The Destiny of Woman: Feminism & Femininity in Traditional Islam by Sanaa Mohiuddin B.A. in Classics, June 2007, Wellesley C
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The Destiny of Woman: Feminism & Femininity in Traditional Islam by Sanaa Mohiuddin B.A. in Classics, June 2007, Wellesley College A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts January 19, 2018 Thesis directed by Kelly Pemberton Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies © Copyright 2018 by Sanaa Mohiuddin All rights reserved ii Dedication To my parents, Drs. Mohammed & Sabiha Mohiuddin iii Table of Contents Dedication …………...……………………………………………………….………..…iii Note on Transliteration …………………………………………………………......….v Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..…1 Chapter I. Female Ontology in the Sacred Texts of Islam ...…………………………...…9 Chapter II. Modern Feminist Objectives …....……………………..………………….20 Chapter III. Traditionalist Critique ……………………………..……………………..28 Chapter IV. Theory vs Practice: Muslim Women’s Networks & Traditional Feminism ……………………...……..…....37 Chapter V. Equality vs Difference: Reflections on Femininity & Masculinity in Islam ...……………………..……………..43 Bibliography …………….…………………………………………………..….……..52 iv Note on Transliteration In this thesis, I have used a simplified Arabic-English transliteration system based on the International Journal of Middle East Studies that excludes most diacritical marks. I do not employ underdots for Arabic consonants or macrons for long vowels. However, I do use the symbol (’) for the medial and final positions of the letter hamza, and the symbol (‘) for the letter ayn. In order to allow Arabic words to be recognized more easily, I have not included assimilation of sun letters after the definite article. I have also standardized several recurring Arabic terms that do not appear in italics after their initial appearance, due to their frequent usage within English academic writing. v INTRODUCTION One of the most controversial and indeed ambiguous topics concerning Islam in the modern era is how compatible feminism and feminist movements are with a religion that has been characterized for the most part as strongly patriarchal. Feminism in the West has been associated with notions of progress, liberation and enlightenment for both women in particular and humankind in general. Islam, like most religions, valorizes tradition, yet it is not necessarily against progress or evolution, nor is it monolithic. The last few decades have witnessed the rise of a substantial group of Muslim feminist scholars who claim to approach the sacred texts of Islam as believers rather than as secular feminists. They have identified a need for reinterpretation of Qur’anic verses, or ijtihad, based on gender-sensitive methodologies. In the West, many of these feminist exegetes are academics who are often associated with privilege as well as with the influence and limitations of Western academia. They include the likes of Asma Barlas, Riffat Hasan and Amina Wadud, whose works have received scathing criticism from traditionalist scholars. This thesis aims to build a bridge between marginalized feminist exegetical works and dominant traditionalist scholarship. I argue that if feminist tafsir (exegesis) wishes to enjoy greater acceptance and visibility among mainstream Muslims, it must incorporate the hadith (recorded statements and actions of the Prophet Muhammad) as well as primary sources from within the classical Islamic tradition while directly engaging living Muslim communities. I have chosen to focus on the works of Western feminist exegetes writing at the time of, or closely after, the emergence of the Islamic feminist movement 1 of the 1990s. I concentrate primarily on Amina Wadud, whom I consider to be a Martin Luther King-esque figure in the world of Islamic scholarship. In Chapter 1, I begin with an overview of conceptions of woman and female ontology in Islamic intellectual thought, both classical and contemporary, based on interpretations of the Qur’an and hadith. I then move on in Chapter 2 to discuss in detail the paramount aims and objectives of the modern Islamic feminist movement, focusing, as mentioned earlier, on Western feminist exegetes writing in English. In Chapter 3, I examine the response and resistance to feminist ideas from within traditionalist scholarship, through analysis of the works of three traditionalist scholars of diverse backgrounds who have acknowledged- either explicitly or implicitly- Islamic feminism as a formidable movement. In Chapter 4, I investigate the efforts of grassroots Muslim women’s organizations in the United States who are promoting the female voice in Islamic scholarship. My investigation includes a personal interview with Shaykha Tamara Gray, a convert to Islam and