If you really are that ambitious, here is a 2660 word essay submitted late for your enjoyment.
Gendering the Qu’ran:
Analysis of Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Women
(A Draft)
“How can ideas that transcend gender be expressed in gendered language?” In her Qur’an and Woman, Amina Wadud asks a hard but uniquely modern question of the timeless text of the Qur’an (xii). She contextualizes the language and ideas of the Qur’an with a model of hermeneutics that is characterized by standard notions to context, grammar, and Weltanschauung, or world view. Rather than simply extend medieval exegesis, Wadud returns to the original text of the Qur’an in order to derive the fundamentals concerning Muslim women, their roles, and responsibilities. She does this through an analysis that is critical of both the cultural context of revelation, as well as the context of classical tafsir, or interpretations of the Qur’an, given that the androcentrism of seventh-century Arabia still pervades society today. She proposes that it is not the Qur’an that has restricted women, but medieval interpretations that have hedgemonized our understanding of Muslim gender relations. Consequently, Wadud disrupts traditionalist notions of prescriptive male-female behavior through a distinctively modern hermeneutical model that attempts to restore notions of gender equality to the text—notions she believes are inherent to the Qur'an, but have been displaced by monolithic readings of the Qur’an. While the strengths of her analysis include her deconstructive reading of the Arabic words including zawj in redefining the male-female binary as a pair, her derivation of transcendent Quranic principles like the oneness of creation, and her application of modern theories to the Qur'an, her failure to include the sunnah or Islamic history in her analysis undermine her legitimacy and authority within the Muslim community.
Wadud’s approach to the Qur’an is modern given her thematic synthesizing of the text around the concept of gender. Rather than link verses linearly as traditional tafsir commentators had done, Wadud analyzes the Qur’an according to ideas, syntactical structures, principles, and under the larger theme of gender (2). This gendered analysis of the Qur’an creates a uniquely modern perspective because women are not the subjects of discourse, but rather the objects of discourse.
Also distinctive is that Wadud states that her objective in writing Qur’an and Woman is to offer a reading that would be “meaningful to women living in the modern era” (1). Her personal objective in engaging with issues of gender and social justice are unlike the objectives of traditional tafsir commentators, who were almost exclusively men and who wanted to expound on legal, esoteric, grammatical, rhetorical, or historical significances of the Qur’an (1). Despite the fact that the canon of Quranic commentary has been dominated by men and that there has been a “voicelessness [of women] during critical periods of development in Qur’anic interpretation,” these conditions cannot be equated with “voicelessness in the text itself” (2).
Instead, Wadud notes that the “the critical questioning of the functions and responsibilities of each gender has only recently been asked” largely because androcentrism has been accepted and regarded as the norm since the seventh century, when the Qur’an was revealed. What began as apparent biological differences between men and women was extended to different social functions, which further extended to the notions of essential differences between the sexes (7). Over time, the evaluations of women as inferior, weaker, “intellectually incapable and spiritually lacking” in relation to men were facilitated by men’s hegemony over scripture. Hence, her intent, which is also unique to modern interpretation, is to read the Qur’an from a perspective of a modern woman.
This objective is furthered by a distinct hermeneutical model, influenced by “feminist ideals and rationales” (2). Her analysis attempts to integrate “social, moral, economic and political concerns” through the axis of gender (9). She examines Quranic diction by examining the context of the word used, and the larger textual development of the term.
For example, in Wadud’s examination of a creation verse (4:1), which she reads as an allegory about the common origin of humanity, she examines the words nafs, which refers to the self and zawj, which refers to spouse, mate, or group (19-20). Zawj originates from the nafs but in terms of grammatical gender, nafs is feminine and zawj is masculine. But in the context of the Qur'an, zawj takes on the “corresponding masculine adjectival and verbal antecedents” and nafs takes on the corresponding feminine adjectival and verbal antecedents. But with these words together, the verse is not grammatically consistent. Conceptually, nafs and zawj are neither feminine nor masculine. These words are not fixed within the structural binary of grammatical gender because “each member of the pair presupposes the other pre-semantically,” thereby making the man and woman contingent parts of the zawj.
