Amina Wadud's "Inside the Gender Jihad"

Wadud, Amina. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam. Oxford: Oneworld, 2008.

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. 

An earnest condemnation of patriarchy within Islam, the book wages jihad (war) against gender prejudices that are rooted in patriarchal interpretations of the Quran. Wadud includes in her book her personal struggle with the consequences of the mixed-gender prayer she led in 2005, concluding that the insults and imprecations she continues receiving are a result of the male hegemony and privilege that have dominated intellectual discourses in Islam; the fact that women have been the objects, not discussants, in discourses on shariah, Islamic law,says a lot, she asserts. It is precisely for this reason that she impugns the literalist, narrow, and static interpretations of Islam. She reminds her Muslim readers that Islam came in order to establish justice, which she believes is defined differently by each individual, contending that it is men who bestow full justice to men who limit it on women. The author notes that the term “Islam” is attached to arguments by Muslims so that the interlocutors may gain legitimacy and authority and to prohibit others from dissenting. Wadud’s book is an attempt to contribute to the future development of Islam as a system of social justice that acts in accordance with the Islam that is just and not bound by any unjust interpretations that deny women their Islamic rights, which include direct involvement in dialogues held about the readings of Islamic scriptures in order to establish the shariah.

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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!

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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.

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Important Texts for a Gender/Islam Course

I'm taking a class called Gender, Sexuality, and Islam. I want to post my ENTIRE syllabus here for that class! But I first need to ask my teacher's permission, I'd think.

Required Texts:

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (Yale University Press, 1992).

Ali, Kecia. Sexual Ethics in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007).

Kugle, Scott. Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld Publication, 2010).

Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Societies by Fatima Mernissi  (also titled The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Rights In Islam) (Perseus Books, 1991; originally in French, 1987).

Stowasser, Barbara. Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford U Press, 1994).

Wadud, Amina. Qur'an and Woman:Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1999). 

Recommended Texts:

Barlas, Asma. Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002). 

Spellberg, D. A. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'Aisha Bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

Supplementary Texts:

Abou el-Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001).

Haeri, Shaela. The Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Iran (Syracuse University Press, 1989).

Hambly, Gavin (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World (St. Martin's Press, 1999).

Musallam, Basim, Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

Safi, Omid (ed.), Progressive Muslims: On Gender, Justice, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).
 
Ruth Vanita (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (Routledge, 2002).

In the next blog post, I will share what our last three assignments have been about. They're really interesting and stimulating topics, and I hope that those who hear about them will try doing them on their own.

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