Women, Leadership, and Mosques Women and Gender The Middle East and the Islamic World Editors Margot Badran Valentine Moghadam VOLUME 11 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/wg Women, Leadership, and Mosques Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority Edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women, leadership, and mosques : changes in contemporary Islamic authority / edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach. p. cm. — (Women and gender ; v. 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-21146-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Muslim women—21st century. 2. Muslim women—Conduct of life. 3. Muslim women—Religious life. 4. Sex role— Religious aspects—Islam. I. Bano, Masooda, 1973– II. Kalmbach, Hilary. HQ1170.W598 2012 305.48’697—dc23 2011042185 ISSN 1570-7628 ISBN 978 90 04 21146 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 20936 7 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................. ix Author Biographies ........................................................................... xiii Introduction: Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Religious Leaders ............................................................................... 1 Hilary Kalmbach SECTION I SPACE FOR FEMALE AUTHORITY: MALE INVITATION, STATE INTERVENTION, AND FEMALE INITIATIVE Introduction to Section I .................................................................. 31 1.1 Sources of Authority: Female Ahong and Qingzhen Nüsi (Women’s Mosques) in China ............................................... 37 Maria Jaschok 1.2 Women Mosque Preachers and Spiritual Guides: Publicizing and Negotiating Women’s Religious Authority in Morocco ............................................................. 59 Margaret J. Rausch 1.3 Reshaping Religious Authority in Contemporary Turkey: State-Sponsored Female Preachers ........................................ 85 Mona Hassan 1.4 From Qurʾānic Circles to the Internet: Gender Segregation and the Rise of Female Preachers in Saudi Arabia ............ 105 Amélie Le Renard 1.5 The Life of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in Twentieth-Century Iran .................................. 127 Mirjam Künkler and Roja Fazaeli 1.6 The Qubaysīyyāt: The Growth of an International Muslim Women’s Revivalist Movement from Syria (1960–2008) ............................................................................... 161 Sarah Islam vi contents SECTION II ESTABLISHING FEMALE AUTHORITY: LIMITATIONS, SPACES, AND STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING Introduction to Section II ................................................................ 187 2.1 Leading by Example? Women Madrasah Teachers in Rural North India ................................................................... 195 Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, and Craig Jeffrey 2.2 Thinking for Oneself? Forms and Elements of Religious Authority in Dutch Muslim Women’s Groups ................. 217 Nathal M. Dessing 2.3 Celebrating Miss Muslim Pageants and Opposing Rock Concerts: Contrasting the Religious Authority and Leadership of Two Muslim Women in Kazan .................. 235 N. R. Micinski 2.4 Textual and Ritual Command: Muslim Women as Keepers and Transmitters of Interpretive Domains in Contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina ............................. 259 Catharina Raudvere 2.5 “She is always present”: Female Leadership and Informal Authority in a Swiss Muslim Women’s Association ........ 279 Petra Bleisch Bouzar 2.6 Muslimahs’ Impact on and Acquisition of Islamic Religious Authority in Flanders ........................................... 301 Els Vanderwaeren 2.7 Women, Leadership, and Participation in Mosques and Beyond: Notes from Stuttgart, Germany ............................ 323 Petra Kuppinger 2.8 Remembering Fātimah:̣ New Means of Legitimizing Female Authority in Contemporary Shīʿī Discourse ........ 345 Matthew Pierce contents vii SECTION III THE IMPACT OF AUTHORITY ON MUSLIM WOMEN, MUSLIM SOCIETIES, AND CONCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC AUTHORITY Introduction to Section III ............................................................... 365 3.1 Challenging from Within: Youth Associations and Female Leadership in Swedish Mosques .............................. 371 Pia Karlsson Minganti 3.2 Gender Strategy and Authority in Islamic Discourses: Female Preachers in Contemporary Egypt .......................... 393 Hiroko Minesaki 3.3 Translating Text to Context: Muslim Women Activists in Indonesia .............................................................................. 413 Pieternella van Doorn-Harder 3.4 Making Islam Relevant: Female Authority and Representation of Islam in Germany .................................... 437 Riem Spielhaus 3.5 Activism as Embodied Tafsīr: Negotiating Women’s Authority, Leadership, and Space in North America ........ 457 Juliane Hammer 3.6 Women’s Rights to Mosque Space: Access and Participation in Cape Town Mosques .................................. 481 Uta Christina Lehmann Conclusion: Female Leadership in Mosques: An Evolving Narrative ...................................................................... 507 Masooda Bano Glossary ............................................................................................... 535 Index .................................................................................................... 557 PREFACE The ability of women to exercise various types of Islamic religious authority has increased significantly since the early twentieth century, especially during the last two or three decades. Scholarship, however, has focused overwhelmingly on certain facets of this increase, in par- ticular female leadership in Sufi groups and attempts to reinterpret Islam to accommodate gender equality, whether through an explicitly feminist framework or not. Largely missing from the literature is seri- ous analysis of the growing acceptance of women within mosques and madrasahs, spaces which have long been centers of Islamic author- ity, but which have traditionally excluded or marginalized women. The acceptance of female leadership and activities in these spaces is a significant change from historic practices, signaling the mainstream acceptance of (some forms of ) female Islamic leadership. Intellectual curiosity about the causes, parameters, and conse- quences of this shift led us to organize a conference that was entitled Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority and was held at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, in October 2009. Our goal was to keep a tight focus on changes in the formal sphere of religious authority—the mosque and madrasah— while bringing together a geographically and methodologically diverse range of papers discussing female leaders in both Muslim majority and minority contexts. We invited a number of leading scholars already working on this under-researched topic and issued a call for papers. We were pleasantly surprised when this call yielded an overwhelm- ing response, including sixty abstracts of good quality. This interest— from both leading academics and younger scholars in the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia—further confirmed the timely nature of our project. We expanded the number of places at the conference, but had to make many difficult decisions in selecting the twenty-one papers that were presented there, twenty of which are presented in the volume. While reviewing the accepted abstracts, we identified three dominant themes related to female leadership: factors related to its emergence, factors related to its consolidation, and factors related to its impact— specifically, the multiple ways in which these women use their Islamic authority to reinforce or change norms within their communities. x preface Concentrating on these three themes helped focus our analytical work before, during, and after the conference, as we moved towards produc- tion of this volume. We asked each participant to prepare an in-depth study of the author- ity of a female leader or leaders in their region of study that focused on one of our three themes and addressed mosque or madrasah space. Because it was a publication-driven conference, we required authors to submit papers in advance for pre-circulation, and structured the con- ference such that the emphasis was on dialogue instead of presentation. At the conference itself, we were fortunate to have Walter Armbrust (a co-sponsor of the project), Francis Robinson, David Parkin, and Karen Bauer chair sessions and help steer debates, which greatly enriched the quality of discussion. The end result was an extremely stimulating and enriching debate over two days that highlighted the complexities