Question:

I understand that hijab is required, and I’ve been wearing it for some time now but I feel like putting it on might have been a mistake.  I don’t feel like it’s made me become a better Muslim, and I feel almost like I’m deceiving people because they look at me as an example even though I’m still struggling with a lot of things. Also, if I take it off, is it really something Allah will punish me for? It seems like such a petty thing. Isn’t the most important thing having a clean heart?

Answer:

Assalaamu `alaykum dear questioner,

Thank you for asking this question which opens up a number of important issues, and for entrusting us enough to share with us some of what you’re struggling with. I ask Allah (subhanahu wa ta`ala – exalted is He) that He makes the words that I write beneficial to you and others who are reading, and that He leads you to the best decisions.

I’d like to start by addressing what I believe is the least important factor in this equation, and that is ‘what other people might think.’ It should never be the case that we alter our practice of Islam or our worship for the sake of other people, or what they might think or assume. People may be quick to judge or jump to conclusions, but whatever thoughts or opinions they have are strictly their responsibility, and not something we should be overly concerned with.

You said that you’re worried that wearing hijab may be deceiving, because people see you as better than you really are. But in truth all of us are sinners, and it is only from Allah’s mercy upon us that He is as-Siteer – the One who veils our faults and our flaws, and makes us seem better than we really are in others’ eyes. One famous scholar said, “If sins had a smell no one would come near me because of the stench!” Every single one of us has deficiencies and weaknesses, has made mistakes, has taken missteps or is presently taking them. We only do the best that we can, and any good deed that Allah grants us the opportunity to perform should be considered a blessing that we take advantage of. Instead of worrying about not being good enough, we can instead consider this as an opportunity to be thankful to Allah for concealing our negatives, and pray, “O Allah, forgive me for what they do not know about me, and make me even better than what they think.”

You will be hard-pressed to find anyone on this earth who can be considered ‘worthy’ of being a representative of Islam, because everyone has one dimension or another in their faith or practice in which they are lacking. However that doesn’t mean we should stop encouraging each other by whatever means are available to us.  There is a very beautiful hadith related to this issue:

Anas relates that, “We asked the Prophet ﷺ, ‘O Messenger of Allah ﷺ, shouldn’t we refrain from calling others to goodness if we don’t practice all good things ourselves, and shouldn’t we refrain from forbidding wrong things until we ourselves have abstained from all the bad?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘You should call others to goodness even if you don’t do all good, and you should forbid bad things even if you don’t abstain from all of them yourselves.'” (Al-Tabarani)

Remember that by wearing hijab you are not saying to others ‘I am Islam’, but simply that ‘I am a Muslim’, meaning – I am someone who is trying to follow this religion, who accepts it as truth, sees beauty in it and hopes to beautify myself with it.  I remember a quote attributed to Yusuf Islam: “Islam is not a state of being but it is a process of becoming,” – becoming more, become better, striving to reach that state of perfect submission and connection with Allah Most High, and May He help all of us achieve that, ameen.

You also said that you feel hijab has not really made you a better Muslim. A lot of times when a person first starts performing a good deed they feel an iman ‘rush’, a feeling of happiness at doing something good for the sake of Allah and energy to do more, improve themselves, etc. However, after some time, when that action starts to become just another part of a daily routine, it loses that power, and that increase in iman and excitement dissipates.

What a person needs, instead of focusing on those ‘rushes’, is a steady and constant diet of good deeds and spiritual nourishment. We cannot rely on one particular deed to ‘make’ us better Muslims. Instead, we have to take the reigns and make sure we are doing things regularly that increase us in iman, like recitation of the Qur’an, performing salah with consciousness and focus, dhikr, and so on. Wearing hijab can definitely be one of those things, but it is only one part of a whole that needs to be constructed. Just like exercise is important for good health, yet it has to be combined with eating right and many other things in order for the person to see the desired results in the end.

Also know that there is a direct relationship between a person’s actions and their inner state. We know that when someone is in a high state of iman it’s natural for him or her to start performing more good deeds. However, we may overlook the fact that the opposite is true as well – that just performing good deeds, even if one may not be ‘feeling it’, can affect us and change us. The limbs are inroads, and performing good deeds with them can soften a hardened heart, bring enlightenment to a closed mind, and give a person a feeling of rejuvenation and desire to come closer to Allah and do more positive things. I heard a scholar say that if one is feeling troubled, confused or in a low state of iman, “go quickly to action”; because good deeds can bring about that inner reawakening one may need. If we don’t see a change happening in us when we do a good deed, that doesn’t mean we should stop it but that perhaps we need to supplement it with others in order to gather the momentum needed to see results.

Thirdly, you are absolutely correct when you say that the most important thing is for us to have purified hearts. Allah (swt) emphasizes this in the Qur’an when He states that on the Day of Judgment nothing will be of benefit to the servant except “one who brings to Allah a clean, sound heart” (26:89). The question is, how does one achieve that? What purifies us and cleanses our hearts?

In our times we find that some people feel that we’ve reached a more ‘enlightened era’ in which spirituality can be derived solely from philosophy and ideas, and need not be bound by rituals and details of religion. However those who propound this notion forget that Allah did not create us as minds and souls alone – but coupled them with our physical bodies. We cannot deny the fact that we are body and soul, content and form, together, and each has its own needs and specifications for refinement. This is a sunnah of Allah in the way that we were created, and why prayer, fasting, and all our spiritual endeavors have very specific physical components. These forms house within them dimensions of meaning, but it is only from enacting them precisely that a profound spirituality can be achieved.

