)HPLQLVW(GJHVRI0XVOLP)HPLQLVW5HDGLQJVRI4XUDQLF9HUVHV

<D6LLQ5DKPDDQ
-RXUQDORI)HPLQLVW6WXGLHVLQ5HOLJLRQ9ROXPH1XPEHU)DOO
SS$UWLFOH
3XEOLVKHGE\,QGLDQD8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV

)RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVDUWLFOH
KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXDUWLFOH

Access provided by Canterbury Christ Church University (23 Nov 2016 20:49 GMT)

142

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

When the text is generativewhen it is constantly in the process of being

produced in the sense of a continuous and discursive becomingthe text also
remains at the center of Muslim meaning making. Through the Qur an as a
continuous and discursive becoming, we may imagine a justice that excludes the
unethical legal provisions of 4:34 and with it a source of sexual hierarchy. And
through the tension produced in the space between feminism and the Qur an,
Muslim women might highlight the value of experience as a site of exegetical
authority beyond the text. Accusations of an anti-Qur anic turn limit the forms
of divinity available to the text to the degree to which the definitive text can
tell us what God says. Yet in these spaces beyond the text that Hidayatullah
and others suggest, equality and the text are never definitive, always discursive,
and drawn from the experiences of the reader, always receptive to continuous
becomings.
Fatima Seedat (PhD Islamic Law, McGill) is a lecturer and the coordinator
of the Gender, Religion, and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights Masters
Programme at the University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN). Previously, she held
an Innovation Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Religious
Studies, University of Cape Town; an Equity Scholarship for Doctoral Studies
Abroad at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University; and a Chevening
Fellowship at the Human Rights Law Center, University of Nottingham. Her
dissertation investigates the discursive construction of the female legal subject
through a study of classical and contemporary approaches to sex difference
in Islamic law and she writes on the intersections of Islam and feminism.
seedatf@ukzn.ac.za

Feminist Edges of Muslim Feminist Readings of Qur anic Verses

YaSiin Rahmaan
Muslim feminist readings of Qur anic verses, by Riffat Hassan, amina
wadud, Asma Barlas, Azizah al-Hibri, and others have provided important
insights and alternative readings for many Muslims who seek gender equitable understandings of the Qur an and Islam. However, their limited modernist
methodology and framework in effect instrumentalizes the central Muslim text
albeit for the justifiable purpose of countering the misogynist and oppressive
uses to which the text had been and is being subjected. Moreover their vision
of divine justice and compassion, which does not extend to as many sentient

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2 (2016), 142148

Copyright 2016 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.,

doi: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.32.2.24

Roundtable: Feminism and Islam

143

beings as possible and especially not to persons of diverse gender identities

and sexual orientations, seriously limits a readers expectations as to the purview of divine justice. The doubts their limited methodology and vision have
generated has led some Muslim feminists like Aysha Hidayatullah and Kecia
Ali to ask whether it is realistic to expect the Qur an to deliver a thoroughly
feminist justice or to guide women seekers to the Divine. The imprecision and
overgeneralization evident in American Muslim feminist scholarship on the
Qur an maybe attributed to an environment not conducive to deep reflection
and meticulous scholarship, given the increasingly Islamophobic gaze of the
non-Muslim majority, which also drives an interest in any title including the
word Qur an or Islam in it and provides a desperately needed space for Muslim
feminist readings of the Qur an.
The conclusion that the Qur an is an incurably patriarchal text that cannot
be expected to deliver gender justice is premature and based on a superficial
and limited engagement with it. What is presented as feminist edges of the
Qur an ought more appropriately be termed the feminist edges of the feminist
readings of Qur anic verses. Moreover, any fear that feminist critical readings
may never gain acceptance and authority among Muslims is unwarranted, given
that Muslim readers of the publications by the aforementioned generation of
American feminists identify with a variety of gender identities. Muslim feminist
scholars whose lifes work is the Qur an, who have its text memorized, who have
the critical language and philological abilities, who spend most of the day, most
days with the text, who embrace and embody the text in prayer and fasting and
who are not shy of asking the unspeakable questions, of giving due consideration to all serious studies of the Qur an, secular and theological, textual and
literary, historical and criticaltheir readings will have authority and a permanent place in the Muslim tradition of Qur anic studies, which respects serious
scholarship. While I expect my colleagues in this roundtable to address more
specific issues raised in Barlass article, I shall devote the rest of this piece to
pointing out the contours of a vision, practice, and methodologies that Muslim
feminist readings of the Qur an might grow into.
The Qur an continues to hold out the possibility of a living and transformative relationship with the Divine, mediated and facilitated by an audition, a recitation (Qur an), and a writing (Kitab) that is echoed in and inscribed over ones
entire existence and that breaks open the shell of the heart to usher a person of
faith into realms of cascading peaceone of the innumerable manifestations of
divine compassion. This, the source of the Qur ans sacred authority, is what sustains a life devoted to its study. A few verses, even one verse, recited and heard
hundreds of thousands of times, might become the key to this transformative
experience. The fact that such an experience is entirely subjective does not distract from its absolute centrality in the life of persons of faith, including those
who strive for gender-equitable readings of the Qur an. Disciplines for seeking