the founder of Rabata, Inc., a non-profit organization that aims to create positive cultural change through creative educational experiences. My fifth and final chapter takes a look at traditional Islamic ideals of femininity and masculinity, and the relationship between established gender archetypes and the modern feminist movement. In the last two chapters of the thesis, I identify strains of Islamic feminist thought that are consciously working from within the tradition, employing the primary sources of hadith and classical—and particularly Sufi—works. Aysha Hidayatullah, a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco and author of Feminist Edges of the Qur’an (2014), describes how the emerging field of feminist Qur’anic exegesis remains outside 2 the center, or mainstream, of Islamic scholarship. She writes that she is well-aware of the drawbacks of merely using the term ‘feminist,’ stating: “I employ the term cognizant of the dangers of ‘ghettoizing’ feminist interpretations…by calling them feminist; we might hold out hope that there will come a time when feminist perspectives will become widely integrated enough into mainstream thought that they will no longer require this distinguishing qualifier, even though at present this is not the case.”1 Hidayatullah appropriately identifies feminist hermeneutics as branching off of modernist interpretations of the Qur’an, which are also considered to be controversial yet have made more headway towards the ‘center,’ due to their longer presence amidst exegetical scholarship. Mainstream Islam, if one can still refer to it as such, is the world of Traditional Islam,2 which is based primarily on the Qur’an, the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (Hadith), and scholarly consensus (Ijma‘a). In a sense, the marginalization of feminist exegetical works seems obvious due to the fact that despite their origination in the realm of Islam rather than that of secular feminism, the majority of these works have not originated in, nor taken pride in, association with the world of traditional Islamic scholarship. Many Muslim feminists, particularly in the West, appear to underestimate or outright dismiss a centuries old, diverse and yet unified system of transmitting and producing knowledge, via sweeping 1 Hidayatullah, 5. 2 In using the terms “Traditional Islam,” I am referring specifically to the scholarship by the ‘ulema, as a system of knowledge preservation and production that seeks to illuminate the way of the Prophet of Islam. According to S.H. Nasr, Tradition in this sense has three aspects, namely Al-Din (religion), Al- Sunnah (the Prophetic model) and Al-Silsila (the chain, linking each period or epoch of life and thought back to the Origin) (See Nasr, Traditional Islam in the Modern World (1987)). Today, such an understanding of “tradition” may be considered to be simplistic and encouraging of taqlid (blind conformity to established thought). However, I employ the term while acknowledging its movement through time and space and, as Talal Asad describes, that it encourages critical inquiry rather than abstract theorization (See Talal Asad, "Thinking About Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today," Critical Inquiry 42, no. 1 (Autumn 2015): 166-214). 3 accusations of patriarchal bias and male exclusivity. As the traditionalist Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains, this system had remained largely unchallenged until the onslaught of colonialism and the various modernizing reform movements that arose in response throughout the Muslim world. Nasr writes, “Only during the past few decades has a new phenomenon appeared that necessitates distinguishing rigorously between traditional Islam and not only modernism, but also that spectrum of feeling, action, and thought that has come to be identified by Western scholarship and journalism as ‘fundamentalist,’ revivalist or ‘activist’ Islam.”3 For feminist scholars like Amina Wadud, the unprecedented nature of the critical questioning of gender roles in the Qur’an in light of modern circumstances only makes the questioning more urgent. In her defining text, Qur’an and Woman, Wadud advocates a direct re-reading and re-interpretation of the Qur’an due to its message having been confused with the exegesis or tafsir of traditional scholars, both past and present. She writes, “The critical questioning of the functions and responsibilities of each gender has only recently been asked: inspired, for the most part, by the sad condition of women in Islamic societies at the time of independence from colonialist forces. Once the question arose, a sound method of answering that question needed to be developed within the field of Islamic scholarship.”4 Based on the belief that traditional tafsir scholarship was