Ritual Obligation, Gender, and Reproduction in Islamic Law

When it comes to the issue of patriarchal legal praxis in fiqh, Muslim feminist theory and praxis have remained in a relative stalemate. There are Muslim feminists who argue that Islamic law can be reformed and those who argue that fiqh is completely irredeemable. In this position paper, I draw on the work of autonomous Marxist-feminist scholar Silvia Federici to reconceptualize ritual obligations as a form of reproduction. Federici's conception of reproduction challenges classical Marxist thought on reproduction. Rather, Federici's work is an invitation to understand how knowledge, information, ideologies, and the materiality of daily life are forms of reproduction. Through Federici, I argue that thinking about ritual obligations as the reproduction of religious life requires Muslim feminists to think about what aspects of religious life they want to reproduce. As a result, they're better poised to do the work of dismantling patriarchal legal praxis in fiqh.