents, 122, 231; during divorce, 227–228; filial obligations of, 201; filial obligation subordinate to God, 143, 198, 203; infanticide, 122, 137, 142–144, 198, 208, 302n35; position of, 130; rights of, 208–209. See also parental rights Chilton, Bruce, 148, 293n7, 294n15 Christianity: body as corrupt/corrupting, 59; Christ as apostle, not God, 100–101, 128; creation narrative in, 162; displacing of motherhood, 206; God as Father in, 290n13; “hierarchy of being,” 162; law borrowed from, 77; misogyny in, 48, 176–177; non-Christian Others in, 296n21;

baal marriages, 197 Badran, Margot, 238–239 Beckingham, C. F., 90 Bell, Richard, 189, 224 Bellamy, James, 50, 177 Bezirgan, Basima, 175 Bible: Abraham’s sacrifice in, 8, 134–136, 142–144, 148–149, 293nn5, 294n16; Adam and Eve in, 163, 258; deity both fully human and divine, 250; God as Father in, 118; as historicized

324

In dex

on, 230–231; making marriages temporary, 197; parents’ rights in, 200; partial ban on, 191, 252, 261; proper/ improper behavior during, 226–230, 302n40; Prophet’s wives given choice of, 129–130; types of, 301n30; women’s rights in, 210, 302n38; zihār divorce banned, 230 dogmatic theology (kalām), 84, 103–105 dualisms: and binary thought, 104–108; dyads in Qurān, 162; humans as two halves of pair, 154, 157–159, 169; polar explanations of gender, 106– 108, 159; and Qurān, 158

original sin in, 163–164; patriarchalization in, 23, 28, 102, 104; priests, 126; Qurānic material derived from, 43, 62; and separation of Church and state, 300n15; “sins of the flesh” in, 185; virginity, celibacy in, 197; woman as Other in, 162–163; woman originating from man, 210, 258. See also Abraham; Bible contextualization of meaning, 6, 54–56, 65, 195, 240–245; decontextualization, 17, 196, 223, 268; recontextualization, 5, 24–26, 55–56, 63, 269 contrasting pairs, 161–162 conversion to Islam, 174–175 Coulson, Noel J., 234 covetousness, 186 Cowan, J. M., 187 Cragg, Kenneth, 19, 56, 62, 283n14 creation of humans, 154, 157–161, 257 Creator models, 103–106, 203, 207 critical scholars, 8, 52, 61–65, 279n27

egalitarianism and hierarchy in Qurān, 173, 257–258 Egypt, 52 Eisenstein, Zillah, 12, 193, 280n44 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 235, 280n42, 299n9, 300n17 El-Sohl, C. Fawzi, 2 episteme, antipatriarchal, 12–13, 16, 23, 85, 133, 154, 238 equality of the sexes, 210–212; as agency/ praxis, 164–175; differential versus equal treatment, 6; humans as two halves of single pair, 157–159, 167– 169, 210; in taqwá of men, women, 157–159 Esack, Farid, 36, 260 Esposito, John, 46, 68, 77, 230, 234, 251, 272 “ethical individualism,” 154, 169 Eve/Hawah, 43, 163–164, 176, 258 expulsion narratives, 163

Daly, Mary, 98 daughters, 126, 197, 200, 204, 208–209, 211, 300n12, 301n23. See also girls David (King), 112 Davies, Merryl Wyn, 100, 111, 166, 170, 173 defining God, 7, 98, 105, 110 degendering “God,” 98 Deleuze, Gilles, 42 democratizing tradition, 71–74 Derrida, Jacques, 135–137, 144, 147–148 dīn (faith), 163–167, 174 divine self-disclosure, 13–16, 99–103, 266–267, 281n46 divine speech, 11, 20–21, 36, 53–54, 61, 83, 269 divine transcendence, 105, 108 divorce: āyāt 4:34–4:35, 221, 225; as contract termination, 299n4; iddat (waiting period) for, 226, 301n32; limits

Fakhry, Majid, 246 Fall, the, 43, 54, 163, 177, 296n21 father-right/rule, 280n42; and Abraham, 114–119, 121, 123; depending on masculine God, 103; desacralizing prophets and, 113–118; and doctrine of Tawhīd, 113; elevation of mothers