Purifying our hearts is the goal, but the means to reaching that goal is through the very real and specific physical prescriptions and commandments that Allah (swt) has given us. It is through His obedience and through following the teachings of our deen that we clean and polish our hearts. It is for this reason that I have to say that hijab is not something trivial. Anything that leads us to spiritual awareness, elevation, and purification – that helps us come closer to Allah – cannot be considered trivial or petty. Perhaps it is more likely that there are hidden depths within it that we do not perceive, or that we are not putting it in the proper context of its deeper purpose and meaning.

About punishment from Allah: a better way of looking at this issue is not considering the smallness or pettiness of the sin, but the greatness of the One whom we are sinning against. From His infinite wisdom, all-encompassing knowledge and vast mercy, in accordance to His Law – which is at its core about attaining benefit and warding off harm – He has instructed us to perform this action. In the Qur’an Allah says, ‘It may be that you dislike something and in it is goodness for you’ (2:216); ‘It may be that you dislike a thing but Allah brings about from it a great deal of good.’ (4:19) If someone chooses to step away from a prescribed action knowingly, we cannot deny that this is a sin, and that Allah holds us to account for our sins. However we always have hope in and pray for Allah’s mercy and kindness, as we know He can forgive all sins if He chooses.

In closing, I want to leave you with a beautiful quote from a Hadith Qudsi. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said:

“My servant draws not near to Me with anything more beloved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him.” (Bukhari)

Know, dear questioner, that if you feel far from Allah, the solution is not to stop what you are doing and find a different way, but to persevere and continue on the path you are on, even though it is hard. This will make you beloved to Allah, and one who feels the happiness of being close to Him and being shaded by His Loving Mercy and care.

May Allah enliven and enlighten our hearts and grant us closeness to Him. May He make us people who love to worship Him, and through our worship become close to Him and gain His love. May He make our hearts firm and steadfast on our deen, and grant us strength and bravery in our spiritual struggles. May He guide us to the best decisions and make easy for us the path of khayr [goodness]. Ameen ya Rabb.

WAllahu a`lam – and He alone knows best.

Wasalaamu alaykum.

As one of the leading scholars in this field, he advocates that we learn more about Islam’s rich history of female scholarship and the role women played in preserving and collecting sacred Islamic knowledge, and strive to provide women with opportunities and spaces to learn and teach in our communities.

The Required Response to Feminist Reinterpretations of the Qur’an: Part I | Part II | Part III

After looking at examples distributed in various parts of the world, we can summarize the key points of this movement’s discourse while noting that its members vary in the extent to which they adopt some of these points:

1. Historicism concerning religious texts including the Qur’an, subjecting them to historical context which could lead to abrogation and replacement or reduction to purely ethical values. Indeed, casting doubt on the authenticity and perfection of the Qur’anic text.
2. Biased analysis that turns a blind eye to: the nature of Arabic texts and Arabic linguistic rules, usages and idioms; the significance of the Qur’an declaring its “Arabic” nature; and the conclusions of contemporary phonological studies, particularly semantics, concerning interpretation.
3. Under-qualification, to various extents, for the job of interpretation. Approaching the Qur’anic text with preconceived notions born of a methodology that materialized and thrived in a different culture for reasons that may not exist in the Islamic environment.
4. Denigrating the Islamic sciences that were compiled and developed in service of religious texts – to verify, understand, and derive rulings from them – with the claim that these represent regressive traditionalism from which we need a decisive break. This, despite the fact that it is these sciences – along with literary, phonological and rhetorical studies – that can form an authentic “hermeneutics”. In other words, they can be taken as a suitable methodology for interpreting Arabic texts scientifically, objectively, and according to set rules.

Towards an Arabic Hermeneutics

I believe that we are now in need of constructing a theory or a complete intellectual structure for interacting with Arabic religious texts – including the Qur’an and Sunnah – and interpreting them in a way that accords with its nature and respects its unique characteristics.

We need not invent something new to match what others have produced: all that is required is to gather the elements of interaction with tradition and its scientific and cultural phenomena from our original sciences and our historical experience. In this way, those sciences will continue their service to this tradition and make it incumbent on whomever wishes to study, evaluate, and interpret the tradition to master the sciences, and, in addition, be trained in their implementation and how to carry out objective research within their scope.

The aptitude of the researcher is a basic prerequisite to any research activity. We saw how some people speak at length about things of which they have no knowledge, armed with nothing but unrestrained guesswork and embellishment, from among the most crucial issues of life and existence. The dangers of this phenomenon may not be obvious today; but as this “intellectual” output continues, the cultural environment will become polluted by its by-products until future generations are left unable to breathe clean air.

I wished to shed some light on the efforts of Uṣūl scholars in particular in confronting this powerful wave, and in developing and enriching the language. Phonological research, which had been unengaged with this dimension, has now begun to include it in the study of language and its sciences and methodologies. The means and tools are abundant, and all that remains is to apply careful consideration and thorough scrutiny.