Wadud interprets the linguistic ambiguity of two grammatically specific words as indicative of the relationship between two congruent parts that together create a whole. The congruent parts, are “equally essential” in creating the whole pair, or zawj. She links several verses thematically: (1) Allah made you pairs (35:11) (2) He created the two spouses [zawjayn] (53:45) and (3) The male is not like female (3:36). From adding these verses together, she derives the following: “Although the Qur'an establishes that humankind was created in the male/female pair, and distinguishes between them, it does not attribute explicit characteristics to either one or the other, exclusively” (21). This analysis of Arabic grammar shows that men and women are created with equal potentialities for virtue, modesty, rights, and duties to God because the natural fact of creation as pairs does not necessarily extend to the social dimension of how members of the zawjayn, or spousal pair, should interact. Therefore, Wadud restricts the Quranic verse about creation of the male-female pair to biology, so that one interprets the verse to mean the common origin of all humankind. This is unlike the primacy of Adam in the Biblical creation story, and the differential role Eve plays as an extract of Adam’s rib. According to the Qur’an, men and women are unequivocally created equal, as contingent pairs of potential good.
Just as words have different meanings under different structural arrangements, men and women serve different social functions with respect to cultural context. Within the context of developing civilizations, women’s roles and responsibilities need to be reexamined. Wadud insists that the Qur'an is “not confined to, or exhausted by, one society and its history” (qtd. on 9). Rather, Islamic fundamentals must be applied according to different cultural contexts. Wadud argues that instead of replicating seventh century Arabian society in the twenty-first century, we should apply the principles of the Qur'an to our specific cultural context.
Furthermore, given that the Qur’an “does not propose or support a singular role or single definition of a set of roles, exclusively for each gender across every culture,” there is great fluidity in applying notions of gender roles and responsibilities to particular contexts. In other words, the Qur'an, as a source of guidance for humanity, prescribes social roles that are relational to culture, and not one universal set of gender roles for men and women. Thus, the particular cultural context of revelation should not be rendered universal. Instead, according to Wadud, “seventh-century Arabian particulars should be restricted to that context” because Quranic revelation must be applied to multiple cultural contexts given the accepted universality of the text (72). If the text is “to lead the reader to ungendered spheres of reality,” then one’s individual approach to the text must be acceptable (75).
Rather than situate women, their roles and responsibilities within a sexist framework that regards women as relational to the universal male, Wadud creates a framework that differentiates men and women according to their taqwa, or level of faith. Her thinking jives with contemporary feminist theory which supports the idea that gender, and notions of femininity and masculinity, are socially constructed, serving to exaggerate the biological differences between men and women to mean essential differences in being. For example, the biological fact that women can bear and nurse children often extends to “psychological and cultural perceptions of mothering” (22). Yet for Wadud, the Qur'an does not mention child-bearing as an “essential created characteristic of the female” (22). Rather, femininity and masculinity are constructed concepts that are “not created [or natural] characteristics imprinted into the very primordial nature of female and male persons” (22). The characteristics that regard women as nurturing, caring and loving, e.g., are instead applied according to cultural context. Thus, the essential differences manufactured between men and women are applied not by scripture, but by culture.
The notion of culture is itself a modern one. Defined by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a progressive Islamic studies scholar as the integrated pattern of human behavior that governs everything about us and even molds our instinctive actions and natural inclinations, culture incorporates our beliefs, morality, expectations, skills and knowledge (3). In his paper “Islam and the Cultural Imperative,” he writes that the fundamental characteristic of a successful culture is that it “imparts an operative identity,” meaning specifically that Islam engages and creates new cultural expressions according to different contexts. Like Wadud, Abd-Allah is concerned about the consonance of Islamic transcendental norms with indigenous ethos, or rather how Islam is expressed in different cultural contexts. In some ways, he fills the gaps in Wadud’s thesis of cultural flexibility to include history and the Sunnah.
What is most problematic about Wadud’s analysis is her intentional omission of the Islamic history and the Sunnah in supplanting her views about gender relations. She states in her preface:
Her explanation is insubstantial because she fails to explain why she does not than contextualize her work into the larger canon of Islamic thought, by creating linkages with scholars of the past. In the process of focusing solely on modernity, she looses legitimacy and authority within the Sunni Muslim community because she does not seem to possesses the right sort of knowledge. She is not grounded in a proper understanding of the past. Her ijtihad, or critical thought, produces a work that exists within a modern vacuum due to the lack of historical back tracking that would necessitate proficient Islamic knowledge.
