Believing Women in Islam

Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an

Asma Barlas

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780863564727
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Does Islam call for the oppression of women? The subjugation of women in many Muslim countries is often used as evidence of this, while many Muslims read the Qur'an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression and inequality. In this paradigm-shifting book, Asma Barlas argues that, far from supporting male privilege, the Qur'an actually affirms the complete equality of the sexes.

Offering a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how, for centuries, Muslims have read patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures. In this seminal volume, she takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender and patriarchy, offering an egalitarian reading of Islam's most sacred scripture.

This revised edition includes two new chapters, a new preface, and updates throughout.

The Qurʾān and Muslim Women

Reading Patriarchy, Reading Liberation

It was not God who wronged them,
but they wronged their own souls.

THE QURʾĀN (30:9 [ALI 1988, 1053])¹

THIS WORK REFLECTS my ongoing engagement with two questions that have both theoretical significance and real-life consequences for Muslims, especially women: First, does Islam’s Scripture, the Qurʾān, 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 Qurʾān permit and encourage liberation for women?

When I ask whether the Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān advocate gender differentiation, dual-isms, or inequalities on the basis of sexual (biological) differences between women and men? In other words, does it privilege men over women in their biological capacity as males, or treat man as the Self (normative) and woman as the Other, or view women and men as binary opposites, as modern patriarchal theories of sexual differentiation and inequality do?

When I ask whether we can read the Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān a patriarchal or misogynistic text?) in the negative while at the same time answering the second (Can the Qurʾān be a source for women’s liberation?) in the affirmative. Using an interpretive methodology, or hermeneutics,⁴ derived from the Qurʾān, 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 Qurʾān’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 Qurʾān’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 Qurʾān and/or other Islamic sources all too often taken out of context” (El-Sohl and Mabro 1994, 1). As many recent studies reveal, women’s status and roles in Muslim societies, as well as patriarchal structures and gender relationships, are a function of multiple factors, most of which have nothing to do with religion. The history of Western civilization should 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 Qurʾānic 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 Qurʾānic 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 Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān’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 Qurʾān’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 Qurʾān or accept its patriarchal exegesis unquestioningly. Arguably, though, as numerous scholars have pointed out, inequality and discrimination derive not from the teachings of the Qurʾān but from the secondary religious texts, the tafsīr (Qurʾānic 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 Qurʾān’s teachings provide Muslims with role models for both women and men. Since different readings of the Qurʾān (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 Qurʾān. 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 Qurʾān, 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 Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān; how Muslims read sexual inequality and patriarchy into it; how we can read the Qurʾān for liberation; my epistemology and methodology; and, finally, the plan of this book.

I. Reading the Qurʾān

Those who read Islam as a misogynistic and “uncompromising and overtly paternalistic” religion (Hussain 1994, 118) point both to the Qurʾān’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 Qurʾān 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 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 Sharīʿah. Rather, I argue that descriptions of Islam as a religious patriarchy that allegedly has “God on its side”¹³ confuse the Qurʾān with a specific reading of it, ignoring that all texts, including the Qurʾān, can be read in multiple modes, including egalitarian ones. Moreover, patriarchal readings of Islam collapse the Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān and to recover the egalitarian aspects of the Qurʾān’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 polyse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Qurʾān and Muslim Women: Reading Patriarchy, Reading Liberation
• Part I: Texts, Contexts, and Religious Meaning
• Part II: God, the Prophets, and Fathers
• Part III: Unreading and Rereading Patriarchy
• Postscript
• Glossary
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index