Therefore, I shall suffice with a brief outline of the elements that can form the basis of the desired Arabic theory of interpretation, in the hope that I shall have another opportunity to elaborate thoroughly on these elements, particularly the efforts of the Uṣūl scholars:

1. Sciences of the Arabic language including its traditional branches – naḥw, ṣarf, balāgha, ‘arūḍ, naqd and adab – alongside their counterparts in modern phonology, especially semantics.
2. Principles and rules of tafsīr, along with types and examples, methods and techniques; appreciating the contributions of our predecessors to understanding its meanings and objectives; related subjects in the Qur’anic sciences.
3. Principles of hadīth, methods of authentication and critiquing both matn and sanad, accompanied by modern methodologies of critiquing and editing texts and historical criticism – both internal and external.
4. Uṣūl al-fiqh and the means by which the jurists extract rulings from their sources; the linguistic and jurisprudential axioms underpinning this process; related studies of the nature and objectives of the source-texts, supported by methods of analysis and law-drafting in contemporary legal philosophy.

These are the primary issues that may require further categorization, in addition to knowledge of the text’s field of relevance, such that it is possible to interact with it with certainty and clarify, interpret and explain it. I ask Allah Most High to bring these bright minds back to the vastness of their culture and heritage, and the origins and reality of their existence.

References and Suggested Readings [with additions by the Translator]

The following are in addition to works cited in the text.

English

• Dictionary of Contemporary Thought, by David Kirby (London, MacMillan)
• The Influence of Modern Western Hermeneutical Approaches to Study of Religion on Contemporary Islamic Thought: A Case Study of Woman in Islam, by Sadia Mahmood (Master’s thesis, International Islamic University, Islamabad, 2004)
• Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Jean Grondin (New Haven, Yale University Press)
• “Modernization in Muslim Society” by Clifford Geertz, in Religion and Progress in Modern Asia (New York, Free Press)
• The Mu‘tazilite Theory of Tawḥīd, by Amila binti Awang (Doctoral thesis, International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, 2003)
• [The History of the Qur’anic Text from Revelation to Compilation, by M.M. Al-Azami (Leicester, UK Islamic Academy)]
• [The Qur’an and the Orientalists, by Muhammad Mohar Ali (Ipswich, JIMAS)]
• [The Sunnah and its Role in Islamic Legislation, by Mustafa as-Siba’ee (Riyadh, IIPH)]

Arabic

• Faṣl al-maqāl, by Abū al-Walīd Ibn Rushd
• al-Fikr al-islāmī al-ḥadīth, by Muḥammad Al-Bahī
• al-Madkhal ilā dirāsat ‘ilm al-kalām, by Ḥasan al-Shāfi‘ī (Cairo, Maktabat Wahba)
• Tajrīd al-i‘tiqād, critical edition by Ḥasan al-Shāfi‘ī (Doctoral thesis, University of London, 1977)
• [Kayfa nata‘āmal ma‘a al-qur’ān al-‘aẓīm, by Yusuf Al-Qaraḍāwī (Cairo, Dar al-Shurūq)]
• [Qirā’at al-naṣṣ al-dīnī bayna al-ta’wīl al-gharbī wa al-ta’wīl al-islāmī , by Muḥammad ‘Imāra (Cairo, Maktabat al-Shurūq al-Duwaliyya)]

The above series was an abridged from a paper written by Dr. Ḥasan al-Shāfi‘ī; please visit the translator’s website for the full translation: “The Movement for Feminist Interpretation of the Qur’an and Religion and its Threat to the Arabic Language and Tradition”

Riffat Hassan

Riffat Hassan was born in the 1940s to a Shi‘ite family in Pakistan; her grandfather was a poet and playwright and the family was known for its creativity and patronage of music and dance. She now holds American nationality and teaches Religious Studies at Louisville University. Her earlier studies were at a Christian missionary school in Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan. Then she went to Durham University in England to receive an Honours degree in English and Philosophy in 1964, then a doctorate in 1968 on the philosophy of Iqbal, maintaining excellence throughout her studies. Before outlining some of her theories as expressed in a number of articles on “feminist theology” (she uses “theology” in its broad Christian sense, not limited to belief; rather, it means all religious thought concerning women), as well as in her three books about Muhammad Iqbal, it may be appropriate to give an account of an influential Pakistani intellectual who preceded her.

Fazlur Rahman Malik

Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919-1988) prepared the ground for Dr. Riffat and those she influenced, even if unwittingly. He received his training from Toshihiko Izutsu at McGill University in Canada, and was perhaps the first to apply the hermeneutical method to the Qur’an. He challenged the traditional definition of the Qur’an in its conception as recited revelation from Archangel to Prophet (peace be upon them). He claimed that there was a subjective aspect to the revelation on the part of its recipient, and that this aspect was what Muslim academic research had thus far failed to appreciate. He was considered a leading authority in Islamic and Qur’anic studies in the West, despite his criticism of many Orientalists.

As for Riffat Hassan: she proceeds from a prior assumption of the low regard for women in traditional Islamic thought, and attempts to explain the Qur’an using hermeneutics from a purely feminist perspective. Thus she attempts to uncover its rulings related to women and restore the Islamic perception of women based on the primary source of the religion, using free thought and removing from the Qur’anic text the effects of aḥādīth (Prophetic statements), which she criticises and eventually rejects on the basis of their conflict with the right of women to absolute equality with men. For example, she refutes the ḥadīth of the “curved rib”, considering this idea to have been taken by Muslims from the Torah rather than the Qur’an. In her feminist theology, she virtually abstains from prophetic ahadith, even though many exhort to proper treatment of women and urge respect for them.

