Women as Imams

Classical Islamic Sources and Modern Debates on Leading Prayer

Simonetta Calderini

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780755618026
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced
answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

Part I

THE PAST

Chapter 1

PRAYER LEADERSHIP, IMAMS AND WOMEN: DEFINING THE CONTEXTS AND SETTING THE ISSUES

Introduction

This chapter is a survey of issues in pre-modern Islam which are at the heart of debates on prayer leadership with specific reference to women. They include definitons of authority, leadership and guidance, concepts and understandings of ritual purity. The term imam is analysed in its varied uses and scriptural references and is shown, depending on context, to be used to indicate ritual but also political leadership. Some of the prerequisites for being, or being recognized as, a legitimate imam have become in time, especially in Islamic jurisprudence, increasingly complex and varied. Two of them, moral excellence (fadila) and precedence in submission and service to Islam (sabiqa) have been studied within the context of political leadership and found to be interrelated with prayer leadership. For this reason, in the present book, while the emphasis will be on prayer leadership, due consideration will also be given to the political connotation of the role of imam. The two prerequisites, of excellence and precedence, will be tested against the field of ritual leadership when analysing, in the next two chapters, the reports of Umm Salama, ‘A’isha and Umm Waraqa, whom the sources present as having led prayer. A short survey of the pre-modern ideal roles of the imam will also provide the basis for comparison with modern roles to be explored in the final chapter of this book.

The framing questions for this chapter are: the extent to which any semantic developments can be identified in some key terms linked to ritual authority; and whether the bases of ritual authority have changed over time and, with them, the imam’s roles, qualities or prerequisites for being an imam.

Almost three centuries after the Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation, the great Sunni Muslim historian Abu Ja‘far al-Tabari (d. 923) completed his universal history. In it, he recorded in great detail the events of the Prophet’s life, among them, those linked to what al-Tabari defines as the first among the duties of a Muslim: salat (worship, prayer). In discussing how prayer came about, al-Tabari relies on the literary accounts of the biography of the Prophet in the Sirat al-Nabi by Ibn Ishaq (d. 768), by using a redaction which is different from the more famous later edition by Ibn Hisham (d. 833).

Al-Tabari recounts that after the Archangel Gabriel had shown the Prophet how to worship, Muhammad ‘went to Khadija and performed the ablution for her in order to show her how to purify herself for prayer, as Gabriel had shown him. She performed the ablution as he had done and then he led her in prayer [salla biha] as Gabriel had led him [salla bihi], and she followed his actions’.¹ As the first to have believed in the truthfulness of her husband’s divine mission, Khadija is presented as not only the first ‘convert’ to Islam but also the first believer to be instructed on how to pray and be led in prayer by the Prophet. The ritual requirements for her worship and the manner of its performance are thus identical to those of the Prophet himself. Hence, not only the ritual ‘duty’ of worship, but also its performance, are shown to be the same for all believers, irrespective of gender. While the pre-eminence of Khadija’s character is uncontested among Muslim scholars past and present, her exemplary role as worshipper has not been sufficiently explored. Though the above account could be viewed as an example of ‘gender equality’ in ritual performance at the inception of Islam, it could, however, also be reflecting a hierarchical model in ritual leadership. God (through Its genderless angel) instructs and leads the Messenger, a man, who, in turn, instructs and leads Khadija, a woman, his wife.

The above account sets the stage to address the following questions: in which contexts do we find women singled out in the act of prayer in early Islam? To what extent have historians and scholars, reporting about prayer in early Islam, included the religious, political and social context in which that prayer was taking place? And more specifically, what is meant or understood by ritual leadership? Is it a form of instruction and of guidance on the part of the ‘leader’, an imitation by the person being led, as described above in the Sira account? Are the rules of leading prayer dependent upon specific spatial, social and other factors or are they beyond these variables? The answers to these questions will provide the background to Chapter 2 on pre-modern debates on the permissibility of women leading women, as well as to Chapter 3 about women leading men. They will be revisited in Chapter 4, when discussing the uses of past precedents in current debates on female imama.

Prayer and women: Purity and leadership

Ritual purity has been associated with Islamic prayer from its very inception.The Qur’anic references to ritual purity have been typically linked, among other verses, to the Medinan verse 4.43, ‘Do not approach prayers … if you are in a state of major impurity (junub) … until you have fully washed’, as well as 5.6, ‘when you are about to pray, wash your face, and your arms … and if you are in a state of junub, purify yourselves’. Thus, it could be deduced that being in a state of ritual purity is foremost among the conditions for the prayer to be valid for the worshipper. In works of tafsir, Qur’anic verses relating to purity (tahara) are subject to multiple interpretations about the meanings of purity, inclusive of physical, ritual and ethical purity, which are not exclusive of one another, but rather all-encompassing.²

That tahara is a pre-eminent element for the validity of prayer is indicated by the priority that the topic is given in classical treatises of Islamic jurisprudence where issues of practices of ritual purification appear as the first subject matter in the section on obligatory acts of devotion to God. As the jurist al-Shafi‘i put it, all devotional acts are enabled by tahara and can be summarized into two main concepts: cleanliness and worship.³ The pre-eminence of purity in the context of ritual prayer is also reflected in historical and literary narratives, as exemplified by al-Tabari’s recourse to the Sira to explain the origin of prayer in Islam. There, the need for purity comes as part of an instruction by no less than the Archangel Gabriel.

Purity

Purity is defined as the absence of its counterpart: impurity. Different causes for impurity can lead to a state of minor or major impurity. Muslim jurists posited that certain bodily functions, such as urination, defecation or, for instance, touching a person of the opposite sex, usually result in minor impurity, which can be rectified through a minor ablution (wudu’). Other bodily emissions, like semen or menstrual blood, as well as sexual activity, will lead to a state of major impurity which needs to be cleansed through a complete ablution (ghusl). While the requirements for purity are gender neutral, two of the causes of major impurity are specific to women: menstruation (hayd)⁴ and post-partum bleeding. Neither of these causes, however, imply a notion of substantive impurity or a contagious state.⁵ In legal literature the ritual restrictions for a menstruating or bleeding woman are not confined to prayer (or touching and reciting the Qur’an), but extend to entering a mosque, and other rituals such as fasting and performing a valid hajj.⁶

Theologically, purity laws, with reference to prayer, can be interpreted as an expression of the believer’s obedience to divine instructions, and as a way of honouring the divine by approaching its message and the rituals it enjoined in a purified state. A socio-anthropological understanding of purity laws focuses on the demarcation of communal identity, specifically among early Muslims vis-à-vis non-Muslims. In attempting to explain the common denominator among Muslim scholars on the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I: The Past
• Chapter 1: Prayer Leadership, Imams and Women: Defining the Contexts and Setting the Issues
• Chapter 2: Congregational Prayers: Women Leading Women Setting the narrative context: Umm Salama
• Chapter 3: Congregational Prayers: Women Leading Men
• Part II: The Present
• Chapter 4: Present Debates and Practices
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright