Women and Men in the Qur’ān

“In the midst of media and academia dominated discourses about Muslim ­women’s discriminatory treatment, the present volume provides a scholarly inter- pretation of the Islamic primary sources to present women and also men as equal partners in the life dictated by modernist ideological expectations. Dr. Asma Lamrabet, without engaging in apologetics, has rendered a great service to women’s­ cause by responding to the systematic denigration of women’s stature and rights in Muslim sources, in order to reinstate the dignity and human worth of women in Islamic tradition. The classical exegetical materials are critically evaluated for their culturally biased position against women. The inclusive and even-handed approach to the question of gender discrimination in Muslim culture leaves the study free of the usual feminist polemics. Dr. Lamrabet’s approach allows the Islamic sources to speak for themselves about controversial treatment of the gender disparity. Moreover, the author commendably presents the contemporary lip-service treatment of wom- en’s rights undertaken by Muslim political and religious leadership. The problems with governance in the Muslim world have done very little in reorienting Muslim traditional attitudes to the questions of justice and equality to improve the lot of the women today. Dr. Lamrabet has correctly concluded that without the democratic governance committed to promote the fundamental rights of all its citizens, especially of women, all talk of reform remains empty and unfulflled in Muslim societies.” —Abdulaziz Sachedina, Chair, Religious Studies, and Endowed IIIT Professor of Islamic Studies, George Mason University, USA Asma Lamrabet Women and Men in the Qur’ān Asma Lamrabet L’hôpital Avicennes de Rabat Rabat, Morocco

Translated by Muneera Salem-Murdock, Washington, DC, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-78740-4 ISBN 978-3-319-78741-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78741-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938336

Translation from the French language edition: Femmes et hommes dans le Coran: quelle égalité? by Asma Lamrabet, © Les éditions Albouraq 2012. All Rights Reserved. ISBN 978-2-84161-562-9. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.

Cover design: Fatima Jamadar

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland In loving memory of Fatema Mernissi who uncompromisingly but gently pressed me to translate this book. In her words, it was my duty to do so. Now that it’s completed, I can see her smiling down on me. Foreword

While we live in an era in which discussions of Islam—particularly those that proceed outside the Muslim-majority world—tend to be dominated by questions relating to violence, there is no question in my mind that at the heart of the future of this great religious tradition is the question of women. There is no more salient terrain—intellectual, embodied, lived— than this one. It is therefore a great honor to be able to pen a brief fore- word for this new edition of Asma Lamrabet’s 2012 work Femmes et hommes dans le Coran: Quelle égalité? Thanks to Muneera Salem-Murdock’s engaging translation, English- language readers now have access to an important work by one of the foremost public intellectuals writing on Islam and gender today. Lamrabet’s work embraces and extends a tradition of scholarship pio- neered by a towering fgure in the historical sociology of women in Islam, her sister Moroccan the late Fatema Mernissi. Mernissi’s work not only revealed the social underpinnings of patriarchal hermeneutics in Islam, it also read back into Islamic history women whose contribu- tions to the construction and articulation of religious authority have been eclipsed by the hegemony of narrative frames inhospitable to the female voice. I always found Mernissi’s work so powerful, so persuasive, not only because it shined light on new ways of thinking about women in Islam but also because it also taught us how to identify and critically explore the various ways in which social relations of power are embed- ded and refected in any historical process of constructing “orthodoxy.”

vii viii Foreword

It is therefore only ftting that Salem-Murdock has dedicated this transla- tion to Fatema’s memory. In Women and Men in the Qur’ān, Asma Lamrabet frst forces us to confront and then proceeds to dismantle the chimeric “Muslim woman” that animates and assuages a predominantly Euro-American discourse seeking redemption for the Muslim world through her liberation. In a self-described “decolonizing” reading of Islamic sources, she reveals the impossibility of a universalized “Muslim woman” through the diverse experiences of the many women who populate the Qur’ān itself much less the vast and varied cultural geography of the contemporary Muslim world. While making a formidable case for the centrality of the equality of women and men as a Qur’ānic principle of paramount importance, Lamrabet does not shy away from engaging directly with those verses and passages of revelation that seem to establish different and seem- ingly unequal standards for the two genders. This is a skillful work of contextualized religious hermeneutics that deserves a place alongside other pioneering works such as Amina Wadud’s Qur’ān and Woman and Asma Barlas’ “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’ān. Women and Men in the Qur’ān enables perspectives and dialogue that will be crucial to the production of a conception of gender equality that is as authentic as it is uncompromising—in short, important new direc- tions and hopeful ideas for highly fraught times.

Prof. Peter Mandaville Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies George Mason University Fairfax, USA Contents

1 Introduction 1

Part I Women in Islam: A New Approach

2 Beyond the Problematic of “The Muslim Woman” 9

3 The Qur’ānic Revelation in Seventh-Century Arabia 13

4 An Alternative Approach to the Qur’ān 21

Part II Women and Men in the Qur’ān: The Key Concepts

5 The Creation of Humanity 35

6 The Construction of Human Civilization 41

7 Moral Integrity as an Evaluation Criteria 47

8 The Egalitarian Call of the Qur’ān 51

9 The Qur’ānic Ethic of the Marital Union 61

ix x Contents

10 The Principles of Divorce in the Qur’ān 85

11 The Shared Responsibility of Men and Women 105

12 The Management of Public and Private Spheres 115

13 The Basic Verses on Inheritance 131

14 Foundations of Corporal Ethic 143

15 The Equality of In-Court Testimony 165

Part III Equality, the Time of a Revelation

16 Why Is There a Lag? 179

17 What Alternative Possibilities? 185

18 Equality, the Time of a Revelation 187

References 189

Index 193