Riffat Hassan has claimed that:

1. Religious thought and narrations in the three revealed religions assume that God’s primary creation was man, in that woman came from his rib;
2. that woman was created not only from him, but for him; and
3. that she is responsible for the descent from Paradise.

It appears that – despite her numerous qualifications in Christian theology – Dr. Hassan is unaware of a fact known to any beginner in Islamic studies: the fact that these three beliefs are foreign to Islam. She exerts great effort at numerous junctures, such as with her strained interpretations of the opening verse of Sūrat al-Nisā’ and her conclusion that “Adam” does not refer to a particular human being, but to the human race. As for the “spouse” (zawj), she claims that as a masculine word it does not refer to the woman. Therefore, there is no primacy in the creation of either gender, and the two origins of the human race are equal.

She continues this painstaking effort – in vain, as the problem is itself fabricated with respect to the Islamic texts – to conclude that the aḥādīth are falsely attributed to a Prophet known to be fair towards women and to recognise their rights. All of this reveals an extremely shallow acquaintance with the Arabic language, and obvious weakness in knowledge of Islamic sciences and religious facts, particularly in the sciences of ḥadīth, tafsīr and uṣūl al-fiqh.

Amina Wadud

Amina Wadud embraced Islam in 1972, and has long worked hard on feminist interpretation of Islamic texts, based on a complete belief in the absolute equality between men and women. She stayed for a year in Cairo during the 1970s, after receiving her first degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She then completed an MA in Near Eastern Studies and a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan in 1988. She worked as assistant professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia from 1989-1992, then professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University until 2008.

Dr. Wadud carries out her activities through her position as a successful university lecturer, and she has received a number of prizes. Her first book, entitled Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective, has been translated into many languages. She follows Riffat Hassan’s approach in focusing upon the Qur’an and prophetic narrations, interpreting them from a feminist hermeneutical perspective, whereas other female activists within this movement focus on history and subjecting the entire Islamic enterprise to critique. Also, despite her extreme conception of gender equality, she affirms her commitment to Islam according to the understanding she embraces.

In the aforementioned book, Wadud highlights her dependence upon the Qur’an alone, such that if the Sunnah contradicts her understanding of the former, she rejects the latter. In what she calls her “progressive” understanding of the Qur’an, she rejects its divorce laws and approval of polygyny, considering both to be examples of a mistaken, regressive understanding of Islam and the Qur’an. She calls for a cultural break from these backward interpretations, while referring in her discussions only to one work of tafsīr, namely the Kashshāf of Al-Zamakhsharī, without explaining the reason for her choice.

Wadud’s level of Arabic seems, despite her qualifications, to be comparable to that of Riffat Hassan. She calls for interpreting the Qur’an in a variety of cultural contexts and environments, rather than being restricted to one. Like Dr. Hassan, she re-visits the question of creation and the “zawj” in order to establish complete equality between the two origins of the human race – as well as discussing the concepts of afḍaliyya (preference), qiwāma (guardianship) and nushūz (marital discord) – ignoring, in the process, the requirements of Qur’anic context and linguistic signification.

Fatema Mernissi

Dr. Mernissi had a traditional upbringing in Morocco, and studied political science at Mohammed V University and the Sorbonne before travelling to America and attaining a doctorate in sociology from Brandeis University in 1974. Upon her return, she began to lecture in sociology at the Mohammed V University of Rabat and is nowadays a research scholar acclaimed in Western circles in the field of Qur’anic and Islamic studies. In 2003, she was granted an award for her contribution to feminist literature. She has numerous published studies concerning the ḥijāb, Islam and democracy, certain aspects of Islamic history, women and Islam, and other topics.

Before summarising her opinions and contributions to the feminist interpretative movement, I wish to mention two well-known names in the field of hermeneutics in the North African environment. The first is the late Mohammed Arkoun, who went further than Fazlur Rahman in his efforts to “deconstruct” the verses of the Qur’an in search of the “real Qur’an” whose text had, he claimed, become mixed with myths which ought to be separated from it. He called for the light of investigation to be directed at the project of compiling the Qur’an – which was flawed in his opinion – putting aside the supposed historical sanctity and authenticity of its text, so that the original text could be purified of the mythical contents contained in the Muṣḥaf in the hands of the Muslims.

These are the boldest claims to surface against the mutawātir (indisputably narrated) text of the Qur’an throughout the centuries, across the regions of the Muslim world and among all strata of society – scholars and laymen, old and young, women and men – but they were echoed subtly by another Moroccan writer, ‘Abd al-Hādī ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, particularly in his book Sulṭat al-Naṣṣ (“The Authority of Text”).

In his introduction, Professor ‘Abd al-Raḥmān speaks about “historicism” concerning the event of Islam’s emergence, and its content and use. He attempts to specify a methodology to study the Qur’an and other texts based on a break from traditional methodologies, which ought to be replaced by a method of deconstruction and reconstruction, with the standards used to critique the Greek tradition. Responding to an analysis by Mohammed Abed al-Jabri of the famous hadith concerning innovations (“Kullu muḥdathatin bid‘a..”.), he suggests that “bid‘a” is genitive, as is “ḍalāla” in the next phrase. As for the statement “every misguidance is in the Fire”, he claims that this is the predicate – or, in his novel phraseology, the “result”. We must ask what analytical method this is, and what novel grammar this researcher is applying .

‘Abd al-Raḥmān calls people to consider the psychological aspect of the Qur’an – given that the Qur’an is in a human language – and to remove the aura of sanctity from it and employ every methodology “whether linguistic, psychological, historical or dialectical”. He applies the method of “reasons of revelation” to Sūrat al-Nisā’, deconstructing and interpreting, concluding with nothing but doubts cast upon the text, and the charge of wrongdoing against women either by its contents, or via its application by the Prophet ﷺ (Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him).

It was in this environment that Dr. Fatema Mernissi’s views developed. Her books presented her bold opinions based on a feminist worldview and using thematic and historical analysis: not only on religious texts, but indeed on the entire Islamic historical experience. In The Veil and the Male Elite, she explores prophetic aḥādīth concerning women in terms of their matn (text) and isnād (chain), with critique based upon the assumption that traditional research is unable to reach the proper position on women and must be corrected. She believes that politics has affected religious texts, particularly aḥādīth, which she discusses under the title: “Sacred Text as a Political Weapon” – this being behind their negative attitude towards females. In the second part, she discusses the first three years of the Madīnan state from a historical angle to prove that the rulings applied to women there, including segregation and ḥijāb, were temporary measures limited to a particular historical context. In the final chapter, she concludes that the oppression faced by the Muslim woman is not due to Islam, the Qur’an or the Sunnah, but rather to the society and male interests.

In Beyond the Veil, she does the same sort of historical analysis, attaching great significance to political considerations and discussing the various hadiths about women. She claims that the narration of Al-Bukhārī from Abū Bakra (ra) concerning female leadership – when news reached the Prophet ﷺ of the Persians appointing a woman as their leader – was nothing more than a weapon in the political stance taken by its narrator, justifying his seclusion from the strife. She accuses the same Companion over the narration of Al-Ḥasan’s (ra) conciliation between the warring parties, accusing him of having a memory that shifts for the sake of convenience: a crude form of ridicule. No less crude are her comments about Abū Hurayra (ra), whose allegedly misogynistic attitude was due to his displeasure at being so nicknamed rather than as “Abū Hirr” (a masculine word). It is by such “academic” standards that aḥādīth are rejected or accepted in the feminist interpretative movement.

Even if Mernissi’s explanation of the historical circumstances behind the “temporary” obligation of ḥijāb in Madīna is accepted, what is she to do – after critiquing the Sunnah – with Qur’anic verses like Al-Ahzab 33:53? The response is the same: historical context, specifically the military threat in the year 5 AH and the burden of many visitors coming to the Prophet’s ﷺ home – all of which brought about the ruling which is comparable in her eyes to the Original Sin in Christianity. Consequently, Mernissi states that the ruling was temporary in nature, in response to a situation that ceased to exist: this is historicism as applied to Qur’anic texts and their meanings and spheres of application.

She also discusses the inheritance rulings in terms of their historical connections, also in a manner not free from ridicule. Her analysis of numerous Qur’anic verses is in terms of cause (historical circumstances) and effect (the revelation), in language that expresses grievances or criticisms against the Companions and the Prophet ﷺ himself concerning any revelation sent down against what Dr. Mernissi considers to be the interests of women.

Leila Ahmed

If the prolific Mernissi was something of a pioneer in this type of historical critique, then Dr. Leila Ahmed has taken on her mantle. She received all her university education from the UK’s Cambridge University and became a professor at the Harvard Divinity School.

She has published a number of books: some about women and others on academic, professional and personal interests, but her primary work is Women and Gender in Islam. In it, she uses a historical method to present the origins of the contemporary struggle between these three elements, as well as detailing the position of woman from the early days of Islam up to its major eras. Then she outlines feminist discourse in the modern period in various Muslim regions including Egypt, and its relation to issues of ḥijāb, divorce, polygyny and so on. She concurs almost completely with Mernissi’s opinions and the evidences she presents, but with a comparative style and attention to cultural influences. As for the “curved rib”, she sees in it the influence of Byzantine culture. She also contrasts African conservatism with Egyptian libertarianism with respect to women. She attacks the term “Jāhiliyya” for its negative effect, while stating that Islam restricted the Arab woman’s sexual freedom. She makes a distinction between – on the one hand – the technical or juristic understanding of prophetic directives, which transforms them into lasting rulings of permission and prohibition, and – on the other – an ethical interpretation that focuses on values and addresses the conscience. She considers the former to be the most serious error into which Islamic orthodoxy has fallen.

Turning to the Qur’an, Dr. Ahmed challenges the Muslims’ belief in the authenticity of its text established by tawātur (successive multiple narration), opining that what is in people’s hands today is different from what was revealed upon the Prophet ﷺ.

I do not know what is behind this enthusiasm, by which she – as an educated Muslim woman – challenges the dearly held beliefs of every Muslim.

In the third and final part:

Towards an Arabic Hermeneutics

Part I | Part II | Part III

This series, presented in three parts, is abridged from a paper entitled “The Movement for Feminist Interpretation of the Qur’an and Religion and its Threat to the Arabic Language and Tradition” by Shaykh Ḥasan Maḥmūd ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Shāfi‘ī, one of the senior scholars of Al-Azhar. A link to the full translation will be provided with Part 3 in shā’ Allah (God willing).