Wadud also seems to premise her argument on the notion that Islam currently has what Abd-Allah calls a “culturally predatory worldview,” which includes her notion of Islamic scholarship as a hedgemonized form of male patriarchy, seething with sexism. This means that her book is ultimately an attempt to bridge the modern values of feminism with Islamic values of tawheed.
Wadud fails to account for Islamic history, for the rich cultural legacy that has historically allowed for the same multiplicity of expression that she is discussing in Qur'an and Woman. In Abd-Allah’s paper, history is examined for the evidence of pluralistic expression. He writes that Islam has a “cultural instinct” that balances regional diversity within the overriding framework of Islamic scholarship, and proceeds to describe several syncretistic Islamic societies of the past (Abd-Allah, 7). Wadud would have benefited from his paper, for both agree that Islam’s ethos is compatible regardless of time and place
For example, she might have tried reading the a fiqh scholar like Al-Qarafi, a nineteenth century Syrian jurist who said that legal decisions that do not change with the times and circumstances lead to injustice. She could have broadened and expanded her arguments with historic examples of the Qur’an as guidance for multiple cultural expressions of Islam (Abd-Allah, 10). Muslims reading her book are sometimes left with a puzzled, “So what?” response because her textual analysis does not seem to depart much from contemporary Islamic consensus: i.e. gender equality is implicit within the Qur’an. The problem is really that her largely non-Muslim audience does not know that her analysis is part of a tradition of scholarship that has at times been surprisingly progressive. Due to her grave omissions of not using the existing canon of Islamic scholarship and demonstrating how progressive (universal) notions of justice and gender are implicit within Islamic exegetic works, she may be delegitimized, deemed an unqualified authority within the Muslim community.
Her omission of the Sunnah is by far the most problematic aspect of her research, especially for Sunni Muslims in the Hanabali school of thought. In failing to account for the gender parity and justice that was present during the time of the Prophet and his Companions, in conjunction with her textual analysis, Wadud offers an incomplete analysis of gender. In fact, Abd-Allah writes that it is precisely the principles of cultural flexibility, and multiplicity of Islamic expression, that characterize the sunnah. He references an early jurist, Abu Yusuf, who “understood the recognition of good, local cultural norms as falling under the rubric of the sunnah” (Abd-Allah, 4). Thus, Quranic claims about prescriptive behavior are always related to the time and place of the Prophet because he lived in a way that was the very first application of the Qur'an. His model has defacto status and continuous relevance to modernity. Granted over time, the sunnah has become the monolithic representation of how Muslims ought to live, but this paradigm created by the Prophet still stands as valuable evidence for Wadud’s claims about gender justice. The Qur'an enjoined the Prophet Muhammad to adhere to people’s sound customs and usages. Wadud, too, must adhere to the custom within the discipline of referencing the sunnah. If Wadud were writing for the legitimacy of the Muslim community, then the practices of the Prophet would have significantly factored into her analysis. The sunnah did not factor into her analysis at all. Therefore, one concludes that she is not writing for scholarly legitimacy within the Muslim community.
Nevertheless, Wadud offers an analysis that is critical of classical tafsir, and its accompanying androcentrism, patriarchy, and sexism. Unlike medieval exegesis that preserves the past and develops intricate ways of extending it, Wadud’s modern exegesis serves to disrupt the seemingly monolithic past, subvert our understandings of concept of gender roles, and offer alternative ways of reading women’s agency in the text. Because Wadud’s approach to the Qur’an allows for flexibility and multiplicity of readings, her arguments are convincing for modern readers. She contextualizes the androcentrism of popular tafsir and Quranic commentary, though she does not contextualize her own work within that trajectory. The fact that most exegetic work was written almost exclusively by males suggests that women’s perspectives are marginalized within the scholarly framework. Wadud introduces individuality, and personal experience into her analysis of the Qur'an in order to derive at the fundamentals about Islam, to ultimately to answer the hard questions of modernity. In her initial question, how can a genderless idea be expressed in gendered language, she is implicitly asking, what are the universal precepts of gender within the text?
Ultimately the answer, or the derivation of meanings from a text, is a process. The idea that meaning can be neither prior nor independent of the act of interpretation is uniquely modern. Rather than apply a particular interpretation universally, one should think critically about one’s individual application of Quranic principles.
The approach should be specific to the individual.