325

In dex

father-right/rule (continued ) over, 112, 205–207; and female infanticide, 208; God’s rule displacing, 116, 118, 123–127, 203–205; Marxist feminists on, 234; parents’ rights versus, 200–205; patriarchy as, 12; and Prophet Muhammad, 124. See also infanticide; patriarchy fathers/husbands role: authority of, 132; and children’s duties, 201–205; as divine surrogates, 1, 112–113; God as Father, 101–104, 113–114, 118, 267, 280n43, 290n13; God displacing fathers, 116, 123–126, 131–133, 203–205; and infanticide, 208–209; in Qurān, 118, 132; as separate, 215–216. See also patriarchy feminism, Islamic: critiques of, 239–242; on Islam’s position on mothers, 207; objecting to monotheism as misogynistic, 113; readings of Qurān, 22–24, 196–197, 234–236, 239, 243; sexual equality theory, 156–157, 164–175 Fernea, Elizabeth, 175 Finn, David, 255 fiqh (jurisprudence), 47, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80 Fitra (intrinsic nature), 111, 166, 179, 210 Forward, Martin, 38 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 302n35 free will, 141–142, 166, 192, 204, 288n18 Frei, Hans, 19

generalizing the specific, 53–61 girls: as a calamity, 102, 126; infanticide of, 102, 122, 137, 142–144, 198, 208–209, 302n35; justice for orphaned, 224, 231; marriage to, 130, 182; at prayer, 49; Qurān’s rejection of infanticide of, 102 God: as beyond gender, 15, 22, 98, 104, 113, 201, 238; de-anthropomorphizing, 109, 246; degendering, re-engendering, 98, 109; as incomparable, 15, 103; masculinization of, 108–110; Qurān not father/husband role, 101–104; rights/rule of, 200–204, 207, 267; semiotic collapse of term, 109–110. See also speech, God’s Goldman, Shalom, 285n27 Goldziher, Ignaz, 46, 50–51, 86, 246–247 Goodman, L. E., 100, 183, 297n35 Gramsci, Antonio, 132 Greek influence: harem, 90; “onesex model,” 155; spirit, soul, body ­typology, 158; women as polluting, 175 Grosz, Elizabeth, 107, 155–156 hadīth (plural ahādith), 9, 34, 40, 45–53, 72, 177 Hanafi, Hasan, 44, 189 Hanafi school, 75, 81–82 harem, 90 Harris, Jay, 285n25 Hart, Nicky, 157, 234 harth (“tilth,” property), 187–190 Hassan, Riffat, 159–160, 173, 179, 214–215, 217, 238 Hawting, G. R., 43 heads of households, 130, 195, 198, 204, 214–216, 291n26 Hegel, G. W. F., 235, 257 Heidegger, Martin, 20, 281n55 hermeneutics, 254–256, 261, 264, 266 Hewitt, Marsha A., 155, 235

Gellman, Jerome I., 141 gender: authority between males, females, 173–174; as distinguished from sex, 155; God as beyond, 104–105, 108; inequality versus difference, 169–170, 173, 231–233; polar explanations of, 106–108, 159; in the Qurān, 1–2, 107–108, 178

326

In dex

Hidayatullah, Aysha, 249, 303n1; criticizing feminist readings, 254; dilemma regarding conflicting readings, 251, 255; Qurān and sexual equality, 240, 242–243, 253, 256–259; Qurān as divine/human discourse, 250–251; Qurān not repository of norms, 253; Qurān not sacred text, 241–242, 254; on women’s role as child-bearer, 259 “hierarchy verses,” 238, 242–243, 257, 261, 264 Hinds, Martin, 249 historicizing the particular, 61–65, 243 Hjarpe, Jan, 295n9 Hodgen, Margaret, 162, 282n63 holistic reading of Qurān, 9, 16–19, 24, 44, 196, 268 Holm, Jean, 36 “honor” killings, 209 human body, 59, 134 human creation story, 157–162 human vice-regency, 108, 110, 111–113 husbands: authority of, 215–216; as “breadwinners” (qawwāmūn), 214– 215, 218, 231; equating with God, 112; as “guardians,” 174, 212–214; “strength” mistranslation regarding, 213; in traditional patriarchy, 194– 195; and wife-beating, 216–217; wives as equal to, 212. See also marriage Hussain, Neelam, 4

