Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (38 page)

arenas shaping both intellectual and philosophical

discourses. These

discourses focus more exclusively on power politics, while boldfacedly ignoring the personal as political. No insight into the reconstruction of authority rests in this reiteration because
unequal spouses
both facilitate

male privilege by “standing steadfastly” by their “side.”
4
Meanwhile, they

continue masculine self-aggrandizement at the same time as they construct a public persona of being liberated. This is evident in the empty articu- lations combined with simultaneously rendering selected female scholars and activists as tokens for public window-dressing and by limiting other women, even their own family members, to roles which provide the glue for sustaining their image as proper family men. Therefore, women must either cater to masculine standards of evaluation as facilitators or be cas- tigated as adversaries.

Obviously female autonomy in engaging with the entrenched practices and ideologies of male privilege cannot rely upon male progressive scholars unless these men advocate, as does Khaled Abou El Fadl, that women further pursue their own learning in order to acquire competence in greater self-reliance instead of this continued dependence upon men’s expertise for epistemological, philosophical, and ontological full agency.

I had naively believed that progressive male thinkers and activists would actually be principal catalysts in helping to transform Muslim women’s identity, but was deeply disappointed. Instead, I confronted the paradox of the double bind. Unless and until women want full agency for themselves,

they will always find

opportunities

to be co-opted to support male

authority, either in the public or the private sectors. “Men and women are not simply considered different from one another, as we speak of people differing in eye color, movie tastes or preferences for ice cream. In every domain of life, men are considered the normal human being, and women

are ‘ab-normal,’ deficient because they are different from men.”

5
Never-

theless the challenge remains an opportunity for me to reflect further on those alternatives that move toward new answers to as yet unasked questions beyond Qur’an and gender and – in a manner of speaking – beyond the literalist Qur’anic readings asserted as if they are in fact divine, rather than mundane expressions of divine Self-disclosure.
6
I am continuing my research in the hope of satisfactorily demonstrating how the challenge to a

190 inside the gender jihad

“gender fundamentalist” approach to the Qur’an is ultimately, still, merely a matter of interpretation and hermeneutics for the sake of egalitarian praxis, but especially in the private sphere where it remains sequestered to obscure its popularity for male exploitation.

I have always felt positively inspired by the Qur’anic worldview and this inspiration assists me in addressing these challenges and in researching the works of other scholars.
7
This scholarly transfertilization is instrumental

in helping unveil possible paths
through
the Qur’an as a consolidated utterance – or fixed text – as well as an utterance or text
in process
. One important aspect of this challenge confronts the possibility of refuting the text, to talk back, even to say “no.” What happens when the text actually states something unmeaningful from the perspective of current human

developments and understandings? Two choices result:

either acknow-

ledge the statement in question as unacceptable regarding current levels of human competency and understanding, and therefore reconsider textual

meaning in the light

of further interpretive

development; or reject

it.

These choices are often

confused with

one another.

To stand up

against textual particulars is therefore to be charged with heresy – an ever-present threat in the background to assuage our progress toward gender justice.

The executive director of Sisters in Islam, Zainah Anwar, once asked, “Why can’t we say we are working for gender justice from a human rights perspective” instead of our earlier claim of working from a gender-inclusive Islamic perspective? Quite honestly, I understand the frustrations. My response, however, was, “I refuse to leave the definition of Islam to the neo-conservative extremists.” I also refuse to leave the definition to the hypocrisy of progressive Muslim males who do not seek to internalize the inherent reciprocal equality as it flows to all levels of the human being and in all human interactions and actions through engaged surrender. I propose to her that we are “working in a partnership between the will of Allah, as revealed in text, and the confirmation of Allah and divine principles through human agency.” As much as this partnership confirms the primacy of the Qur’an as the
word
, one form of Allah’s Self-disclosure as an ineffable reality, it simultaneously explores the implications of revelatory experience

with its inexplicable transcendent nature

that

must overflow into the

mundane realm in order for guidance to actually lead to social justice at all times, in all practices, and in all places.

Zainah proposed a workshop organized around that theme in Malaysia, 2002. It was my first public attempt to present ideas about this divine–

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
191

human cooperation, especially as one might perceive a structure of gender relations in Islam in terms far more egalitarian than readily understood from basic reading of Qur’anic text or from the historical androcentric construction of divine principles into explicit legal codes in the discipline of jurisprudence. In one sense, anything beyond literal Qur’an can be deemed supra-text, a refutation of the text, post-text, or a way of saying “no.” In another sense one might see the opportunity this allows human beings to act as Allah’s agents, responsible for making the meaning of the Qur’an implemental as universal guidance and not mere history.

