Amina Wadud = Amina "Mardud"?

So, when I was writing on Amina Wadud's Qur'an and Woman text for a class recently, I came across this lame blog that was talking nonsense about Amina Wadud and the author seemed quite proud of himself in doing so. It was so bad the author referred to Amina Wadud as "Amina Wardud" and the blog image was that one with two chicks with a caption that lamely reads, "Retards. We all know one."

Anyway, so I commented on the blog with the following post. It mostly has to do with the popular Muslim claim that "Islam is so simple, but we make it complicated. As for the difference among the different schools of thought, they're not major; they're very minor." That's not true. Some of them are very major! Anyway, here ges.

What a pitiful effort to "prove someone wrong." I'm personally not a fan of her, but that's not gonna stop me from admitting to her intelligence and intellectual capability to make an argument and then support it quite well with Qur'anic verses and logic and reason and common sense.

You, however, my dear brother in Islam, give us no intellectual arguments or support for your claim that she is what you accuse her of. You need to study Islamic law and the larger debates on virtually everything you accuse her of propagating. Did you know, for example, that the Qur'anic ayah on cutting the hands of thieves is actually a popularly disputed guideline in classical Islamic law? (They ask, for instance, what the "hand" includes and what is consider theft. And did you know that theft does NOT include your stealing something from a friend when you're at that friend's house? Yeah, shocking, I know. But it should show you and the rest of us that every single word of the Qur'an has been and continues to be up for debate.)

It is therefore ignorance on our part to assume that we can just read a Qur'anic verse and understand exactly what God meant. That's why we have different sects in Islam and, on top of that, different sub-sects and, even further, different schools of law. And, no, not all of the differences in these schools of law are "small" and "minute": many of them make a huuuuge difference. For example, the Hanafi School says that a woman does not need a walee (male guardian) in order to get married; the Shafi School makes such a marriage invalid -- or haraam, you can say! Now, suppose you do your marriage the Hanafi way: according to Shafi law, then, your children are illegitimate. Does this mean nothing to you?

And, so, that's why scholars spend and have historically spent long, tiring decades in their humble efforts to understand the Qur'an as much as they can -- and even then, they don't fail to admit that they *may* be wrong because it's humanly impossible to know what God's intentions are/were with particular verses.

So, my humble advice: don't make assumptions and conclusions without actually understanding the larger issue. Oh, and most importantly, WHICH Qur'anic verse "explicitly" states that men are superior to women? (I'm lawling right now, sorry. That's funny.) And then find at least three Muslim scholars who will agree with your claim - because, as far as I know, none of them believe that verse 4:34, if that's what you're hinting at, says or suggests that men are superior to women or that women are inferior to men.

Peace!