Muslim Feminism, Decoloniality, and Tradition

This position paper engages with selected critiques of Islamic femnimism hermenuetics. My aim is  two-fold: I wish to present some critical reflections to facilitate a discussion about what can be learned from Islamic feminist hermeneutics as an area of knowledge with its contributions and limitations and whose relevance in Islamic studies is not confined to the question of gender I will argue that critics and proponents of Islamic feminism, to better understand, evaluate, and for the latter to contribute to the development of this scholarship, might find it beneficial to adopt an integrated approach that brings different Islamic feminist works in conversation with one another. Second, I wish to unpack through an examination of these critiques some of the hegemonic questions and regimes of thought in Islamic studies- particularly in academia in the global North- which I argue underlie these kinds of critiques.

Much of the scholarship on women in the Qurʾan evades a substantive engagement with tafsīr (Qurʾanic exegesis) as a scholarly genre. This lack of engagement with tafsīr in the field of women in the Qurʾan partially stems from evaluations of the exegetical tradition as consistently patriarchal. I argue that this evaluation requires a critical reassessment. By dismissing the exegetical tradition’s role in contemporary efforts to recover Islam’s broader ethics, we lose sight of the rich ways in which the tafsīr’s inherent pluralism and methodological rigor open up new epistemic channels with which to engage the Qurʾan. Viewed as a springboard into an endless ocean of meaning, the genre of tafsīr created an open discursive space for the continual interpretation of the Qurʾan by generations of exegetes. A serious engagement with tafsīr creates new sites of engagement for Muslims who refuse to concede faith and feminism as mutually exclusive pursuits.  

Mutʿa, temporary marriage has been a source of debate throughout history. The polemical nature of the debate created a liminal space, making it an excellent subject for reconsidering marital and sexual ethics. This position paper posits a reassessing of the conceptualization of such ethics within interpretations of mutʿa in particular and within Islamic law in general. It proposes advancing a four-dimensional approach: 1) taking seriously the works of Muslim feminists and the methodological approaches they have put forth to (re)think Islamic sources; 2) incorporating lived Islam though socio-legal ethnography as a testament to the significance of living Muslims; 3) considering moral questions on the issue of sexual ethics and marriage; and 4) seriously weighing the scientific findings on human sexuality. The analysis presented here, as well as the work that still needs to be done, has serious implications for issues related to modern sexual relationships, marriage, and Islamic sexual ethics. 

The contemporary western academy considers itself to be secular, conducting research through non-religious, objective and reasonable means, yet much of its historical background is routed in Christian modes of thinking. Within this academy exists the field of Islamic feminism, which defines itself as distinctly religious and routed in Islamic ideals. The existence of Islamic feminism within the framework of a secular academy begs the question, what makes Islamic feminism, Islamic, as opposed to feminism? Given the Christian routes of western academic institutions, to what extent can normative secular values be considered non-religious or neutral? Given the questions highlighted above, this paper poses the question, how does the field of Islamic feminism define itself within the western secular academy? In the hopes of facilitating a conversation that addresses secular feminism's privilege in claiming neutrality and non-religion, a prerogative not granted to Islamic feminists, who are forced to justify their theological standing.