Unfortunately, Wadud fails to garner enough authority for herself because her research is not broad enough to include the actual application of her gender-just theory in the form of the sunnah, and historic precedent. Her place in the trajectory of Islamic scholarship on gender relations is designated “modern” but that designation is arbitrary. Given that progressive notions of gender parity and justice are embedded within the Qur'an, it is simply a matter of reading the text to arrive at newer applications of meanings. By only theorizing about (and not applying) the multiple, fluid conceptions of gender relations in only the Qur'an, but not the social contexts in history, and the Sunnah as applications of these theories, Amina Wadud omits necessary applications of Qur’anic fundamentals.
Gendering the Qu’ran:
Analysis of Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Women
(A Draft)
“How can ideas that transcend gender be expressed in gendered language?” In her Qur’an and Woman, Amina Wadud asks a hard but uniquely modern question of the timeless text of the Qur’an (xii). She contextualizes the language and ideas of the Qur’an with a model of hermeneutics that is characterized by standard notions to context, grammar, and Weltanschauung, or world view. Rather than simply extend medieval exegesis, Wadud returns to the original text of the Qur’an in order to derive the fundamentals concerning Muslim women, their roles, and responsibilities. She does this through an analysis that is critical of both the cultural context of revelation, as well as the context of classical tafsir, or interpretations of the Qur’an, given that the androcentrism of seventh-century Arabia still pervades society today. She proposes that it is not the Qur’an that has restricted women, but medieval interpretations that have hedgemonized our understanding of Muslim gender relations. Consequently, Wadud disrupts traditionalist notions of prescriptive male-female behavior through a distinctively modern hermeneutical model that attempts to restore notions of gender equality to the text—notions she believes are inherent to the Qur'an, but have been displaced by monolithic readings of the Qur’an. While the strengths of her analysis include her deconstructive reading of the Arabic words including zawj in redefining the male-female binary as a pair, her derivation of transcendent Quranic principles like the oneness of creation, and her application of modern theories to the Qur'an, her failure to include the sunnah or Islamic history in her analysis undermine her legitimacy and authority within the Muslim community.
Wadud’s approach to the Qur’an is modern given her thematic synthesizing of the text around the concept of gender. Rather than link verses linearly as traditional tafsir commentators had done, Wadud analyzes the Qur’an according to ideas, syntactical structures, principles, and under the larger theme of gender (2). This gendered analysis of the Qur’an creates a uniquely modern perspective because women are not the subjects of discourse, but rather the objects of discourse.
Also distinctive is that Wadud states that her objective in writing Qur’an and Woman is to offer a reading that would be “meaningful to women living in the modern era” (1). Her personal objective in engaging with issues of gender and social justice are unlike the objectives of traditional tafsir commentators, who were almost exclusively men and who wanted to expound on legal, esoteric, grammatical, rhetorical, or historical significances of the Qur’an (1). Despite the fact that the canon of Quranic commentary has been dominated by men and that there has been a “voicelessness [of women] during critical periods of development in Qur’anic interpretation,” these conditions cannot be equated with “voicelessness in the text itself” (2).
Instead, Wadud notes that the “the critical questioning of the functions and responsibilities of each gender has only recently been asked” largely because androcentrism has been accepted and regarded as the norm since the seventh century, when the Qur’an was revealed. What began as apparent biological differences between men and women was extended to different social functions, which further extended to the notions of essential differences between the sexes (7). Over time, the evaluations of women as inferior, weaker, “intellectually incapable and spiritually lacking” in relation to men were facilitated by men’s hegemony over scripture. Hence, her intent, which is also unique to modern interpretation, is to read the Qur’an from a perspective of a modern woman.
This objective is furthered by a distinct hermeneutical model, influenced by “feminist ideals and rationales” (2). Her analysis attempts to integrate “social, moral, economic and political concerns” through the axis of gender (9). She examines Quranic diction by examining the context of the word used, and the larger textual development of the term.
For example, in Wadud’s examination of a creation verse (4:1), which she reads as an allegory about the common origin of humanity, she examines the words nafs, which refers to the self and zawj, which refers to spouse, mate, or group (19-20). Zawj originates from the nafs but in terms of grammatical gender, nafs is feminine and zawj is masculine. But in the context of the Qur'an, zawj takes on the “corresponding masculine adjectival and verbal antecedents” and nafs takes on the corresponding feminine adjectival and verbal antecedents. But with these words together, the verse is not grammatically consistent. Conceptually, nafs and zawj are neither feminine nor masculine. These words are not fixed within the structural binary of grammatical gender because “each member of the pair presupposes the other pre-semantically,” thereby making the man and woman contingent parts of the zawj.