The author is a leading authority on Islamic theology, philosophy and spirituality and has published at least 19 books including translations and critical editions. In addition to studies in his native Egypt, he received a doctorate from the University of London in 1977. Among his many academic appointments, he served as president of the International Islamic University in Islamabad from 1994-2004; he has also taught in Sudan and Saudi Arabia. He is an active member of numerous bodies including the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo.

The Significance of This Paper

This paper addresses a trend that has left the ivory towers of academia and begun to penetrate the psyche of modern Muslims in different parts of the world. Some of the figures mentioned are still active today and receiving media attention. It is not a detailed critique, but it is distinguished from some other writings by its focus on the roots of the problem, namely the question of interpretation rather than specific conclusions. As an example, the female-led Jumu‘ah (Friday) prayers of Dr. Amina Wadud have drawn detailed and extensive juristic (fiqhī) criticism, while there is less concern over her approach to the fundamentals. The paper is also significant due to its author being an internationally renowned authority in the traditional sciences of Islam, based at Al-Azhar with its proud history and contemporary role in promoting Islamic moderation and authenticity.

Whom it Addresses

As mentioned, the paper is not so much a refutation as it is an attempt to draw the attention of Islamic scholars to the issue. Therefore, far from silencing the feminist authors mentioned, it calls for constructive engagement with their ideas and taking the opportunity to build a hermeneutic theory that is harmonious with Islamic thought and tradition. It is also relevant to ordinary Muslims who ought to be aware of the controversial nature of the ideas underpinning the feminist interpretative enterprise, as they might look positively on it given that women’s rights are genuinely a core Islamic concern. Indeed, some mainstream Muslim groups and individuals have fallen into the trap of promoting these thinkers in their quest for a “new Islamic theology.”

What it Says and Doesn’t Say

The paper examines the background of Western hermeneutics (interpretation methodology) and discusses several examples of how this has been applied to the Qur’an, particularly by feminist thinkers. It touches on some of the flaws in these authors’ qualifications for the task, as well as their dangerous assumptions and problematic conclusions. It calls for making full use of the accumulated experience of centuries of rigorous Islamic scholarship, together with the best of modern methods. Therefore it is not a rejection of modernity, or the West, or feminism, per se. I believe that it calls for a critical engagement with the concepts, and for scholars to take on the task of responding to misconceptions and carving a constructive path to progress. And Allah knows best.

Author’s Introduction

This paper aims to draw attention in the academic sphere to a cultural and intellectual movement that has become widespread in the contemporary Islamic world. This movement seeks to take the Western methodology of “hermeneutics” and apply it to the Noble Qur’an and Islamic religious texts in general, with complete indifference to the principles of Qur’anic exegesis and rules of interpretation established in our Arabic-Islamic heritage, as well as the related Prophetic clarification contained in the authenticated Sunnah [tradition and practice of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him)]. Indeed, this indifference extends to the events of history and the entire accumulated experience of Islamic civilisation, based on a prior assumption and judgement that the Islamic tradition–in theory and practice–has been patriarchal and chauvinistic against women. Therefore, according to this view, the time has come to break intellectually from this tradition and re-establish the interpretation of the Qur’an and the religion based on this assumption, and in the light of Western Christian hermeneutics.

In recent times, since the second half of the last century, this movement has been championed by a number of academics educated in Western institutions, and almost entirely lacking in rigorous, authentic learning and training in the fields of Islamic culture and religious sciences. Most of them reside in the West, where they studied and occupied research and teaching positions, particularly in Britain and the United States. However, a few live in the Muslim world after having received their education in Western universities. They promote the same direction of thought while engaging in this interpretative work; it is an active movement on the level of culture and research, but does not yet represent a general trend. It is possible for this movement to achieve results and effect change on Muslim societies in terms of their connection with their heritage, but not to the desired extent of a complete break with tradition. The effect would merely be to weaken these societies’ interaction with their cultural tradition, thereby possibly stunting their progress towards a sound awakening that would restore them to the path of history.

First: The origins of “hermeneutics” and its stages of development until its present form.

Second: The effect of these hermeneutics upon some of our men and women, and their attempts to apply them to the Arabic-Islamic tradition with acute subjectivity and bias. In addition, they display complete conformity to results of a cultural experiment that took place in a foreign environment, without any critical spirit or concern to adapt the process such as to accord with the nature of our heritage, language and civilisation.

Third: The linguistic, intellectual and methodological requirements of an “Islamic hermeneutics”–if this expression is appropriate–that suits our civilisation, our Arabic language and our distinct historical experience. In my view, we are in no need of this terminology, but I am employing it for the purposes of comparison. What we mean is: the scientific principles of interpreting Arabic religious texts, as they developed and took shape in the context of our culture and religious sciences, alongside their counterparts in contemporary knowledge and thought.

Western Hermeneutics: A History

Before discussing this phenomenon, which is key to the study–in that it is the basis from which feminist interpretation of Islamic texts was born–I wish to affirm clearly that interaction and exchange between cultures, particularly between the contemporary Arab culture and others such as the Western culture, is both praiseworthy and desirable. Indeed, in the present circumstances, it is almost inevitable.