144

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

such a transformative relationship with the Divine through the mediation of the
Qur an are available to persons of all gender identities and sexual orientations
throughout Muslim cultures.
Compassion is the core of the Divine and of the Qur an, and justice is the
minimum degree of compassion, therefore, compassion must be the primary
interpretive strategy of faith as indicated by the intentionality of basmallah that
predicates all Muslim acts. An equitable and just relationship with fellow beings
is a precondition, concomitant, and an inevitable consequence and imperative
of an aspirant toward Allah and a reader of the Qur an toward this end. A critique of interpretive traditions, undertaken with the view of upholding equitable and just relationships not just among human beings (of all gender identities
and sexual orientations) but with all fellow beings, especially those with mobility
and blood coursing through their veins, is a faith imperative. Such a critique
may at times appear anti-Qur an as it stands up for justice and bears witness
against ourselves as Muslims (4:135). This witnessing against ones self, this
intellectual honesty is essential if one is ever to find the existential connection
between ones faith and ones intellect, live a life of integrity, and uphold a space
within which others may do so. In order to arrive at a place where one can say,
this makes sense, one must exercise the honesty of saying, this does not make
sense. Hidayatullah and Alis critiques are a welcoming example of having the
courage to say, this does not make sense. Sense and meaning are subjective
and intersubjective, dynamic, existential realities so one can expect over time to
outgrow or even regrow into older senses and meanings.
While the Qur an (the transformative revelatory existential experience)
is clear (mubeen), the mushaf (received text) is both muhkam (established in
meaning) and mutashabiha (opaque, ambivalent, polyvalent) (3:7). A distinction between the Qur an (including its oral performance as recreation of the
original revelatory experience) and mushaf (including the precanonical and the
closed official corpus), provides us with the space to admit all forms of historical, critical, and literary readings of the mushaf, as a text formed in history
through human agency while maintaining the Qur an as divine revelation, that
descends upon the heart of the believer and gives meaning to her life. The
mushaf is a record of the Qur anthe core existential experience of revelation
of the Prophetic community, just as the hadith is a record of the living practice/
sunnah of the community.
A readers ever-evolving understanding continues to divide the mushaf into
the muhkam (that which is clear or makes sense) and mutashabiha (that which
is elusive, does not yet make sense, or may never make sense). Together these
two complimentary and interdependent distinctions make it possible for a seeker
to continue to struggle with meaning. They are not labels to be permanently
assigned to specific texts but indicators of an individuals and interpretive communities state of understanding. To be able to identify certain passages as currently

