Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (10 page)

34 inside the gender jihad

understand, articulate, and then implement Allah’s sovereignty. This leads to another key concept under intense consideration in reformist Islamic discourse: the meanings and applications of
shari‘ah
today.
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Based on the above statement of intent in the Qur’an, all humankind is created with the purpose of trusteeship for Allah on earth. This purpose is

the most significant feature of the moral agent. Elsewhere in the Qur’an, humanity is charged with a trust (
amanah
)
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or a covenant (
mithaq
)
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between themselves and Allah. Humans accept this trust, or covenant,

primordially (33:72). Between human acceptance and divine purpose for human creation rests the basic idea of Qur’anic guidance: cooperation between Allah, as Creator of all the worlds, and humankind, as creature and
khalifah
in Allah’s creation, on earth.

Again these Qur’anic discussions about the notion of Islam – or being in surrender – include all of creation and not just humans. Yet, while all of nature is
muslim
without volition, by virtue of the phenomenon of free will, humanity is a special case. There have been endless and circular theological discussions about this phenomenon, which I overlook here in my attempt to bring home some particulars about Creator–creature cooperation. Instead, I

presume that humans are agents possessing limited power, via free will, while Allah is all-powerful.
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This metaphysical reality has practical impli-

cations in the circumstances of human control over all matters on the earth. For while Allah has made the earth subservient to us (22:65), having free will means we are equally capable of making choices that reflect our conscious surrender to Allah’s will and our agreement to fulfill the trust or of making choices that follow our own egos, greed, and lusts for power that violate the trust.

By agency, or
khilafah
, therefore, I mean the responsibility of each human being to establish social justice, as a representative of the divine will or cosmic harmony. Responsibility means consenting to find the motivation both to understand the divine will and then to act in accordance with that understanding. While one cannot ever come to understand completely the divine will because its totality begins and ends in transcendence and is therefore incomprehensible, the term responsibility implies at least an initiative toward understanding, followed by practices that establish that will in real-life circumstances. Everyone is invested with this responsibility. Some may acquire greater facility in understanding. Some may acquire greater facility in acting upon their understandings, as circumstances dictate. To the end of full moral responsibility, a Muslim is required to continue to seek understanding, individually and in concert with others.

What’s in a Name?
35

Still, this responsibility includes the flexibility of changing one’s perspective on any issue as humanity acquires more understanding toward a better means to fulfill that which best reflects the divine will. Therefore, one must act better as one’s understanding develops. This growth in understanding and action is equally true of humanity at large as it is for the individual in terms of personal growth. That is the crux of moral responsibility.

Furthermore, as
shari‘ah
developed, it helped determine the under- standing that “to act” includes both personal actions of faith and ritual worship (
‘ibadah
), as well as actions in the private and public spheres toward establishing what is just in society at large in terms of mutual inter- actions(
mu‘amalat
) in accordance with the divine will. In the development of

shari‘ah
,

these areas of
‘ibadah
and

mu‘amalat

form the two central

categories of focus in articulations of the law. Ultimately, only Allah can judge personal actions, the arena of one’s spiritual enhancement, and one’s true intentions or consciousness. However, it is my contention that one’s personal spiritual development forms the cornerstone of one’s activities in both the public and the private realm of society. In this regard, my analysis differs from secular articulations of social justice in that the total well-being of the human creature is not limited to the physical or material. At the end of the day, it is the moral center of one’s being, or one’s consciousness, that determines the nature of one’s social actions and relationships. This discussion shows how being a moral agent is central to the construction of and participation in struggles for social justice.

Agency, human empowerment, is best described as responsibility. We are responsible for the choices we make at every juncture, and we will be held accountable via the ultimate judgment for all of our choices. According to the Qur’an, “Whoever does an atom’s weight of good shall see it; and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil shall see it” (99:7–8). As trustees, we are charged with the ability to make choices that facilitate the completion of our trust. To best fulfill our trust the Qur’an also describes the human being as
‘abd
, or servant before Allah.The
‘abd
is entrusted with completing
‘ibadah
to Allah, or service in the creation. Narrowly speaking,
‘ibadah
is worship, with the term
ihsan
(doing good deeds) carrying the broader meaning that every good deed is done as servants of Allah and hence also

acts of worship.
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The agent–servant paradigm in the Qur’an sets up an understanding of both the limits of human will and the expectations on humanity for using free will toward moral service. Although humans are given a certain capacity through agency, that capacity – a gift – must be used morally in the

36 inside the gender jihad

service of Allah and of maintaining cosmic harmony, as a responsibility. Furthermore, there is a reciprocal relationship in the Qur’an between capacity and responsibility. The one with greater capacity is charged with a greater responsibility, and vice versa. Thus
at the time of revelation
, when slavery was still practiced, a slave was not charged the same recompense for certain crimes as the free person (4:25). Another example at the time of revelation was the proportions of inheritance. The male share is twice that of the female in the same position amongst the relatives in correspondence to the greater responsibility of the male, for
nafaqah
(material provisions) of the family that women did not have. Ultimately I argue against both the institution of slavery and the subjugation within marriage referenced here to show the underlying Qur’anic correlation between responsibility and agency.
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This focus on responsibility is intended to prevent the term “moral

agency” from being read like

some

kind of unconditional individual

privilege. I accept the
shari‘ah
restrictions on full human capacity or agency for children and those with mental deficiency,
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requiring others to act as guardians managing their affairs unless or until they reach the age of reasoning. However, nothing exists in the Qur’an or
sunnah
that restricts or limits agency – in the sense of full moral responsibility to obey the will of Allah – on the basis of race, class, or gender. This chapter is especially aimed at deconstructing assumptions that limit human agency in women. The assumption of male superiority produced by culture and circumstantial convenience are not essential to “Islam.”