• This is because proper exchange flows from the nature of this Arabic-Islamic culture that believes in the unity of humanity and its common origins, and that the diversity of nations calls for mutual interaction and connection, not conflict and contempt. These are constructive principles worthy of being taken as a basis for interaction and exchange on the human level.
• Indeed, the Islamic civilisation practised and benefited from such interactions, without hesitation and free of prejudice, during its most prosperous times. At the outset of this experiment, Abū Ya‘qūb al-Kindī stated: “We should be very grateful to whoever brings a small or great measure of truth, as they have made us party to the fruits of their thought and thus facilitated our goals. We ought not to be shy about appreciating truth and adopting it from wherever it comes, even from distant peoples or nations differing from us, because nothing is a higher consideration for the truth-seeker than truth itself.” Some centuries into the flowering of the experiment, Abū al-Walīd Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote: “In this project of ours, we must make use of the statements of our predecessors, whether they shared with us in religion or not; by the latter, I mean those who explored these questions before Islam. We should turn to their books and consult their opinions; whatever is correct, we accept, and whatever is mistaken, we point that out.”
• As for this engagement being both necessary and a reality: the Information Revolution of the past few decades, with its constant stream of information via the various communication networks, makes an introverted approach impossible in today’s world. Yet the question remains: does the phenomenon we are analysing match that spirit expressed by Al-Kindī and Ibn Rushd, or does it take another route? The answer may become clear with the following brief historical account.

What is meant by hermeneutics is the rules of interpretation and understanding of religious texts; it is an old term from Christian theology, the sense of which widened and narrowed in response to developments in religious and philosophical thought and biblical studies in the Western context. The broadest definition has it as “understanding and interpreting the forms of human existence”, thus encompassing all the humanities and social sciences.

The consideration of text began with the ancient Greeks, for whom the allegorical aspect was most prominent. Then hermeneutics reached the Jews, who strove to devise rules of interpretation. There emerged among them literalists–like the Sadducees and Karaites–yet the allegorical exegesis remained dominant; then the Rabbis worked to develop a path between the two ways. The Egyptian School played a significant role early on, as did the Andalusian School during the Islamic era. Just as Philo brought interpretation closer to Greek philosophy, Mūsā b. Maymūn (Maimonedes) did the same for Islamic philosophy and Kalām theology.

Then hermeneutics proceeded to the Christian Church, where the allegorical method dominated again. However, the Fathers laid down some bases to understand and interpret the Bible, which came to be known as Augustine’s rules: (1) Exegesis by received teachings, or by related texts if possible: for such cannot contradict each other; (2) Metaphorical interpretation according to rules and relationships that point to significations beyond the literal meaning; (3) Exegesis using linguistic rules to determine the meanings of words and structures; and (4) Exegesis according to historical circumstances and events accompanying the text. These rules represented a positive step in refining and structuring the process of interpretation to a certain extent; however, the allegorical method still retained its upper hand due to the influence of Gnosis on early interpretations of the New Testament. Like the Jews, and as with any religion, three groups emerged among them: (a) textual literalists; (b) allegorists and mystics; and (c) moderate centrists.

The Church treated the Bible as its property and considered its interpretation to be the Church’s exclusive right; in order to minimise disagreements, this authority was subsequently limited to the Pope alone. Along with other factors, this resulted in protest movements, including new scepticism, erupting around the middle of the 15^th Century. Thus new interpretations emerged, free from the authority of the Catholic Church, even if they had not broken free from the same hermeneutics. The successive attempts of Martin Luther and John Calvin sought to further develop the discipline of interpretation, or to turn hermeneutics into a structured technique rather than a loose process without boundaries and limits.

Then came the Modern Era when intellects were set free from their reins, and thinkers went to great lengths in subjecting the Bible to historical criticism and free linguistic analysis, throughout the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. Enlightenment philosophy had a great impact and heavily shook belief in the sanctity of the scripture and its contents. It was helped in this by the Greek heritage revival movement, along with Cartesian Rationalism and Humanism with its call to subject religious scripture to the same standards of critique as other ancient texts. The result was the emergence of various forms of Deism, and rebellion against not only the Church but religion as a whole, during the 18^th and 19^th Centuries.

In the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, hermeneutics developed at the hands of the philosophers, notably Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, Schleiermacher, Dilthey and Heidegger, who made a manifest impact on generalising hermeneutical theory to other fields of philosophy and the humanities; thus it is said that hermeneutics was founded by the theologians and developed by the philosophers. If the spirit of liberation dominated all Western thinkers at the time, some of them went to the excesses of atheism and scepticism concerning anything religious or sacred.

Thus, modern hermeneutics was born in the midst of rationalist, Enlightenment and humanist philosophies. From the preceding outline, we see how hermeneutics developed in Western thought, and how it progressed from the time of the Greeks until the present day in response to genuine factors within that context: most significantly, the requirements of interpreting the Bible and the complications stemming, on the one hand, from the nature of the subject and the challenges of comprehension; and on the other hand, from the stances of Church and power.

Nobody can claim that we must follow the same programme in differing contexts and circumstances simply for the sake of imitation, and to develop hermeneutics as they did before us. Rather, the process of authentication and criticism began with the very start of the Islamic era, in an open environment with scientific techniques, as non-Muslim specialists testify. Therefore, if there must be imitation, let it be within the scope of our culture and using resources and aspects from our scientific experience. Let it proceed with objectivity and structure, and work to minimise the negative aspects which any human effort necessarily contains.

