Tuesday 7 February 2012

Does the Qur’an Support Gender Equality?

Abstract: How are we to understand those verses that most Muslims read as saying that men are women’s guardians and have a degree of superiority over women and that they can marry multiple wives and even beat a disobedient one, and inherit double a women’s share in property, and so on?


By Asma Barlas

Female and male equality in the Qur'an

How are we to understand those verses that most Muslims read as saying that men are women’s guardians and have a degree of superiority over women and that they can marry multiple wives and even beat a disobedient one, and inherit double a women’s share in property, and so on?

I struggled with these verses for many years until I discovered the literatures on hermeneutics, linguistic analysis, Qur’anic exegesis, and patriarchy, and these allowed me approach the Qur’an very differently than most Muslims do.

The “wife-beating” verse began to unravel once I realized that the word that is translated as “to beat” derives from the root daraba that has several meanings, including “to separate.”  So I have to ask: what sorts of hermeneutic and political choices went into rendering daraba as beating specially when the Qur’an counsels
love and mercy and liberality between spouses even if they hate one another?

Then, too, translations of nushuz as the wife’s disobedience became indefensible when I found references to a wife who fears nushuz on her husband’s part.

Similarly, the whole edifice of polygyny begins to collapse once we note that the Qur’an only speaks about it as a way to ensure justice for female orphans.  What sorts of elisions went into re-reading that injunction as giving all men the right to marry four women?

Moreover, doesn’t the verse on polygyny end by saying that it is better to marry only one wife so that the husband won’t be partial to another?

And, once I realized that the word qawwamun also denotes financial upkeep of a wife by a husband—which is how some medieval exegetes read it—I no longer felt obliged to accept its rendition as guardians, much less as rulers.

Doesn’t the Qur’an appoint women and men each other’s awliya, or guides, and charge them both to enjoin the right and forbid the wrong? As one scholar says, how can they be each other’s guides and in charge of one another if men are women’s guardians and have “absolute authority” over them?

And, why should we assume that men always inherit twice the share of a woman when the Qur’an says that mothers inherit twice as much as fathers?

And why should we read the Qur’an’s counsel to take two women as witnesses in place of one man as a two-for-one formula, as Amina Wadud calls it, when a wife’s testimony over-rules that of a husband’s if he accuses her of adultery?

And, if the references to the degree, or darajah, that men enjoy vis-à-vis women is only mentioned in the context of divorce and reconciliation, why should we take that as a universal statement about male ontology and sexual inequality?

Doesn’t the Qur’an teach that sexual equality is ontological in that humans were created from a single self (nafs)?  In fact, some scholars read this and other verses as saying that the Qur’an did not privilege the man by prioritizing his creation.

The Qur’an is also the only scripture that directly addresses women and in language that makes it clear that it does not view them as being less than men as is shown in verse 33:35.

Re-interpretation of the Qur'an

I am among those, however, who argue that the reason the Qur’an has been read as a patriarchal text has to do with who has read it, how, and in what contexts. To make it clear, historically only male scholars have read the Qur’an, mostly in a piecemeal and decontextualized way, and always within patriarchies.


That is why I call the dominant reading of Islam a mis-reading which implies, of course, that I believe there can be a correct reading of scripture.  And this brings me to a second set of tensions having to do with  interpretation.

There are those who continue to insist that the Qur’an can be read in only one way, but, as we know, every text is open to multiple readings.  However, once we accept the principle of textual polysemy, on what grounds can we argue against one reading and in favor of another?

This is one of the biggest conundrums for scriptural hermeneutics but, as I will argue, the Qur’an itself provides Muslims a way out of it.  If Muslims haven’t taken this way out, it is, I believe, because of political, not theological reasons.

And this brings me to the final set of tensions I want to consider here: between hermeneutics and history and I can state these in terms of the following paradox:

On the one hand, most Muslims treat not only the Qur’an, but, also dominant readings of it as timeless and beyond history.  On the other hand, however, they defend such readings in the name of tradition and communal history.

So, history is employed both to defend early Qur’anic exegesis, some of which is anti-women, and to discourage new readings of the text, specially by women. And this is what explains the discursive continuities in patriarchal readings of the Qur’an as well as on “women’s issues” for 1,400 years

Falsely interpreting the Qur'an with ahadith

These are some of the tensions that I try and negotiate in my own work, starting with the relationship between the Qur’an and its readings. While it is a fine line to draw, Muslim theology, and indeed the Qur’an itself, distinguishes between “the divine speech and its earthly realization.”

I believe that it is partly the failure to make this distinction that explains the long history of sexism and misogyny in Muslim societies.  Muslims didn’t invent sexism and misogyny, of course, but they have legitimized them by reading theories of female inferiority into the secondary texts and even into the Qur’an. 

By secondary texts I mean specifically the hadith, or narratives that purport to record the Prophet’s life and praxis and which contain the most infamous antiwomen strictures that many people mistakenly ascribe to the Qur’an.

