WOMEN

The identity of women, throughout the history of Islam, has often been determined by androcentric
interpretations of the Quran. Some presume that Islam is intrinsically a patriarchal religion.
Although it proclaims that both men and women have the potential to attain spiritual deliverance,
in the course of history, men were the primary mediators between religious truth and women. The
sharia, the divine law (derived from the Quran and sunna, the tradition of the Prophet) by (almost
all) male jurists defines the parameters of womens rights and obligations. Thus, jurisprudence
plays an undeniable role in representing the Quranic image of woman. Not all jurists agree on all
issues, however: there are differences within the four Sunni schools and the Jaari and Ismaili
schools of law. Imam Abu Hanifa, for example, was of the opinion that a woman can become a
qadi (Judge) based on the grounds that women as well as men are charged in the Quran with the
responsibility of enforcing good and fighting evil. Within some of the other schools, women were
excluded from this position often on a non-Quranic charge of being too emotional.
Notions of hijab, segregation, seclusion, nika, marriage and talaq, and the accompanying
conditions (including polygamous or child marriages), inheritance and the position of women in
the public domain are some issues around which differences exist within the different schools of
law. Many Muslims, based on the very statements of them Quran, believe that Islam adheres to
equality among men and women and that it inspires its followers to struggle against oppression
and injustice. This does not contradict the fact that many of them also infer that Islamic law has
been selectively applied, emphasized, ignored or circumvented in accordance with individual or
group interests at times and in different areas of the Muslim world. The influences of various
customs and the cultural baggage of Muslims from different ethnic backgrounds have been at a
disadvantage in promoting the cause of women. In many cases, it was only the cultural influence
that determined the patriarchal interpretation of the Quran, which in turn required women to be
housebound and to look after the family this is nowhere mentioned in the Quran as being part
of a womans duty. Nonetheless, the duty of a woman to look after her husband and children
became part of the sharia law, and thereby sacrosanct.
Most non-Muslim scholars of Islam also believe that the Quran and its guidelines improved the
status of women in Arabia compared to during the jahiliyya, or pre-Islamic era. They concur that
Muslim women were given more liberties than their counterparts throughout the rest of the world,
including Europe, up until the eighteenth century. Among these liberties was the right to property
and to contract and trade. The message of the Quran regarding gender justice was revolutionary
for its time, yet like most revolutions it has been robbed of its most esteemed values, and within
certain communities has been turned into a system of female subordination and male authority.
This shift, coupled with a kind of self-congratulation for the progressive initiatives of the Quran,
has made for an unhealthy social amalgamation, wherein women are highly honoured and yet
simultaneously restricted. And both the liberties, and the restrictions and limitations, are drawn
from the precepts of the Quran. Thus it is the Quran that is at the base of this multiplicity of
views and which continues to define the role of women today. Any discussion of women in Islam
starts with the references of the Quran and is interpreted by the sunna and hadith. Some
contemporary Muslim scholars have reservations about the use of the hadith literature due to
uncertainties about its reliability. Nonetheless, it remains a primary source for Quranic exegesis,
with some commentators including a note on the degree of the reliability of certain ahadith in
order to maintain credibility.
Interpretations of the Quran vary from traditional, moderate conservative, modern, to progressive,
yet all agree that the Quran presents an equitable account of women and men and of the relations
between the two. However, these various interpretations differ in their definition of equity and its
application. Their views regarding equality are more distinct. The traditional and conservative
positions often oppose equality among men and women as resulting in homogenization of the
masculine and feminine roles, something they view as a disturbance to the social order. In the
Quran some verses address women and men, some are injunctions about women and men, and
others are exclusively man-to-man discourse about women. While some view the patriarchal tone
of some of the verses as socially and historically situated, others criticize and interrogate certain
verses on issues of gender justice. In other words, they do not exclude the Quran from the charges
of exclusion of womens voices. Yet others differentiate between the ideals of Islam and its
realities. They claim that while the ideals as presented in the Quran do render justice to women,
the realities of certain Islamic cultures do not. As Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet
proclaimed: the Quran is a book . . . and does not speak. Therefore, it should have an interpreter
and people alone can be its interpreters. The varieties of interpretations of the status of women in
the Quran can be summarized as follows.
The conservative interpretation often propagates a lower status for women in the social and legal
domain, and suggests inferiority in physiology and psychology as well. The conservatives uphold
such views in light of the verses that give only half-credit to the testimony of a woman when
compared to that of a man and the ruling that women should not pray or fast (or recite the Quran)
while menstruating. Moderate conservatism subscribes not to inequality of male and female but
suggests a mutual complementarity of the two. In their system of family order women are trusted
with the emotional task of childrearing and men with rationality. At times the traditional roles of
woman as mother and wife are so highlighted that a womans performance of the domestic duties
of her household is considered jihad.