Wadud interprets the linguistic ambiguity of two grammatically specific words as indicative of the relationship between two congruent parts that together create a whole. The congruent parts, are “equally essential” in creating the whole pair, or zawj. She links several verses thematically: (1) Allah made you pairs (35:11) (2) He created the two spouses [zawjayn] (53:45) and (3) The male is not like female (3:36). From adding these verses together, she derives the following: “Although the Qur'an establishes that humankind was created in the male/female pair, and distinguishes between them, it does not attribute explicit characteristics to either one or the other, exclusively” (21). This analysis of Arabic grammar shows that men and women are created with equal potentialities for virtue, modesty, rights, and duties to God because the natural fact of creation as pairs does not necessarily extend to the social dimension of how members of the zawjayn, or spousal pair, should interact. Therefore, Wadud restricts the Quranic verse about creation of the male-female pair to biology, so that one interprets the verse to mean the common origin of all humankind. This is unlike the primacy of Adam in the Biblical creation story, and the differential role Eve plays as an extract of Adam’s rib. According to the Qur’an, men and women are unequivocally created equal, as contingent pairs of potential good.
Just as words have different meanings under different structural arrangements, men and women serve different social functions with respect to cultural context. Within the context of developing civilizations, women’s roles and responsibilities need to be reexamined. Wadud insists that the Qur'an is “not confined to, or exhausted by, one society and its history” (qtd. on 9). Rather, Islamic fundamentals must be applied according to different cultural contexts. Wadud argues that instead of replicating seventh century Arabian society in the twenty-first century, we should apply the principles of the Qur'an to our specific cultural context.
Furthermore, given that the Qur’an “does not propose or support a singular role or single definition of a set of roles, exclusively for each gender across every culture,” there is great fluidity in applying notions of gender roles and responsibilities to particular contexts. In other words, the Qur'an, as a source of guidance for humanity, prescribes social roles that are relational to culture, and not one universal set of gender roles for men and women. Thus, the particular cultural context of revelation should not be rendered universal. Instead, according to Wadud, “seventh-century Arabian particulars should be restricted to that context” because Quranic revelation must be applied to multiple cultural contexts given the accepted universality of the text (72). If the text is “to lead the reader to ungendered spheres of reality,” then one’s individual approach to the text must be acceptable (75).
Rather than situate women, their roles and responsibilities within a sexist framework that regards women as relational to the universal male, Wadud creates a framework that differentiates men and women according to their taqwa, or level of faith. Her thinking jives with contemporary feminist theory which supports the idea that gender, and notions of femininity and masculinity, are socially constructed, serving to exaggerate the biological differences between men and women to mean essential differences in being. For example, the biological fact that women can bear and nurse children often extends to “psychological and cultural perceptions of mothering” (22). Yet for Wadud, the Qur'an does not mention child-bearing as an “essential created characteristic of the female” (22). Rather, femininity and masculinity are constructed concepts that are “not created [or natural] characteristics imprinted into the very primordial nature of female and male persons” (22). The characteristics that regard women as nurturing, caring and loving, e.g., are instead applied according to cultural context. Thus, the essential differences manufactured between men and women are applied not by scripture, but by culture.
The notion of culture is itself a modern one. Defined by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a progressive Islamic studies scholar as the integrated pattern of human behavior that governs everything about us and even molds our instinctive actions and natural inclinations, culture incorporates our beliefs, morality, expectations, skills and knowledge (3). In his paper “Islam and the Cultural Imperative,” he writes that the fundamental characteristic of a successful culture is that it “imparts an operative identity,” meaning specifically that Islam engages and creates new cultural expressions according to different contexts. Like Wadud, Abd-Allah is concerned about the consonance of Islamic transcendental norms with indigenous ethos, or rather how Islam is expressed in different cultural contexts. In some ways, he fills the gaps in Wadud’s thesis of cultural flexibility to include history and the Sunnah.
What is most problematic about Wadud’s analysis is her intentional omission of the Islamic history and the Sunnah in supplanting her views about gender relations. She states in her preface:
[This book] is about exactly what it says it is about—the Qur’an, and woman, as a concept. The special focus on the Qur'an for the issue of women and gender is appropriately restricted. (xvii)
Her explanation is insubstantial because she fails to explain why she does not than contextualize her work into the larger canon of Islamic thought, by creating linkages with scholars of the past. In the process of focusing solely on modernity, she looses legitimacy and authority within the Sunni Muslim community because she does not seem to possesses the right sort of knowledge. She is not grounded in a proper understanding of the past. Her ijtihad, or critical thought, produces a work that exists within a modern vacuum due to the lack of historical back tracking that would necessitate proficient Islamic knowledge.
