Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (37 page)

only to reproduce the priority of the male norm, or act androgynously.

Does the female leader, and worshiper, have to surrender all that is peculiar to her as a woman in the roles heretofore exclusive to men? Do men abandon their masculinity when fulfilling the role of leader? Is pluralism melting into some illusive pot that transcends diversity in order to become an anomaly called human? How do we maintain all our particular- ities while not being limited to or judged exclusively by them? While I think we can transcend the politics and inequities of particularity, I do not think we can transcend the particulars – nor do I want to. As Minnow suggests above, members of a distinct group do not lose their right to their own particular and unique identity. Indeed, sharing in a variety of group identities should not present contradictions. An individual is neither fully distinguished from nor exclusively identical with his or her various group

affiliations. There are many crossroads between group and

184 inside the gender jihad

individual

affiliations. Nor can one’s unique self-identity be restricted to exclusive membership in any one group over another. In particular, I must claim myself as woman in public and private. I am
both
individual
and
woman, not
either
individual
or
woman. Only with all aspects of myself intact may I be the full
khalifah
Allah intended for all humanity.

Although public ritual leadership in Islam still remains nearly exclusively male, from an ethical standpoint it should not continue that way. Maybe we cannot rewrite the history of women’s experience as part of female particu- larities because of the legacy of silence and exclusion. Therefore we cannot look only to history for precedent, to provide us with historical examples of women as leaders. Their lives were too private. We can draw precedent from our current knowledge and developments. In addition, I argue on the basis of a Qur’anic principle as an ethical precedent to construct an intra-Islamic rationale for reconsidering gender in leadership of Islamic ritual. It is built on the
tawhidic
paradigm, as the highest principle of the Islamic worldview, which supports the idea that continued gender asym- metry is against Islam. A new future of integrity in all aspects of the
din
is outlined on the basis of this oldest principle of Islamic thought.

Islam is only possible with
tawhid
. More than mere monotheism,
42

many nuances of
tawhid
have been and continue to be the subject of much Islamic discourse pointing toward the same essence.
Tawhid
is the operating principle of cosmic harmony: true justice. It operates between the metaphysical and physical realities of the created universe, as well as within them both. On a theological level,
tawhid
relates to the transcendent and yet eminent divinity or ultimate reality that is the unicity of Allah.

As an ethical term,
tawhid
relates to relationships and developments within the social and political realm, where it emphasizes the unity of all human creatures under Allah, the one Creator. If experienced as a reality in everyday Islamic terms, the Muslim
ummah
would be a community with no distinction between humankind on the basis of race, class, or gender. Their only distinction would be on the basis of
taqwa
(49:13) or moral con- sciousness, which is not an external matter accessible for human-to-human judgment. All of nature is interconnected under the rubric of
tawhid
,
which reinforces the golden rule of reciprocity as articulated in many faith systems and just philosophy.

This Qur’anic system of correlated and contingent pairs at the meta- physical level is further emphasized at the physical level, especially in social–moral terms. The basic construction of human pairs is the male and the female. Then the
tawhidic
paradigm becomes the inspiration for

Public Ritual Leadership and Gender Inclusiveness
185

removing gender stratification from all levels of social interaction: public and private, ritual and political.

CONCLUSION

That
khutbah
in the Claremont Main Road mosque did make a mark on present-day Islamic history – whether or not understood or approved by some Muslims. However, I suggest here that the basis of judgment of my participation in the event should include whether I said something in violation of the integrity of the Islamic tradition or supported it, especially by augmenting it by adding the historically marginalized or silenced female voice and female experience. If I had violated any Islamic principle, then I was not a worthy candidate. On a purely practical level, leadership must always be elected on a case-by-case basis, with the consensus of those who are actually participating in the act of worship: neither any woman at any time nor any man at any time, but on the basis of established qualifications, character of person, and with respect to the needs and temperament of the communal circumstance. Since the basis of Islamic history has been patri- archal, we must make a concerted effort to correct the imbalance this has caused in the
ummah
. We need to give ear to women and women’s experi- ences, not only in forming a new consideration of Islam, but also in form- ing a new public voice and establishing new public policies.

Nothing remains sacred and above reproach unless it functions to pre- serve the integrity of Islam and to allow for the continuity of Islam equally for women and men, in a future that is beginning to look distinct from the past, especially in the area of gender praxis. With this in mind, I submit that the brothers who invited me to participate in the role of
khatibah
at the Claremont Main Road mosque in Cape Town were attempting a radical but legitimate Islamic act. I have considered both weaknesses and strengths because I certainly owe them my gratitude for this opportunity to partici- pate as a central figure in this noteworthy contribution to reform Islamic futures. In particular, I acknowledge that Rashied Omar, as
imam
, offered up his place of privilege, unflinchingly demonstrating the sincerity of his aims to deconstruct gender hegemony. The questions I have had to answer here, both for myself and for others interested in these issues, simply reflect the push for transformation that he courageously made possible for me first to experience and then further investigate.

186 inside the gender jihad

6

Say, “If the sea were ink for [writing] the Words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord, even if we brought another [sea] like it in addition.”

– Qur’an 18:109

There’s no getting around it. Muslims have been struggling through an identity crisis not only as a consequence of colonialism’s infiltration and corruption of Muslim complacency, but also in response to the global- ization of ideas like pluralism, Western secular human rights universals, and their sheer backwardness – as recently reported through an internal study of the state of the Arab world/Middle East (read: Muslims, despite actual demographics). I entered this struggle with my own peculiar identity con- cerns as well, as a woman.