Roundtable: Feminism and Islam

145

mutashabiha for one and to respect their opacity while focusing on verses that are
muhkam indicates a level of maturity as a reader of the Qur an. Each reader of
the Qur an has their individual Ummul Kitab (Mother Book, 3:7) that holds them
through their journey toward the Divine as an auditor of the Qur an.
Feminists have argued mostly on the basis of disembodied verses, lifted out
of the suras of which they are an integral part. They have yet to develop a deep
familiarity with the texts of the mushaf or understand and analyze the structure of each sura and its literary import. A deep familiarity with the form and
personality of a sura is a prerequisite to attempting feminist analyses. As structural analyses of suras has demonstrated, in suras with a clearly discernible ring
structure, the core teaching at the center of the sura overrides or reimagines an
initial situation at the beginning and end of the sura. We may discover that the
contradiction between the gender-hierarchical and gender-egalitarian verses is
resolved by the application of this method. Moreover, no attention has been
given to recurring key terms in a sura, related to its overall communication goals
and how these keys are turned and returned during the course of the sura with
at times breathtaking literary and semantic effect, often leading to the discovery
of a deeper hidden level of meaning beyond the apparent one (for example, the
term bayt or house/home) in Sura 24, Nur (Light)).
A rigorous feminist literary critique of each individual sura and clusters of
suras is a prerequisite to a feminist critique of the entire mushaf. For example,
a satisfactory critique of all the suras that feature Mary (Suras 3, 4, 5, 19, and
66) has yet to be attempted: What does the Marion cluster of suras have in common? What role does Mary have in these suras? Is there significance for gender equity in the Marion nature of a sura, including Sura 4, an-Nisa (Women),
which contains the infamous 4:34. Similarly, what can be said of the cluster of
suras that feature ibn Maryam, son of Mary (Suras 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 19, 23, 33, 43,
57, and 61). What precisely of Jesuss person is being foregrounded when he
is referred to as ibn Maryam and what of Mary is being projected through her
son? What role does Mary have in the Qur an?
Out of the three lines of argument in the Qur anhistory, nature, and
selfonly the androcentric history may be faulted from a feminist perspective. Is it conceivable that Marys presence provides a just counterbalance to
all the male prophets in the Qur an? Given that the tradition places the rank of
a mother at seventy times that of a father, might the rank of a mother prophet
be deemed exponentially higher than that of a father prophet? The tradition
also assigns the thrice-recited, eighteen-word Sura 112, al-Ikhlas (with a hidden reference to Mary and Jesus) a benefit equivalent to the recitation of the
entire Qur an. Angelika Neuwirths insight that Sura Ikhlas rewrites both the
Shemauniversalizing it and the Nicean creedunitizing it, corroborates the
insight of the Muslim tradition as to the significance of Sura Ikhlas. Is there a
similar weight and significance in the presence of Mary in a particular sura and

146

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

in the mushaf? Insights, like Neuwirths, provided by secular critical studies of

the mushaf may have momentous implications for the liberatory potential of
Muslim feminist readings.1
Feminists have yet to notice and present a comprehensive study of the
gender fluidity of the Qur anic Arabic with respect to statements regarding the
Divine and human subjects. For example, consider the gender balance and fluidity in the Divine Self decree:
kataba ala nafsihi rahmaHe [God] wrote upon Himself compassion
kataba [He wrote, masc. verb] ala [upon] nafs [self, fem. noun]
hi [His, masc. pronoun] rahma [compassion, fem. noun] (6:12)
Of the two key interchangeable terms used to refer to human subjects: nafs
and insan, the former is assigned feminine and the latter masculine verbs and
pronouns. For example, in 53:3839, individual moral accountability is stressed
in both feminine and masculine forms:
and that no bearer [fem.] bears [fem.] the burden [fem.] of
another [fem.] (53:3)
a person [masc.] only gets what he strives for [masc.] (53:39)2
While 53:38 and 53:39 refer to the same subject, the grammatical gender shifts
from feminine nafs to masculine insan suggesting that gender identity is a provisional linguistic assignment. Each human subject is linguistically both nafs
and insan, grammatically feminine or masculine when addressed by another or
referred to as a third party.
In Sura 43 al-Zukhraf (Gold Ornaments), social construction of gender and
human inclination to fracture divine unity/Tawheed intersect:
awa [then is] man [one who] yunashaoo [is raised, masc.] fi [in] hiliyatin [ornaments, fem.] wa [and] hua [he, masc.] fil [in] khisami [dispute, masc.] ghairu [is not, masc. noun] mobeen [clear, masc.] (43:18)
The reference to the girl child raised among ornaments and unable to present a clear argument in dispute is expressed in masculine verbs and pronouns,
instead of the expected feminine forms. The masculine forms protect the
female child even as the text vehemently argues against the practice of assigning daughters to Allah; daughters who they raise among trinkets and who are
1
Angelika Neuwirth, Late Antique Quran: Jewish-Christian Liturgy, Hellenic Rhetoric,
and Arabic Language (paper presented at Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey,
June 3, 2009), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHCeYSvazY4&index=2&list=PLYmGCJXA9JJ
TWZWAnfaDHDUFBEwEp7Nte.
2
I have consulted The Quranic Arabic Corpus, http://corpus.quran.com/, for all discussions
of Qur anic grammar, syntax, and morphology.

