"Believing Women" in Islam by Asma Barlas

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. First, hermeneutical and existential questions are ineluctably connected. 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 ʾānic hermeneutics and, I believe, renders such an engagement imperative, and even unavoidable, to all projects of Muslim women’s and men’s liberation.Įven though a Qur ʾānic hermeneutics cannot, by itself, put an end to patriarchal, authoritarian, and undemocratic regimes and practices, it nonetheless remains crucial for various reasons. And yet all three often are justified by Muslim states and clerics in the name of Islam. The history of Western civilization should also tell us that there is nothing innately Islamic about misogyny, inequality, or patriarchy.

As many recent studies reveal, women’s status and roles in Muslim societies, as well as patriarchal structures and gender relationships, are a function of multiple factors, most of which have nothing to do with religion. 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 ʾān and/or other Islamic sources all too often taken out of context” (El-Sohl and Mabro 1994, 1). (I use the concept of episteme loosely to refer to the Qur ʾān’s foundational claims about the nature of God, human beings, and the universe, which provide the moral/ethical framework for its overall teachings.) Using an interpretive methodology, or hermeneutics, 4 derived from the Qur ʾān, 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 ʾān’s episteme is inherently antipatriarchal but that it also allows us to theorize the radical equality of the sexes. What is less obvious-given the widespread tendency to blame Islam for oppressing Muslims rather than blaming Muslims for misreading Islam 3-is the possibility that we can answer the first set of questions (Is the Qur ʾān a patriarchal or misogynistic text?) in the negative while at the same time answering the second (Can the Qur ʾān be a source for women’s liberation?) in the affirmative. 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.

&quot;Believing Women&quot; in Islam by Asma Barlas

"Believing Women" in Islam by Asma Barlas