The modernists precept that Islam is compatible with modernity suggests changes within Muslim
family law, changes that have had a direct effect upon the status of women both within the family
and within society. The justification for these changes in what is often perceived as the immutable
divine l (aw is based on a distinction between ibadat (laws concerning worship) and muamelat
(social transactions). This distinction provides a ground for the (modernist to conclude that, while
the ibadat are not subject to interpretative change, the muamelat can be reconsidered and
reinterpreted by each generation. Thus, changes within Muslim family law which fall under the
category of muamelat are not only permissible but necessary, if the law harms or is no longer of
benefit to the community. They should be revisited and reformulated in the context of our time,
not merely to benefit women but for the common good and the moral rebirth of the Islamic
community (umma).
The common good of the umma is the concern of contemporary Islamic revivalists also. Their
primary notion is that Islam stands for equality of men and women and that it inspires its followers
to struggle against all kinds of oppression and injustice against women. The active social role of
women in the community and their political participation are not only permitted but encouraged.
Based on the notion that there is no conflict between family and state, revivalists maintain that the
role of women in the family is not trivialized and abandoned but respected and acknowledged, and
that neither of these roles should be sacrificed for the sake of the other.
Contemporary feminist readings of the Quran take offence at the androcentric quality of Muslim
society and condemn the segregation of women throughout Islamic history. Pro-feminist readings
of the Quran attribute patriarchy and androcentrism not to the sacred text and the essence of Islam
but to the later hierarchization of the message of the Quran. They often differentiate between the
Qurans early Meccan message which was tolerant and egalitarian and its Medinan message
 which revealed adaptation to the social and political status of the new Islamic community. It was
the institutionalization of Medinan authoritarianism, they claim, that led to segregation of women.
With references to the Quran and hadith pro-feminists maintain that the women of the household
of the Prophet were not only dynamic and influential but were also fully involved in the public
affairs of the early Islamic community. There was no segregation at times of worship; men and
women occupied the same space in the mosque; and women as well as men could interpret the
law.
Throughout the Muslim world those who endeavour to maintain gender justice refer to egalitarian
verses of the Quran such as whosoever does good deeds whether male or female, they shall enter
the garden and shall not be dealt with unjustly (4.124) or they [women] have rights similar to
those against them (2.228). While there are many such verses that can be used as an authoritative
means to seek justice, others are not so helpful: men are qawwamun, the protectors and
maintainers of women, because God has preferred some of them over others and because they
support them from their means (4.34). This verse and what follows, which permits wife-beating,
and the verse regarding polygamy, together with centuries of male interpretation, do not render
justice as far as gender is concerned.
A hermeneutic approach to the Quran criticizes the traditionalists exclusion of womens voices
from the realm of interpretation. While some Muslims may have no objection to criticizing the
Quran for this exclusion, others view it as a misapprehension to think that this silence is rooted in
the Quran itself. The argument is that there is a distinction between the text and its interpretations.
The text and its principles do not change, yet the capacity within a community of people for
understanding and reflection on such principles can, and does, change. The principles of the Quran
are eternal and can be applied in various social contexts. This separation of principles and their
applicability offers an infinite realm of interpretation. In this sense the stated purpose of the
Quran, which is universality and timelessness, would be limited if a time restrained, culturally
biased interpretation becomes a metanarrative and is taken to be the final word on the matter. The
Quran is a book, and its interpreters are people whose understanding is bound not only by their
intellectual rank but also by their cultural, social, economic and political status as well as their
gender.

Further reading
Ahmed, L. (1992) Women and Gender in
Islam, London: Yale University Press.
Bodman, H.L. and Nayereh Tohidi (1998)
Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity
within unity, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
Publishers.
Esposito, J.L. (1988) Women in Muslim
Family Law, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press.
Kausar, Z. (1996) Oikos/Polis Conflict: Perspectives
of gender feminists and Islamic
revivalists, The American Journal of Islamic
Social Sciences 13, 4.
Mernissi, F. (1991) The Veil and the Male
Elite: A feminist interpretation of womens
rights in Islam,New York: Addison-Wesley.
Mir Hosseini, Z. (1999) Islam and Gender:
The religious debate in contemporary Iran,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Moghadam, V.M. (1993) ModernizingWomen:
Gender and social change in the Middle East,
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Stowasser, B.F. (1987) Liberated Equal or
Protected Dependent: Contemporary
religious paradigms on womens status in
Islam, Arab Studies Quarterly 9, 3: 26083.
(1994) Women in the Quran: Traditions,
and Interpretation, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Wadud, A. (1999) Quran and Woman:
Rereading the sacred text from a womans
perspective, New York: Oxford University
Press.
See also: modesty; nisa; veil
Bahar Davary