ijtihād and ijmā, 62, 71–73, 287n11 ilm (knowledge), 50, 63, 70, 84–85, 88, 104, 138, 272 imam, meaning of, 119–120 immanence of God, 104 Inayatullah, Naeem, 286n43, 305n5 individual autonomy, 123–124, 154 indivisibility. See Tawhid inequality versus difference, 169–170, 173, 231–233 infanticide, 102, 122, 137, 142–144, 198, 208–209, 302n35 inheritance rights, 198, 206, 214, 261, 292n31 insān mistranslated as “man,” 109 intercession, 123, 147 interpretation, human, 36, 53, 132–133 intertextuality and religious meaning, 80–85 “irresponsibilization,” ethics as, 137 Isaac, sacrifice of, 142, 144, 294n16; age of, 293n5; body not central, 134–135; ethics of sacrifice, 148–149, 293n8; Qurānic version, 134–136. See also Abraham Islam: belief/unbelief as only distinction, 171–172; Christ not divine under, 128; as egalitarian, 2; Golden Age of, 9–10, 90; marriage under, 198–200, 211–212, 234; as “sex positive” religion, 177; in theory versus in practice, 11–12; united by moral worldview, 127. See also feminism, Islamic Izutsu, Toshihiko, 14, 18, 38–39, 100, 104, 161, 284n18

ibādah (realm of worship), 173–174, 190 Ibn al-Arabi, 103–104, 124, 135, 137–142, 147–148 Ibn al-Batanuni, 289n31 Ibn Hanbal, 49, 75 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 84, 248 Ibn Tufayl, 300n20 Ibn Zuhayra, 88 idriboo (beat), 216, 218–221 ijma (consensus), 43–44, 64, 69, 71–74, 76, 82–88, 92

Jackson, J. R. de J., 25 Jaggar, Alison, 156–157 Jawzi, Bandali, 91 Jesus, 295n12 jilbāb (cloak), 58–61 Job, 216–217 Joseph, 285n27, 298n49

327

In dex

Judaism: God as father, 101–102, 118; Isrāīlīyāt influence, 52; patriarchalization in, 28, 102; priests, 126; Qurānic material derived from, 62; “sins of the flesh” in, 185; women as polluting, 176–177 Junyboll, G. H. A., 50 justice versus equality, 259

males, male/ness: anthropomorphizing God, 98, 113; definitions of, 99; as between God and women, 110, 112; as normative Self, 2; nudity, 184–185; sexual agency, 258–260; and understanding God, 20–21; as vice-regent, 112. See also father-right/rule; fathers/ husbands role Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, 20, 285n27, 289n31, 298n49, 300nn17 Marlow, Louise, 86, 88 marriage: as contractual, 234, 299n4; husbands’ right of discipline, 212– 222; Islamic, 198–200, 211–212, 234; legal equality with differences, 231; meaning of daraba, 216–217, 220, 232; meaning of nushūz, 214, 216, 218–219, 225–226, 232; meaning of qanit, qanitāt, 214–219; meaning of qawwāmūn, 214–215, 218; monogamy preferred, 231; as mutual love and fulfillment, 159, 179, 187, 211; as social contract, 209–210, 234; and spousal equality, 210–212; wife-beating, 216, 218–221; women’s rights in Arab society, 197–198, 210, 222–225 Marxist feminism, 234 Mary, 101, 203, 219, 287n49, 301n28 masculine and feminine principles, 106–108, 110 “master-slave” metaphor, 111 Maududi, Abul Ala, 7, 179, 214 McMillan, Carol, 234, 235–236 mean, ideal of the, 166 Meccan sūrahs, 64 Mejias, Ulises, 42 menstruation, 43, 163, 176, 187–188, 192, 231, 261 Mernissi, Fatima, 4, 49, 88, 90, 265 Metcalf, Barbara, 292n32 Millett, Kate, 153, 155, 176, 261, 299n1 Mir, Mustansir, 8, 40 Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, 74, 215, 239