Feminist Hermeneutics

The most active part of this movement is a group of female writers who were raised and received their education in the West and continue to work within those institutions. A few returned to their original homelands to participate in the movement’s activities. In addition, some writers in various parts of the Muslim world have contributed in one way or another to this type of academic work. It is important to acknowledge that there are differences between the respective discourses and outputs from the various members of this movement, which bases its statements upon re-readings of religious texts and deriving new interpretations in the light of hermeneutical methodology.

Some of these female researchers are relatively moderate and: (a) accept the Qur’anic text while seeking to interpret it in the way mentioned; (b) reject anything from the Sunnah which they consider antithetical to women’s rights; and (c) affirm their affiliation to Islam. However, there are also some who have gone to the extremes of rejecting all prophetic hadiths, and even questioning the authenticity and divine origin of certain verses of the Qur’an. These people call for a neo-Islam or a new Islamic theology via subjecting the texts of Qur’an and Sunnah–and the entire contents of Islamic tradition–to historical and academic critique along the lines of what occurred in the West.

Therefore, the examples I shall present are not all the same in the ideas they promote, their extent of involvement in hermeneutical interpretation, or the cultural background against which this interpretation or analysis arises.

Still to come:

Part II: Feminist Interpreters of the Qur’an: Examples

– Discussing Riffat Hassan, Amina Wadud, Fatema Mernissi and Leila Ahmed, plus the hermeneutics of Fazlur Rahman Malik, Mohammed Arkoun and ‘Abd al-Hādī ‘Abd al-Raḥmān.

Part III: Towards an Arabic Hermeneutic

I don’t think so.

What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God—not in relation to men. But as Western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left—except men. As a result, the Western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing, she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man.

When a man cut his hair short, she wanted to cut her hair short. When a man joined the army, she wanted to join the army. She wanted these things for no other reason than because the “standard” had it.

What she didn’t recognize was that God dignifies both men and women in their distinctiveness – not their sameness. And on March 18, Muslim women made the very same mistake.

For 1400 years there has been a consensus of the scholars that men are to lead prayer. As a Muslim woman, why does this matter? The one who leads prayer is not spiritually superior in any way. Something is not better just because a man does it. And leading prayer is not better, just because it’s leading. Had it been the role of women or had it been more divine, why wouldn’t the Prophet ﷺ have asked Ayesha or Khadija, or Fatima—the greatest women of all time—to lead? These women were promised heaven—and yet they never led prayer.

But now, for the first time in 1400 years, we look at a man leading prayer and we think, “That’s not fair.” We think so although God has given no special privilege to the one who leads. The imam is no higher in the eyes of God than the one who prays behind.

On the other hand, only a woman can be a mother. And God has given special privilege to a mother. The Prophet ﷺ taught us that heaven lies at the feet of mothers. But no matter what a man does he can never be a mother. So why is that not unfair?

When asked, “Who is most deserving of our kind treatment?” the Prophet ﷺ replied, “Your mother” three times before saying “your father” only once. Is that sexist? No matter what a man does he will never be able to have the status of a mother.
And yet, even when God honors us with something uniquely feminine, we are too busy trying to find our worth in reference to men to value it—or even notice. We, too, have accepted men as the standard; so anything uniquely feminine is, by definition, inferior. Being sensitive is an insult, becoming a mother—a degradation. In the battle between stoic rationality (considered masculine) and selfless compassion (considered feminine), rationality reigns supreme.

As soon as we accept that everything a man has and does is better, all that follows is a knee-jerk reaction: if men have it, we want it too. If men pray in the front rows, we assume this is better, so we want to pray in the front rows too. If men lead prayer, we assume the imam is closer to God, so we want to lead prayer too. Somewhere along the line we’ve accepted the notion that having a position of worldly leadership is some indication of one’s position with God.

A Muslim woman does not need to degrade herself in this way. She has God as a standard. She has God to give her value; she doesn’t need a man.

In fact, in our crusade to follow men, we as women never even stopped to examine the possibility that what we have is better for us. In some cases we even gave up what was higher only to be like men.

Fifty years ago, society told us that men were superior because they left the home to work in factories. We were mothers. And yet, we were told that it was women’s liberation to abandon the raising of another human being in order to work on a machine. We accepted that working in a factory was superior to raising the foundation of society—just because a man did it.

Then, after working, we were expected to be superhuman—the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect homemaker—and have the perfect career. And while there is nothing wrong, by definition, with a woman having a career, we soon came to realize what we had sacrificed by blindly mimicking men. We watched as our children became strangers and soon recognized the privilege we’d given up.

And so only now—given the choice—women in the West are choosing to stay home to raise their children. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, only 31 percent of mothers with babies, and 18 percent of mothers with two or more children, are working full-time. And of those working mothers, a survey conducted by Parenting Magazine in 2000, found that 93% of them say they would rather be at home with their kids, but are compelled to work due to ‘financial obligations.’ These ‘obligations’ are imposed on women by the gender sameness of the modern West, and removed from women by the gender distinctiveness of Islam.

It took women in the West almost a century of experimentation to realize a privilege given to Muslim women 1400 years ago.

Given my privilege as a woman, I only degrade myself by trying to be something I’m not – and in all honesty – don’t want to be: a man. As women, we will never reach true liberation until we stop trying to mimic men, and value the beauty in our own God-given distinctiveness.

If given a choice between stoic justice and compassion, I choose compassion. And if given a choice between worldly leadership and heaven at my feet—I choose heaven.