Amina Wadud's "Qur'an and Woman"

Wadud, Amina. Qur'an and Woman:Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. Oxford UP, 1993. 

Amina Wadud, a convert to Islam, received her B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975, her MA. in Near Eastern Studies, and her PhD. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan in 1988. During graduate school, she studied advanced Arabic in Egypt at the American University in Cairo, along with Quranic studies and tafsir (exegesis) at Cairo University; she also took a Philosophy course at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. She received full professorship of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently (2010) a visiting professor at the Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. She is also the author of Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam.

In Quran and Woman, Wadud analyzes the concept of justice in the Quran. She argues that too many Quranic verses and words used to support the subjugation and negative treatment of women are Quranic solutions for particular problems and not universal principles. The book shows how important it is to identify careless, restrictive, and oppressive interpretations of terms and contexts, demonstrating why careful, contextualized readings are necessary, especially when their consequences are as damaging as they have proven in most Muslim societies. Wadud also asserts that social justice is one of the ultimate and critical aims of the Quran. Hence, if Muslims are to strive for social justice, it becomes absolutely necessary to challenge patriarchy and replace it with a more egalitarian society that will encourage the participation of all members of the society equally. Furthermore, she argues, if Muslims must keep believing that the Quran is for all people of all times, then they must take the different times and societies into consideration—particularly where the roles of women and men are concerned--since different cultures may have different roles for its gendered members.