kalām (dogmatic theology), 84, 103–105 Kennedy, Hugh, 77, 87, 89 Kerr, Malcolm H., 76–77 Khadijah, 127, 292n31, 299–300n10 Khalidi, Tarif, 61–62, 70, 76, 85, 86–89 “Khalil,” 138. See also Abraham Kharijites, 288n18 khilāfah (vice-regency) of humans, 108, 110, 111–113 khumur (shawl), 58–59 Kierkegaard, Søren, 134–137, 140–141 King, Catherine, 183 “King/Lord” inappropriate terms for God, 110 Kister, M. J., 51 knowledge creation, 80, 85–94 Kristeva, Julia, 43, 283n5 Laqueur, Thomas, 155–156, 193 Lassner, Jacob, 87–89, 285n26, 289n29 Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, 84 Leacock, Eleanor Burke, 234 Leemhuis, Fred, 142 Lelwica, Michelle, 143 Levy, Reuben, 60, 230, 288n20, 297n37 liberatory readings, 2–3, 11–12, 14, 21–22, 93 Lokhandwalla, S. T., 69 Lowin, Shari L., 141 Luther, Martin, 280n43 Mabro, Judy, 2 Madinan sūrahs, 64 Mahmood, Saba, 94, 250, 252

328

In dex

misogyny: attributing to God, 15; lesbian accusations of, 235; and monotheism, 164; motherhood verses labeled as, 207; readings exhibiting, 1–2, 4–9, 48–49, 52, 68; sexual abuse of wives, 191 Moazzam, Anwar, 72, 84 modes of reading, 20–22, 196–197 modesty and lust, 178–186 monotheism: incompatible with patriarchy, 97–98, 113, 116, 125; and principle of divine unity, 99–100 Mooney, Edward, 141, 293n6 Moosa, Ebrahim, 239, 243, 249, 257 moral freedom, 124 moral hierarachy, 171 “moral personality,” 169 moral praxis, 58, 107, 154, 163, 166– 167, 170, 204 Moses, 17, 125, 140, 203, 268 mothers: children’s duties toward, 201– 205; Muslim feminists views on, 207; reverence owed toward, 205–206; and rights of fathers, 112, 197, 200–201, 231; role of, 203, 206–207 Muhammad. See Prophet (Muhammad) Muhammad, Waqas, 218–221 Murata, Sachiko, 103–107, 124, 171– 172, 190, 206, 284n22, 290n16 mushaf (official recension) of Qurān, 35–36, 41–43, 249 muslim (self-surrender to God), 147 Muslim feminism. See feminism, Islamic Mutazilah, 108, 237, 245–249, 251, 273, 284n17, 288n18 mutual guardianship (awlīya), 172–174, 214, 258, 260 mutuality, 159, 170, 173, 179, 190, 201–202, 236, 241–244, 256–258 mystical exegesis, 103, 135, 138–140

Nandy, Ashis, 271 naskh (rationale of abrogation), 38, 54, 64, 284n24 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 106 Nayed, Aref Ali, 63 neo-Platonic Creator model, 103–104 Netton, Ian, 38, 103–104, 108–109, 246 Neuwirth, Angelika, 161 Nicholson, Linda J., 233 Nicolaisen, Ida, 177 Noah, 123, 291n28 norms, making of, 11, 78, 236, 239, 243, 250, 273 nudity, 186, 297n39 nushūz, meaning of, 214, 216, 218–219, 225–226, 232 “Official Corpus,” 48 Omar, 130 “one-sex model,” 155–157, 160, 245 ontological equality of sexes, 155, 157– 161, 210, 233, 243, 256, 267 original sin, 163–164 orphans, 223–225, 231, 261 Other: native Americans as, 163; woman as, 153, 156, 162 Padel, Ruth, 175 pair, humans as two halves of, 154, 157–159, 169 Pakistan, 52 Paradise, 163, 182, 187, 189 parental rights, obligations, 200–205, 228, 231. See also children; fathers/ husbands role; mothers Parrinder, Geoffrey, 176 partners to God, 99, 100, 102, 113, 115, 166, 174 Pateman, Carole, 194–195, 210, 234, 291n24 patriarchy: binary thinking and, 154, 156; and biological/sexual differences, 155; cited support in Qurān, 2, 7–11; definitions of, 1–2, 12–14, 97, 114,