Roundtable: Feminism and Islam

147

as incoherent in argument as they themselves are in assigning partners to Allah

(43:1723). How a child is raised, not her gender identity, is responsible for her
lack of rhetorical and rational skills, and those whose rationality is questioned
for associating partners in divine unity are also faulted for how they neglect
their daughters upbringing. The theme of speech and silence and its complex
relation to power and truth runs through al-Zukhraf. Invoking Mosess speech
impediment, Pharoah casts doubt upon his message, even though Moses may
have been raised in ornaments and trained in rhetoric and logic in the Pharoahs
palace (43:52); and Ibn Maryam (43:57), an eloquent male child (also erroneously assigned the status of offspring/son of God by some) uses his first words as
an infant to defend his mother who was not raised in ornaments, but as the first
and only girl child admitted to the Temple, whose contemplative silence and
prayer may have been more potent than the arguments of well-trained debaters. Mary is certainly one of the addressees of 89:2730.
In Sura 89, alFajr (The Dawn) verses 2730, the self, any self at the highest
level of its spiritual attainment, is addressed as feminine nafs, with an intimacy
and beauty of Divine address that has continued to inspire readers over the
centuries and which is often inscribed on the shrines of male and female saints:
ya ayyuhatuhan [O ye, fem. vocative] nafs [self, fem.] almutmainna [tranquil, fem.]
irjiee [return, fem.] ila [to] rabbi [Lord, masc.] ki [your, fem pronoun] radhiatan [well pleased, fem.] mardhia [pleasing, fem.]
fa [so] [u]dkhuli [enter, fem.] fi [into] ibad [servants, masc.]
i[my, neutral suffix]
Wa [and] [u]dkhuli [enter, fem.] jannat [garden, fem.] i [my,
neutral suffix]
In this overabundance of gendered grammatical forms, the self, not only the
human self but also the Divine selfuses neutral or gender nonspecific suffixes
(for example, 89:27 and 28), pronouns, and verbs (for example, 2:186) when it
refers to itself, and gender-specific nouns and adjectives: At the core of ones self
understanding and becoming, gender is irrelevant. This queer and dynamic modification of suffixes, nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives on the basis of gender and the assignment of masculine, feminine, and neutral gender to the same
subject both celebrates gender and continually reforms and destabilizes it. It is a
primary resource for radically gender equitable and queer readings of the Qur an.
While the hymnic Qur anic descriptions of nature are neutral from the point of
view of gender justice, its descriptions of the human subject are gender deconstructive, pointing a way beyond gender binary and heteronormative assumptions
that even feminist readers have brought to their readings of the Qur an.
When a person of faith, passing by a destroyed city asks, how will God
resurrect her after her death? God honors his question by causing him to die

148

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2

for a hundred years then resurrecting him and having him watch as his donkey
is resurrected from dust to bones to flesh (Sura 2, al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:259).
When Abraham asks, My Sustainer show me how will you revive the dead, he
is asked do you not believe? Abraham says, I do, but so my heart may be convinced. Abraham, as a person of deep faith, asks an honest question, expressing his doubt about a central tenet of faith. He is rewarded by not only being
shown but also being taught how to revive the dead (al-Baqara 2:260). Muslim
feminists need to ask, My Sustainer, show us how are we to deliver justiceto
women, to sexual minorities, to nonhuman animals and to this earth? and
expect to be rewarded beyond our imagination in our efforts to bear witness for
justice as our faith imperative.
YaSiin Rahmaan received a doctorate in religion in the United States and
currently teaches in a graduate program. Rahmaans research and teaching
interests focus on bringing togethertraditional Muslim and contemporary
Western approaches to Qur anic studiesto open up possibilities for new
readings regarding issues of gender, sexuality, and animal rights.

A Response
Asma Barlas
I appreciate this opportunity to respond to the criticisms of my essay and
will focus on two sets of shared concerns about what made it possible and
prompted its theological scrutiny of my interlocutors.
Hidayatullah asks What kind of response is Asma Barlass? . . . How is a
reading like hers made possible? [and] . . . Is it possible to disagree theologically in a manner that builds and edifies? (135). She clarifies that her false
theological paradoxpitting Gods speech and justice against each other
results from treating the Qur an as a repository of norms (137). When we
do this, she argues, we present the text as saying things for us . . . instead of
claiming the human authority to privilege some meanings of the Qur an over
others when the text does not offer clear support for doing so (137). This is
why, she says, feminists need to reassess the revelatory nature of the text in
a manner that allows for interpretive roles beyond extraction (137). Ali says
I misquoted her (regrettably, I did mistake her use of the phrase divine oversight); that theological preoccupations are foremost in my mind, and that,
rather than engage in sustained exegetical debate, Barlas resorts to theological
scrutiny, questioning the religious bona fides of those with whom she disagrees
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32.2 (2016), 148151
Copyright 2016 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.,

doi: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.32.2.25