In recent decades, women in the Christian and Islamic traditions have been negotiating what it means to participate in religious practice as a woman within the two traditions, and how to interpret canonical scripture. This book creates a shared space for Muslim and Christian women with diverse cultural and denominational backgrounds, by making meaning of texts from the Bible, the Koran, and the Hadith. It builds on the reading and discussion of the Hagar narratives, as well as 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and Sura 4:34 from the New Testament and the Koran respectively, by a group of both Christian and Muslim women. Interpretative strategies and contextual analyses emerge from the hermeneutical analysis of the women’s discussions on the ambiguous contributions of the texts mentioned above to the traditional views on women. This book shows how intertextual dialogue between the Christian and Islamic traditions establishes an interpretative community through the encounter of Christian and Muslim readers. The negotiation between a search for gender justice and the Christian and Islamic traditions as lived religions is extended into a quest for gender justice through the co-reading of texts. In times when gender and the status of women are played into the field of religious identity politics, this book shows that bringing female readers together to explore the canonical texts in the two traditions provides new insights about the texts, the contexts, and the ways in which Muslim-Christian dialogue can provide complex and promising hermeneutical space where important questions can be posed and shared strategies found.

A solemn attempt to rediscover the Qurnic basis of gender equality, determining the status of women in Islam, to recapture the spirit of quranic revelation further to reconstruct Islamic theology from an egalitarian perspectives. A comprehensive and exhaustive study.

It brings light to all issues, concerning women, in relation to Islam and makes clarifications on the misunderstanding on gender justice in Islam. Being a reputed Islamic theologian, his statements ascend logical exclusiveness with the discovery of true Islamic commands to the second sex. A benchmark for the disciplines of Islamic and women studies.

This volume brings together the work of a group of Islamic studies scholars from across the globe. They discuss how past and present Muslim women have participated in the struggle for gender justice in Muslim communities and around the world. The essays demonstrate a diversity of methodological approaches, religious and secular sources, and theoretical frameworks for understanding Muslim negotiations of gender norms and practices. Part I (Concepts) puts into conversation women scholars who define Muslima theology and Islamic feminism vis-à-vis secular notions of gender diversity and discuss the deployment of the oppression of Muslim women as a hegemonic imperialist strategy. The chapters in Part II (Sources) engage with the Qur'an, hadith, and sunna as religious sources to be examined and reinterpreted in the quest for gender justice as God's will and the example of the Prophet Muhammad. In Part III (Histories), contributors search for Muslim women's agency as scholars, thinkers, and activists from the early period of Islam to the present - from Southeast Asia to North America. Representing a transnational and cross-generational conversation, this work will be a key resource to students and scholars interested in the history of Islamic feminism, Muslim women, gender justice, and Islam.

This study analyses the commentaries of four Muslim intellectuals who have turned to scripture as a liberating text to confront an array of problems, from patriarchy, racism, and empire to poverty and interreligious communal violence. Shadaab Rahemtulla considers the exegeses of the South African Farid Esack (b. 1956), the Indian Asghar Ali Engineer (1939-2013), the African American Amina Wadud (b. 1952), and the Pakistani-American Asma Barlas (b. 1950). The authors considered all proritise the Qur'an over the hadith. Rahemtulla considers this an essential move for a Muslim liberation theology and concludes with proposals with a new construal of what a politically radical Islam might mean, sharply differentitated from Islamism. This work provides a rich analysis of the thought-ways of specific Muslim intellectuals, it substantiates a broadly framed school of thought. Rahemtulla draws out their specific and general importance without displaying an uncritical sympathy. He sheds light on the impact of modern exegetical commentary which is more self-conciously concerned with historical context and present realities. In a mutally reinforcing way, this work thus illuminates both the role of agency and heremnetucal approaches in Modern Islamic thought.

Since the 1980s, Muslim women reformers have made great strides in critiquing and reinterpreting the Islamic tradition. Yet these achievements have not produced a significant shift in the lived experience of Islam, particularly with respect to equality and justice in Muslim families. A new approach is needed: one that examines the underlying instruments of tradition and explores avenues for effecting change. In Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice leading intellectuals and emerging researchers grapple with the problem of entrenched positions within Islam that affect women, investigating the processes by which interpretations become authoritative, the theoretical foundations upon which they stand, and the ways they have been used to inscribe and enforce gender limitations. Together, they argue that the Islamic interpretive tradition displays all the trappings of canonical texts, canonical figures, and canon law – despite the fact that Islam does not ordain religious authorities who could sanction processes of canonization. Through this lens, the essays in this collection offer insights into key issues in Islamic feminist scholarship, ranging from interreligious love, child marriage, polygamy, and divorce to stoning, segregation, seclusion, and gender hierarchies. Rooting their analysis in the primary texts and historical literature of Islam, contributors to Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice contest oppressive interpretative canons, subvert classical methodologies, and provide new directions in the ongoing project of revitalizing Islamic exegesis and its ethical and legal implications.

Women; legal status, laws, etc.; Egypt.