nafs (Self ), 107, 158–160, 170, 174, 177, 210 Nagel, Tilman, 248

329

In dex

prophets not symbolic fathers, 113–114 public/private spheres, 198–200 pudendency, 177 purity, 180

patriarchy (continued ) 195; elevating God, prophet, males, 153; incompatible with monotheism, 97–98, 113, 116, 117, 125; Islam not a religion of, 97, 102–103; versus monotheism, 126; and “patriarchal marriage,” 195; Qurān’s posture toward, 232, 238–245, 253 People of the Book, 18, 126, 148, 181 Peters, F. E., 50, 75, 286n36 Pickthall, M. M., 24, 131, 211 polar explanations of gender, 106–108, 159 polygyny, 6; in Arab culture, 197–198; not universal, 225; popular views of, 177–178, 182; problem of inequity within, 224; of the Prophet, 130–131; to protect vulnerable orphans, 223– 225, 231, 261 polytheism: Abraham’s breaking of idols, 117; and patriarchal traditions, 117; Qurān’s rejection of, 101–102, 211–212 Poonawala, Ismail K., 41 positionality, 20–22 prayer, women’s obligation for, 296n25 priestesses/prophetesses, 197 “principle-extraction,” 240–241, 244, 262 principle of divine unity (Tawhid), 13–14, 99–100, 105–108, 113–114, 166, 204, 272 principles, competition among, 244–245 “private parts,” 297n39 private/public spheres, 198–199 Prophet (Muhammad), 35; behavior toward wives, 130; as father of daughters, 126; and father-right/rule, 124; “feminine” traits of, 127–128; not a symbolic father, 123, 127, 129; not a symbolic husband, 129, 131; not to be worshipped, 128–129; polygyny of, 130–131; responsible for support of women, 131. See also wives of Muhammad

Queen of Sheba, 43, 285n26 Qurān, 34–40 (35, 37); addressing women, 20–21; as androcentric, 240; as antipatriarchal, 132; Arabic as language of, 18; author’s reading of, 20, 24–27, 238–239; as created, 242; deriving legal principles from, 77–79; as discourse, text, and exegesis, 43, 94, 249–251; “dislocating” of to promote secularism, 252; dyads in, 162; feminist readings of, 22–24, 196–197, 234–236, 239, 242–243; historical context of, 9–10, 195–196, 243; holistic reading of, 9, 16–19, 24, 44, 196, 268; interpretation of, 18, 221; is not itself God, 23, 246, 249; “levels of signification” of the, 42, 249; liberatory readings of, 2–3, 11–12, 14, 21–23, 93, 239; “mutuality pronouncements” in, 258; as rethought, 249–255; as revelation versus text, 11–12, 253; Sunnah elevated over, 65, 69–72, 128–129; theology and anti-theology of, 245–255; as universal, 53–54; variant readings of, 8–10, 38; women commenting on, 10, 22–23, 25 Rabb, 24, 109 Rabbani, 128 radical lesbianism, 235 rahim (womb), 205–206 Rahman, Fazlur, 299n10; on “abrogation,” 284n24; on equality within marriage, 215; on Hadith, 52; on human nature, 166–167; on ijtihād and ijmā, 62, 71–73, 287n11; on moving between past and present, 24; on Muslim “theoretical infallibility,”

330

In dex

altering of, 260–262, 264; slavery in, 303–304n11; status of women in, 191–192, 195, 197–198, 232; views of marriage in, 211, 299n4 sex and gender: and inequality, 154–157; not conflated within Islam, 153–154, 175; patriarchal “sex-change metaphors,” 206; sexual differentiation theories, 97, 99, 155–164; and sex/uality, 192–193 sexual divisions of labor, 199–200 sexual equality, 1–4; in the ahādith, 49; definitions of, 155; difference versus inequality, 6, 156–157; in Islam, 20, 98, 164; and the Qurān, 26, 29, 157–164, 174, 236, 239–240, 257, 259, 265, 267 sexuality: consensual sex in marriage, 190–191, 244; “demonic power” of, 177; as “divine instrument,” 179; gaze and the body, 183–186; God as beyond, 110; modesty and lust, 178–182; as mutual pleasure, 179; as natural, desirable, 153–154; not associated with gender, 153–154; not stigmatized in Qurān, 154; patriarchy and, 175–177; sexual praxis, 183–186 sexual/textual oppression, 2 Shahab, Rafi Ullah, 109, 217 Sharīah (classical Muslim law), 34, 66; ahādith and, 48–49, 78, 283n7; consensus defense of, 88; fiqh and, 47, 74, 77; ijma and, 43; influence on by the state, 49–50, 76; kalām and, 104; legal sources of influence on, 77; need to revise, 64–65; obligations of fathers under, 300n12; schools of, 75, 77; sexual inequality within, 5, 35, 75, 77–78; some provisions ignored, 288n20; Sunnah and, 34–35, 64, 66, 74, 78–79, 283n7; sūrahs and, 64; tafsīr and, 41, 283n7 Sherif, Faruq, 19, 62, 103, 283n13