ETHICAL THEORY AND JUSTICE

Adding the term “moral” as fundamental to the meaning of
khalifah
reflects the uniquely human ethical capacity through their exclusive charac- teristic of free will. According to Majid Fakhry,
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“An ethical theory is a reasoned account of the nature and grounds of right actions and decisions and the principles underlying the claim that they are morally commendable or reprehensible.” Such a theory then provides a “justification and appraisal of moral judgment as well as the discrimination between right and wrong actions or decisions.”
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In Islam, “we start from the premise that the [Qur’an] and the traditions embody the original core of the Islamic ethical spirit.”
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From the perspective of our discussion of moral agency: the responsibility of acting on the earth to fulfill moral agency involves acting in accordance with the guidance about right and wrong given in these two

What’s in a Name?
37

primary sources. It should not be hard to understand that the purpose of the historical construction of Islamic law or
shari‘ah
was to fulfill that end: to construct a system that reflects the “justification and appraisal of moral judgment as well as the discrimination between right and wrong actions or decisions.”
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As Fakhry has explicitly stated, although we have the Qur’an, which embodies the whole of the Islamic ethos and “around which the whole of Muslim moral, religious and social life revolves,” it “contains no ethical

theories
in the strict sense.”
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Fakhry distinguishes between the Islamic

ethos and Islamic ethics, which is “a reasoned account of the nature and grounds of right actions and decision and principles underling the claim that they are morally commendable or reprehensible. [With] special stress on the definition of ethical concepts . . . To be complete, an ethical system must deal adequately with these aspects of moral inquiry in an articulate and coherent way.”
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That the Qur’an has been invoked by various ethical theorists, but has resulted in the development of theories sometimes contradictory to each other, reiterates the significance of interpretation as a process of constructing “Islam.” In other words, even based upon the same primary sources, practical implications, implementations, and the development of ideas and theories will differ based upon many other factors relative to being human. The Qur’an does not develop a single uniform ethical system; it contains ethical principles and values. The development of a system must be formulated through human beings, the agents responsible for imple- menting and maintaining those systems in the first place.

Fakhry gives the eleventh and twelfth centuries as the starting point in the intellectual discourse of Islamic ethical theory. Prior to that time, of course ideas of morality or of right and wrong existed and were directly or indirectly based on the revelation and the practices of the Prophet, but there was no fully developed theory. There are at least two important impli- cations in developing ethical theory. First, understanding what is ethical is relative to context. Therefore, second, it affects the ways we resolve new issues outside the parameters available through literal application of rules or codes established in the early development of
shari‘ah
and Islamic thought. Again, these were human-made, relative to the existing civil and moral contexts, perhaps based on the Qur’an and the
sunnah
, which Muslims agree embody the original core of the Islamic ethical spirit. Not surprisingly, women did not participate in the historical development of Islamic ethics. Theories were always based upon the presumption of the

38 inside the gender jihad

male Muslim as the normative human being. For example, in a discussion of musical instruments, al-Ghazali compares the flute as “a reference to the human [
sic
] essence, and the nine holes are a reference to the openings in the outer frame (
zahir
), which are nine, viz the [2] ears, the [2] nostrils, the

[2] eyes, the mouth and the private parts.”
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Only males have nine orifices,

since the private parts have two openings. Female private parts have three openings. For females, the total number of orifices is ten. Thus the flute as a human analogy is specific to male humans. This renders the female deviant from this notion of what is human. If this is how a Muslim philosopher de- scribes the human person, women are not included. If the notion of the human is not predicated upon the male person, then, often, the agent referred to is developed while obscuring and giving the “superficial appearance . . . [that] can easily lead to the impression that they are inclusive of women.” However, when a gender notification is given, it not only specifies the male person, but

also relegates women to “restricted opportunities” within such theories.
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Furthermore, the variations in the conclusions drawn about ethics guar- antee that none have precedence over others. There is certainly a scarcity of scholarly effort to study the development of Islamic ethical theory and to concentrate specifically on examining what reconstructions might be con- structive in progressive Islamic thought. As yet I know of no women involved specifically in this area of study, nor of any men, progressive or otherwise, who are examining ethics with gender as a category of thought. This only means that the conclusion of the matter will be the same male privilege as elsewhere. The Qur’an exhorts, “Let there be among you a community [of people] who invite unto all that is good (
khayr
), and enjoin the doing of a well-known or established idea of justice (
ma‘ruf
), and forbid the doing of wrong (
munkar
)” (3:104). From a pro-faith perspective, the goal of civil society is to establish a moral order while recognizing that morality extends from an inward state of being that motivates certain frameworks for building legislation. While you cannot legislate a person to moral excellence as some narrowly constructed dogmatic Islamic institutions have tried to enforce, human agents can be raised toward moral excellence through structures of care and well-being.

One principle of this ethical upbringing centers on the term
taqwa
.

TAQWA

I first mentioned
taqwa
in the discussion of agency as personal spiritual development forming the cornerstone of one’s activities in both the public and private realm. I applied the word
taqwa
to that development as it