Wadud also seems to premise her argument on the notion that Islam currently has what Abd-Allah calls a “culturally predatory worldview,” which includes her notion of Islamic scholarship as a hedgemonized form of male patriarchy, seething with sexism. This means that her book is ultimately an attempt to bridge the modern values of feminism with Islamic values of tawheed.
Wadud fails to account for Islamic history, for the rich cultural legacy that has historically allowed for the same multiplicity of expression that she is discussing in Qur'an and Woman. In Abd-Allah’s paper, history is examined for the evidence of pluralistic expression. He writes that Islam has a “cultural instinct” that balances regional diversity within the overriding framework of Islamic scholarship, and proceeds to describe several syncretistic Islamic societies of the past (Abd-Allah, 7). Wadud would have benefited from his paper, for both agree that Islam’s ethos is compatible regardless of time and place
For example, she might have tried reading the a fiqh scholar like Al-Qarafi, a nineteenth century Syrian jurist who said that legal decisions that do not change with the times and circumstances lead to injustice. She could have broadened and expanded her arguments with historic examples of the Qur’an as guidance for multiple cultural expressions of Islam (Abd-Allah, 10). Muslims reading her book are sometimes left with a puzzled, “So what?” response because her textual analysis does not seem to depart much from contemporary Islamic consensus: i.e. gender equality is implicit within the Qur’an. The problem is really that her largely non-Muslim audience does not know that her analysis is part of a tradition of scholarship that has at times been surprisingly progressive. Due to her grave omissions of not using the existing canon of Islamic scholarship and demonstrating how progressive (universal) notions of justice and gender are implicit within Islamic exegetic works, she may be delegitimized, deemed an unqualified authority within the Muslim community.
Her omission of the Sunnah is by far the most problematic aspect of her research, especially for Sunni Muslims in the Hanabali school of thought. In failing to account for the gender parity and justice that was present during the time of the Prophet and his Companions, in conjunction with her textual analysis, Wadud offers an incomplete analysis of gender. In fact, Abd-Allah writes that it is precisely the principles of cultural flexibility, and multiplicity of Islamic expression, that characterize the sunnah. He references an early jurist, Abu Yusuf, who “understood the recognition of good, local cultural norms as falling under the rubric of the sunnah” (Abd-Allah, 4). Thus, Quranic claims about prescriptive behavior are always related to the time and place of the Prophet because he lived in a way that was the very first application of the Qur'an. His model has defacto status and continuous relevance to modernity. Granted over time, the sunnah has become the monolithic representation of how Muslims ought to live, but this paradigm created by the Prophet still stands as valuable evidence for Wadud’s claims about gender justice. The Qur'an enjoined the Prophet Muhammad to adhere to people’s sound customs and usages. Wadud, too, must adhere to the custom within the discipline of referencing the sunnah. If Wadud were writing for the legitimacy of the Muslim community, then the practices of the Prophet would have significantly factored into her analysis. The sunnah did not factor into her analysis at all. Therefore, one concludes that she is not writing for scholarly legitimacy within the Muslim community.
Nevertheless, Wadud offers an analysis that is critical of classical tafsir, and its accompanying androcentrism, patriarchy, and sexism. Unlike medieval exegesis that preserves the past and develops intricate ways of extending it, Wadud’s modern exegesis serves to disrupt the seemingly monolithic past, subvert our understandings of concept of gender roles, and offer alternative ways of reading women’s agency in the text. Because Wadud’s approach to the Qur’an allows for flexibility and multiplicity of readings, her arguments are convincing for modern readers. She contextualizes the androcentrism of popular tafsir and Quranic commentary, though she does not contextualize her own work within that trajectory. The fact that most exegetic work was written almost exclusively by males suggests that women’s perspectives are marginalized within the scholarly framework. Wadud introduces individuality, and personal experience into her analysis of the Qur'an in order to derive at the fundamentals about Islam, to ultimately to answer the hard questions of modernity. In her initial question, how can a genderless idea be expressed in gendered language, she is implicitly asking, what are the universal precepts of gender within the text?