292n41; on nafs, 158; no Muslim theory of equality, 4; on origin of conservatism, 83–84; on practical application of Qurān, 34, 39, 63–65; on “psychological complex” from contact with West, 91–92; Qurān a “response” to history, 62; Qurān not against women earning wealth, 299– 300n10; on Sunnah, 68, 71, 287n6 Rahman, Rahim, 205–206 Ramshaw, Gail, 98, 110, 280n43 Raschke & Raschke, 98–99, 178 rationalism, 246 reading behind/in front of text, 23–24 reading the Qurān, 4–5 re-engendering God, 98 relativism, 170 Rhouni, Raja, 241–243, 249–251, 253 Ricoeur, Paul: on difference and similarity, 232; on God as father and spouse, 289–290n6; on meaning of “Yahweh,” 118; on reading of texts, 19, 25, 37, 93, 281n50 Robinson, Neal, 11, 39 Roff, William R., 93 Rosenthal, Franz, 177 rule of fathers. See father-right/rule Rumi, 290–291n17 Sabbah, Fatna, 207 Sahlins, Marshall, 155 Sardar, Ziauddin, 19, 272 Satan, 163 Schimmel, Annemarie, 177 secular-/feminism, 237–245; expectations of, 260–261; and rethought Quran, 249–255 semiotic collapse, 108–110 seventh-century Arab culture, 132, 179, 182; female sexual passivity and, 244; inheriting of wives, 190; and meaning of harth, 188; and meaning of “right hands owning,” 223; orphans and polygyny, 224; Qurān

331

In dex

shirk: by Abraham’s father, 115; defined, xiv, 115; deifying of God’s speech as, 247; man’s claim over women as, 239; mischaracterization of feminism regarding, 256–257; patriarchal authority possibly, 267, 303n7; as unpardonable sin, 100 Siddique, Kaukab, 130, 174, 216 signifier versus Signified, 103, 108–110 silence, meaning of in text, 23 similitudes, use of, 23, 110 slavery, 181–182, 197 Smith, W. C., 11, 36, 130 Sonn, Tamara, 69, 71, 73, 76, 87, 91 Sophia (wisdom), 164 Soroush, Abdolkarim, ix, 270–272, 274 Sourdel, Dominique, 75–76, 89, 288n16, 289n29 speech, God’s: Qurān as, 13–15, 22, 240, 252, 273; revelation as, 284n18; uncreatedness of, 36, 54–55, 247– 248; zulm and, 266 Spellberg, Denise, 48, 49, 52, 89, 91, 131 spiritual matriarchy, 104 Stowasser, Barbara, 43, 47–48, 55, 58, 61, 79, 92, 294n3 submission, 111, 115, 119, 195 Sufi tradition, 103, 105, 177 Sunnah, 34, 75; ahadīth and, 34, 40, 43–47, 52; al-Mamun and, 288n26; al-Shafi and, 76; authority of, 82–86; content of, 71; elevating over Qurān, 65, 69–72, 128–129; and ijtihād, 71–73; on marriage, 130–131; need for revival of, 64; reading “backward” toward, 81; and Sharīah, 34–35, 64, 66, 74, 78–79; as wahy, 69 sunnah (customary practices), 67–69, 73, 128 Sunnah-as-wahy, 92 sūrahs, 64