Personally, I think it is not just unfortunate that Muslims have come to interpret the Qur’an by way of the hadith, but it is also theologically and methodologically problematic inasmuch as the best way to read the Qur’an is by the Qur’an. I will make this point by discussing the criteria the Qur’an gives us  to read it and
also to judge between the contextual legitimacy of competing readings.

Reading the Qur’an by the Qur’an

The first criteria is textual holism.  As the Qur’an says, the whole of it is from God and it criticizes those who read it piecemeal and selectively.  Referring to the law given to Moses, it accuses some people of making “it into (Separate) sheets for show, While ye conceal much (Of its contents)” (6:91; in Ali, 316).

It also censures “those who divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts), . . . and have made the Qur’an Into shreds (as they please),” and it warms that God will “Call them to account” for their misdeeds (15: 90-93; in Ali, 653).

The Qur’an also condemns those who “change the words from their (right) times And places” (5:44; in Ali, 255), and who dwell only on its allegorical verses while ignoring its clear ones as a means to sow discord among people.

Most importantly, the Qur’an asks us to read for its “best meanings.”  This injunction not only confirms that we can read the Qur’an in multiple ways but also that not all our readings may be equally good or acceptable.

Significantly, the Qur’an does not say that only some people can read it for its best meanings and nor does it define what it means by best but leaves it to us to decide.  To me, this opens up a textual democracy of meanings since it allows us to exercise our own agency and choices in constructing religious knowledge.

It also opens up possibilities for political democracy inasmuch as it allows us to argue that we cannot arrive at a shared notion of the best so long as women are excluded from the processes of knowledge construction, and so long as Muslims don’t enjoy the civil and political liberties necessary for engaging in an open
public dialogue or for expressing dissent without fear of persecution.

Lastly, and most importantly, the Qur’an provides some theological criteria for reading it through its description of God.  There are infinite divine attributes and at least ninety-nine divine names, but I can only consider the hermeneutic implications of two aspects of God’s self-disclosure for reading the Qur’an.

One is Tawhid, or God’s unity.  God is one and hence God is the only ruler and sovereign.  No one else—prophets or kings or fathers or husbands—can claim sovereignty over others.  Secondly, God is uncreated and unrepresentable. The fact that we tend to masculinize God linguistically doesn’t mean that God is “really” male and, in fact, the Qur’an even forbids using metaphors for God.

This conception of God who is sovereign and who is neither father, nor son, nor man, nor male, and nor even created, is one of the sites from which I read the Qur’an as an anti-patriarchal text because I believe this conception of God defines what I like to call Qur’anic epistemology.

The Qur’an and patriarchy

In order for me to make this point—and I finally come to the heart of my talk—I need to clarify what I mean by patriarchy since I haven’t defined the term so far.

I view patriarchy as a continuum at one end of which are representations of God as Father and of fathers as rulers over wives/ children, and at the other end, a politics of sexual differentiation that privilege males while Otherizing women.

The virtue of this definition is that it can be applied to different historical periods as well as to religious and secular forms of male privilege and it is broad-ranging enough to encompass a wide array of the Qur’an’s teachings.

If one applies this definition to read the Qur’an, one finds no support in it for either form of patriarchy and much that challenges patriarchal epistemology. First, as I just said, the Qur’an does not represent God as Father and in fact it explicitly forbids Muslims from sacralizing God as Father.

Nor does it sacralize fathers or fatherhood.  To the contrary, it warns that blindly “following the ways of the father” has kept people from God.  To me, this says that there is an inherent conflict between monotheism and traditional patriarchy for what else is traditional patriarchy if not “the ways of the father?”

Of course, the Qur’an does recognize that patriarchies exist and that men are the locus of authority within them, and it does also frequently address men.  But to recognize patriarchy or to speak to men is not to advocate patriarchy.

Second, the Qur’an also does not use biological sex to privilege males and to Otherize women.  Unlike Westernized misogyny, the Qur’an does not represent women and men as opposites, or women as lesser or defective men, or the two sexes as incompatible, incommensurable, or unequal.

Indeed, the Qur’an does not even associate sex with gender.  That is to say, it recognizes sexual (biological) differences but it does not assign them any gender symbolism.  There is thus no concept of gendered man or woman in the Qur’an.

Not a single verse links men and women to a specific division of labor or define their roles as a function of their biology, or say that biological differences make women and men unequal.

It is true that the Qur’an treats women and men differently with respect to some issues, but this doesn’t mean that it establishes them as being unequal.  Moreover, difference does not always imply inequality and the Qur’an does not tie its different treatment of women and men to any claims about biology or inequality.


For Muslim men and women,
For believing men and women,
For devout men and women,
For men and women who are
Patient and constant, for men
And women who humble themselves,
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. 
(Quran 33:35)



By: Asma Barlas
http://asmabarlas.com/PAPERS/Groningen_Keynote.pdf










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