Personally, I have come to places where how the text says what it says is just plain inadequate or unacceptable, however much interpretation is enacted upon it. Besides, the Qur’an never overtly advocated the eradi- cation of the institution of slavery and concubinage, but confirmed the existing practices of slavery while offering thirteen ways to free slaves, reducing the acquisition of slaves through prisoners of war, and promoting just treatment of slaves as the lesser of two evils. There are two gender examples that have always been of some concern. One of these examples I

will treat only minimally here until I have

sufficiently

developed my

research. The other example revisits verse 4:34, with its potential for abuse in the form of the perpetuation of violence against wives. I have dealt with the content of this verse and its harmful consequences in practice quite extensively by now. Thus it will become the basis of demonstrating three aspects of “textual intervention” by way of interpretation and the potential of refutation of certain explicit verses of the Qur’an. Those three are: (1) similar interpretive projects have proceeded throughout Muslim intellectual and legal history in order to explicitly restrict the abuse of the textual statement (2) we can promote the idea of saying “no” to the text; while (3) still pointing to the text to support this, as part of hermeneutics and inter- pretation. It is therefore neither un-Islamic nor heretical to the same extent as it might be deemed post-text in this post-revelation social, cultural, and philosophical context.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE QUR’AN AND SEXUALITY

While, on the one hand, the Qur’an seems to operate within a structure of linguistic taboo about sexuality and matters of intercourse altogether,

on the

other hand it promotes male sexuality in particular with three

citations. (1) Polygyny, housed in the language of desire, “Marry those

who

please you (
maa taba lakum
) of the women: two, three or four”

192 inside the gender jihad

(4:3). Although polygyny is permitted in the text, it is also
conditioned
upon almost unachievable terms of justice. (2) Women are designated as
harth
(tilth), or something to be cultivated or tilled: “Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate . . . as you will”(
nisa’ukum harthun lakum fa’tuw harthaku, innaa’ shi’tum
) (2:223). Whether this is a discussion of sexual position or permissible times of male sexual satisfaction, according to different jurists, it is still directed toward men and men’s sexual desires, while women and women’s sexuality remains passive. (3) The notorious virginal
huri
s for men – even after they are dead, men’s pleasure should not be forsaken (52:20, 55:72, 56:22)! It’s hard to take any of these affirmations away from

their explicitly male sexual predilection “Where nowhere are

extolled

the virtues of their earthly wives.”
8
In fact, the Qur’anic statement about

“
al-qawa’idu

min

al-nisa’
”
,
usually

taken to mean post-menopausal

women, includes

that such women will also “not hope to

marry” (
la

yarjuna nikahan
) (24:60) and “can cast aside their outer garments.” Research on human sexuality verifies that women are not only still

active,

capable,

and willing sexual participants past menopause, they

reach the peak of their sexual desire and enjoyment in their forties and fifties just as menopause most often occurs. Is this verse inaccurate about women’s sexual desires, as it seems to claim? The necessary interrogation of the term
nikah
is key to understanding this statement. Since the jurists designated the term to mean “sexual intercourse” as well as “marriage,” the difference between these two designations complicates the simple reading. Women may at one and the same time “desire sexual intercourse” while “not hoping to be
selected for
marriage,” the only legitimate Qur’anic space for intercourse outside of being a concubine. Even today, in many cultures menopausal women and post-menopausal women are not considered the best choice for marriage.

There were several reasons why I have not addressed such glitches in my earlier works. First, I recognize that the Qur’an addressed its primary audience within the context of revelation’s social, historical, and cultural circumstances and, as Fazlur Rahman describes it, “through the mind of the

Prophet.” These necessarily affected its linguistic construction and even its searches for meaning.
9
It had to have
contextual
meaning or it would fail at its stated method of being “plain Arabic” (16:3). This is acknowledged

within Qur’anic interpretive sciences and part of the prerequisite know- ledge for understanding text. Some verses are
‘amm
(general) and some are
khass
(specific). Whether “general” and “universal” are one and the same is a subject requiring even more extensive interpretive consideration. Because

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
193

“general” can be relative to the general context of its revelation, there is space to re-examine those verses considered
‘amm
against general contexts outside seventh-century Arabia.

I am influenced by the Qur’an’s claim to offer universal guidance for
insan
(humankind) to conclude that even some verses classified as general are relative to the revelatory context. That context, seventh-century Arabia, was not only thoroughly patriarchal, it was relatively isolated from most of the rest of the world, as well as mostly obsolete to our current realities. Unless these verses are rigorously examined vis-à-vis their context, the universal meanings could be lost by their modes of articulation. The general understanding of family at the time of revelation, as I discussed at length

elsewhere in this book,
10
is not universal because family is a social insti-

tution and subject to change relative to social development. The question of universal was not fundamental to early exegetical works, hence the use of the word “general” rather than something equivalent to universal, which was not yet a concept in human philosophical thinking, due in part to the role of particularities in constructing meaning and understanding. If something was generally understood, it could be totally irrelevant to other societies; as the idea of
“
global pluralism” did not exist,
“
general
”
was limited to the immediate space and time of the revelation.

Still,

Muslim

scholars

and

laity

believed in

the

universal intent of

Qur’anic guidance, even when

certain

times

and

places

had

exclusive

perspectives on universal relative to the general understandings in context. Thus universal, at the time of revelation, was not globally comprehensive. Indeed, the Qur’anic categories of human belief systems were focused on those prevalent and known in seventh-century Arabia, inclusive of
ahl al- kitab
(people of the book), or members of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There were also
mushrikun
(polytheists), at that time, but polytheism in Qur’anic discourse did not include any direct refer- ences to Hindu or African traditional religious polytheism, which have both the concept of numerous gods and the concept of the sacred as Ultimate. These sacred traditions relied upon this Ultimate sacred nature as facilitated

by enactments or articulation of other “gods” to

redefine multiple