I concluded early in my research that one way to resolve my questions about gender was to direct myself to Islamic theology rather than Muslim social contexts or commentary, present or historical. Using the Qur’an, I proposed ideas about the Muslim woman’s full human agency and dignity despite Qur’anic interpretations, juridical codes, and practices to the contrary. The irony of this ivory tower approach, however, is that it led me directly into social praxis and issues of social justice and reform in Muslim cultural contexts. In this particular matter, theory was put to the test of Muslim women’s lives and the still rampant patriarchal control of not only praxis, but orthodox interpretations as well. Meanwhile, after more than fifteen years of research on the Qur’an, it has proven to me without a doubt

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
187

that patriarchal privilege still continues with increments of success in secu- lar and Western contexts despite the lack of particular claims of religious legit- imacy. So unraveling the binds of patriarchy in the context of Muslim cultures, including that religious component, will still take more time, and solutions to practices of inequality must come from multiple strategies simultaneously.

Given the odds against the success of a mere theoretical strategy of alter- native interpretation of the Qur’an, Islam’s primary resource, I have taken up the charge to both articulate the relationship to and the movement through the Qur’an to social justice for women and men. Despite my book,
Qur’an and Woman
, and its revolutionary contribution at the time of its formulation, the idea of alternative interpretation of the Qur’an from a female-inclusive perspective is by itself insufficient to bring about all gender reforms necessary for the multiple dimensions of Muslim men’s and women’s lives. This points to the need for a more radical synthesis of strategies and struggles toward the end of gender equality.

I compare this need to the movement that brought about the eradication of slavery in the global context. Muslims and Islam were catapulted into the global reconsiderations in such a way that they eventually came out as one voice among many. No distinctive Islamic voice was raised either for or

against, to such an extent as to leave a significant

historical mark on the

movement. It mattered little if the evaluation of the treatment of particular slaves was inhumane or beneficent; the conclusion of this movement, in- cluding the ulterior motives invested in it, was the recognition that slavery itself was inhumane. Consequently, the institution is now illegal. It remains to be seen if a particular “Islamic” contribution would have been a major contender in this movement to eradicate such a practice.Yet discussions of Muslim women’s full human equality seem impossible without a com- prehensive intra-Islamic transformation. I continue to see the Qur’anic text as a central means for that transformation provided the hermeneutical im- plications are accepted to the extent that both the historical intellectual trad- ition and the current intellectual considerations are seen as integral to that centrality and prerequisites to actual social reforms.

GENDER JUSTICE THROUGH QUR’ANIC HERMENEUTICS AND BEYOND

Qur’anic hermeneutics from a gender perspective was a novel idea when I proposed to move toward it almost two decades ago. Now I accept the critiques of moving beyond my apologetics. In some ways, this has been a

188 inside the gender jihad

legitimate challenge and one that I was prepared to take on as early as the first publication of
Qur’an and Woman
in 1992. In other ways, this challenge is not so much directed at my work as at my position vis-à-vis certain issues within the context of gender reforms in Muslim societies. I have been dubbed a “gender fundamentalist” – as if the name should deter me from the root source and inspiration of my efforts, the Qur’an, or away from the moral imperative to not only maintain my dedication to survive the gender
jihad
but also to insist even further that gender is a category of

thought ill-respected

even in the works of many reformist male Muslim

intellectuals. Most are progressive and reformist on anything but class and

gender.

Unfortunately, the challenges to my positions in
Qur’an and

Woman
have remained deconstructionist in nature, with no crucial recon- struction offered – even as lead-ins to assist me toward greater possible alternatives in my own work. In
Progressive Muslims,
Ebrahim Moosa specifies “Muslim feminists” for his critique of making “too much of a few verses of the Qur’an that suggest reciprocal rights and duties between
unequal spouses
and then hastens to suggest that the Qur’an advocates egalitarianism as a norm.”
1
No mention is made of the comprehensive mandate for female-inclusive readings not only of the text
as revealed
and now writ, but also to the fullest implications of this inclusion, philo- sophically and theologically. Women’s readings of the Qur’an are either expected to be perfect and comprehensive, or they are inadequate. There- fore, rather than finding encouragement from others with prior privilege in engaging in textual analysis, they are castigated for their efforts at contrib- uting, however inconclusively, to new understandings of the Qur’an. Those understandings reveal possible roads toward finding new conceptions of what it means to be
human
in a religion that has had a history of this very

kind of castigation from the male elites,

who

were

so entrenched in

their

own struggles for

understanding

the

divine–human

relations

that

that they saw their

androcentric

assumptions as a reflection of the

totality of the divine intent. In the final analysis, this critique without recommendation only reiterates the significance of the quest of Muslim women, whether feminists or not, “to explore and develop new ways of interpretation of especially the revealed text.”
2

This circular argument, with its feigned perspective as an objective critique, draws no attention to the significance of gender as a category of thought by reducing the overall agenda of Islamic feminist research and theories to “a few verses.” Meanwhile, it unabashedly reinscribes the male privilege of “generations of scholars” despite their being exclusively male

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
189

and with their specific “patriarchal norms.”
3

Simultaneous

with this

explicit demonstration of retaining male scholarly privilege is the articu- lation and practice of the utility of “unequal spouses”. In effect, much of women’s domestic roles permit continued masculine privilege in public