Ultimately the answer, or the derivation of meanings from a text, is a process. The idea that meaning can be neither prior nor independent of the act of interpretation is uniquely modern. Rather than apply a particular interpretation universally, one should think critically about one’s individual application of Quranic principles.
The approach should be specific to the individual.
Unfortunately, Wadud fails to garner enough authority for herself because her research is not broad enough to include the actual application of her gender-just theory in the form of the sunnah, and historic precedent. Her place in the trajectory of Islamic scholarship on gender relations is designated “modern” but that designation is arbitrary. Given that progressive notions of gender parity and justice are embedded within the Qur'an, it is simply a matter of reading the text to arrive at newer applications of meanings. By only theorizing about (and not applying) the multiple, fluid conceptions of gender relations in only the Qur'an, but not the social contexts in history, and the Sunnah as applications of these theories, Amina Wadud omits necessary applications of Qur’anic fundamentals.
interesting essay; it leaves one wondering though: what is the importance of wadud's failure to legitimize her thoughts within the traditional system?
ReplyDeleteyour thoughts?
~chicago ain't all that.
it takes away from her authority. we can't take her seriously. her ideas are good, but this is a major absence in her research that makes her read only in certain types of classrooms..
ReplyDeletei do believe you are my one consistent commentor (commentator?) now.
:)
i agree with you, it does take away from her authority, but only from a particular audience. perhaps she is directing her voice in another direction, towards another audience.
ReplyDeleteit reminds me of my dear respected Navajo elder, Hamza. He said that when he came to Islam, a group of Ismailis assisted and nurtured him. They treated him well and taught him as much as he was willing to soak up. In the end, he parted ways with them for Sunni Islam, but he was always thankful for what good they brought early in his life as a Muslim.
InshaAllah, I pray that Amina Wadud has the same affect upon those who may hear her voice, and that maybe she will include the legions of scholars that predate her in her writings so as to expand her audience.
~If I were more than a man, I would fill the world with hope, tenderness, love and happiness. But I am only a man, so I will continue my efforts to mimic those who can -- women.
Professor's comment on this: (I actually had a better version of this paper, which I didnt save, more fluid analysis; etc.)
ReplyDeleteDear Sadia,
I've read your paper now, and it's generally very good; you've got a quite sophisticated grasp of Wadud's points, and your overall thesis is valid. I'm giving you an A-, which I think is slightly generous but reflects the thoughtfulness of your paper. There are a few areas where you might think further, though. First of all, Wadud's ideas about the distinction between sex and gender don't "jive with" basic feminist theory; they are straightforwardly derived from such thinking. On the other hand, your perception that there is a Muslim "consensus" on the idea that the Qur'an teaches gender equality is not a pre-existing understanding that Wadud is failing to recognize; it is in part authors like Wadud (and, before, them, several generations of debate about women's roles in the Islamic world, as well as apologetic responses to outsider critiques) that produced this "consensus." This is not to say that the Qur'an teac! hes gender inequality, but that the whole idea of analyzing the Qur'an using "gender" as an analytic category is fairly new. Furthermore, overall affirmations that the Qur'an teaches women's "equality" with men often evade some of the issues that Wadud takes on (convincingly or unconvincingly), issues relating to concrete questions like roles within marriage or rights to divorce. Wadud is rejecting ideas of gender "complementarity" that posit equally important, but rigidly set, gender roles for men and women. Thus (again, regardless of their merits) I think her arguments are not a ho-hum repetition of principles that everyone already accepts.
Your use of Abd-Allah's ideas is interesting, but somewhat uncritical. His arguments reflect a wider debate on the role of the pre-modern Islamic scholarly heritage among Muslims seeking to define a path in the contemporary world. Some, like Wadud, argue that the classical heritage is fundamentally flawed, in that it reflects the agendas and biases of people who lived in stratified societies in culturally specific contexts. Others, like Abd-Allah, argue that there is a high degree of diversity in the pre-modern tradition, and that many things that Muslim progressives seek in the Qur'an can in fact be recuperated from the classical heritage. While this approach is very appealing, there are also those who critique it, largely on the grounds that such recuperation inevitably involves a selective (and often capricious) appropriation of the heritage, which often robs pre-mod! ern discourses of their inherent coherence and cohesiveness for the sake of picking out individual features that anticipate modern concerns (such as gender equality).
Anyway, very interesting paper.
Best,
Professor