tafsīr (commentaries, exegesis), 9, 11, 34, 40–47 Taha, Mahmud Mohamed, 34, 38, 40, 64, 78 Talmud, 164 tanzīh and tashbīh models, 103–104 taqlid (precedent), 9, 72–73, 79, 287n12 taqwá (God-consciousness), 167; equal in men and women, 167, 169, 171, 174; essence of moral personality, 167, 300n16; owed to mothers, 205–207 Tawhid (principle of divine unity), 13–14, 99–100, 105–108, 113–114, 166, 204, 272 text “fundamentalists,” 239 “texts” and “textualities”: conservative theories, 53–61; in context, 245; critical theories, 61–65; defined, 33 Thiselton, Anthony, 245 Tilley, Terrence W., 43 Torah, 176, 297n35, 301n23 traditional patriarchal imaginaries, 153 Trinity, 101 Tucker, Judith, 90 Turner, Pauline, 176 “two-sex model,” 155–157, 160, 245 ulama (religious scholars), 70, 79, 81, 84, 86–92, 248–249 Umayyad state, 40, 50, 76–77, 85, 288n18 ummah (community), 45, 80, 120, 123, 127, 166, 174 Umm Salama, 20–21, 191 United States, 93, 94, 252, 296n28 unity/indivisibility of God, 99–100 “‘un-meant’ meaning,” 245 usūl al-fiqh (principles of jurisprudence), 74 Vajidi, Farid, 8 van Ess, Josef, 36, 246 veiling for Muslim women: purpose of, 185–186; Qurānic āyāt addressing,

Tabari. See al-Tabari, Muhammad

332

In dex

56–60, 245; rule of the, 59–61, 129, 183–184 Versteegh, C. H. M., 38 virginity, 176, 181, 197 Virkler, Henry A., 245 Vogt, Kari, 177 von Grunebaum, Gustave E., 51, 246

wives of Muhammad, 129–131, 181. See also Ayesha Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 19, 37 womb, 205–206 women: barred from temples, 176; commenting on Qurān, 10, 22–23, 25; as defined in Qurān, 192–193; as different, Other, 2, 12–13, 97, 153; equal to men in sight of God, 174; feminist readings of Qurān, 22–24, 196–197, 234–236, 239, 242–243; gendered language exempting, 109; not only as mothers, wives, 206; oath of allegiance required of, 174–175; as objects, 260–262; obligation for prayer, 296n25; Qurān addressing, 21; rights of, in seventh century, 197–198; rights when self-supporting, 215; same calls as men, 167–170, 172–174; subdued voices in Qurān, 10; as vice-regents over earth, 111; in war, 174, 198; and wife-beating, 6, 216, 220, 225, 232; wife’s evidence, 222. See also daughters; marriage; mothers

Wadud, Amina, 259; on Adam and spouse and “the Fall,” 163; on divorced women, 229–230; on “hermeneutics of tawhid,” 238; on including women’s voices, 10, 24; labeled a “feminist exegete,” 303n1; on masculinity, femininity in Qurān, 107; on meaning of qawwāmūn, 214–215; on men, women as categories in Qurān, 161, 192, 199– 200, 233; on mothers and children, 203, 207; on neutrality of Qurān, 12; on pairs, 159; on patriarchy as shirk, 303n7; on polygyny, 224; on reading of Qurān, 8, 53, 55, 195, 249, 251; on sex, gender in Qurān, 259; on sūrahs, 64–65; on tafsīr, 41; on taqwá, 171; understanding of Qurān changing, 39; on wifely “obedience,” 216 wahy (revelation), 69, 203 Walther, Wiebke, 47, 50, 131, 292n37 Wasserstrom, Steven M., 135, 177 Watt, W. Montgomery, 247–248 Weeks, Jeffrey, 175, 185, 293n3 West, Gerald O., 19–20 Wheeler, Brannon, 70–71, 74, 81–83, 287n12 wife-beating, 6, 216, 220, 225, 232

Yahweh not a father, 118 Yusuf Ali, Abdullah, 16–17, 24, 120, 183, 212 Zamakhshari, 8 Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, 70, 76, 84, 85–87, 91, 93 Zuleikha, 43, 285n27, 298n49 zulm (doing harm), 14–15, 18, 100, 239, 266

333