Karmi, Ghada. "Women, Islam, and Patriarchalism," in Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspecttives, ed. Mai Yamani. New York: New York UP, 1996.
Ghada Karmi, a doctor of medicine, was born in Jerusalem in 1939. She has held a number of research appointments on Middle Eastern politics and culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the Universities of Durham and Leeds. From 1999 to 2001, she was an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where she also led a major project on Israel-Palestinian reconciliation. Currently, Karmi is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and vice-chair of the Council for Arab-British Understanding.
In her article “Women, Islam, and Patriarchalism,” Karmi makes an earnest call for ijtihad (independent reasoning) in contemporary times. She identifies several aspects of Islamic law that need to be re-interpreted because, she asserts, they were formulated in a patriarchal Arab society in which the view and roles of women differed significantly from today’s time. She argues that Muslim women’s rights and access to their children after divorce need to be re-evaluated because, while women may not have been financially capable of taking care of their children at the time when these laws were constructed, many women are capable of doing so now. Karmi also advocates the re-readings and re-interpretations of several controversial Quranic verses, including 2:220, 2:223, and 4:34. She further questions the common conception that women in pre-Islamic Arabia were mistreated, suggesting that perhaps this claim is intended to make women appreciate the purported uplifting status that the patriarchal readings of the Quran give them, including those verses that appear to be pejorative to women. She explicitly states that her argument is not that the Quran is a misogynist document; it is that women are “infantilized” in the literal text of the Quran. She suggests that if the Quran is read in its historical and social contexts, different conclusions about the status and treatment of women may be drawn and applied.
In her article “Women, Islam, and Patriarchalism,” Karmi makes an earnest call for ijtihad (independent reasoning) in contemporary times. She identifies several aspects of Islamic law that need to be re-interpreted because, she asserts, they were formulated in a patriarchal Arab society in which the view and roles of women differed significantly from today’s time. She argues that Muslim women’s rights and access to their children after divorce need to be re-evaluated because, while women may not have been financially capable of taking care of their children at the time when these laws were constructed, many women are capable of doing so now. Karmi also advocates the re-readings and re-interpretations of several controversial Quranic verses, including 2:220, 2:223, and 4:34. She further questions the common conception that women in pre-Islamic Arabia were mistreated, suggesting that perhaps this claim is intended to make women appreciate the purported uplifting status that the patriarchal readings of the Quran give them, including those verses that appear to be pejorative to women. She explicitly states that her argument is not that the Quran is a misogynist document; it is that women are “infantilized” in the literal text of the Quran. She suggests that if the Quran is read in its historical and social contexts, different conclusions about the status and treatment of women may be drawn and applied.
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