Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (39 page)

theophonic attributes while still adhering to their intrinsically unified –

i.e.
tawhidic
– nature with regard to the sacred as universal.

There were also idol worshipers present in the context of the Qur’anic revelation, who are conflated with the
mushrikun
, because of their multiplicity. There were no animists, believers in the sacred manifestations throughout creation, as in many indigenous religious traditions, like

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native African, Australian, and North and South American pre- and post- Qur’anic traditions. These are not directly spoken to in the Qur’an. Furthermore, all forms of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, with unembodied or non-personified concepts of the sacred, were excluded from Qur’anic discussions of faith or religion, despite their existence prior to the seventh century in other parts of the globe. Popular Muslim thinking does not interrogate the subtle relationships between the idea of a universal divine essence, the concept of the sacred, and the various manifestations of these already recognized and practiced in other parts of the world, while the general context of Arabia and its surrounding areas are taken as the comprehensive arena for considerations of the meaning of the divine. Instead of coming away from the universal intents of the Qur’an against its general audience at one time and place, the global realities of divine–human relations are often reduced to some simple aspect of the Qur’anic contextual discussion – if not totally ignored. Consequently, the
shari‘ah
prohibits intermarriage between Muslims and members of these world

faiths, and acknowledges

the Qur’anic

concept

of female

subjugation

within marriage to permit men to marry
ahl al-kitabi
women.

Nevertheless, I continue to believe in the Qur’an’s universal intent while armed with comparative religious studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each measure of human understanding of the totality of the divine nature is more like a window, through which a person or a community can have a view of the totality. I cannot defend the notion that the window itself represents the total sacred potential. It is a framework or a viewpoint, limited to the ones who look through it. Therefore,
‘amm
verses are not the same as universal. What I consider universal in the Qur’anic statements can only be understood in light of the transcendent. Transcendence does not adhere to mundane limits. In fact, its definition is best articulated in negative theological terms, by stating or focusing on what the sacred or the divine is
not
. “Allah is one” compares to an unlimited possible articulation of what Allah, or Its “one-ness,” is not. It is not multiple gods, idols, and literal prescriptions to its manifestations throughout creation, especially in nature. The multiplicity of human responses to the idea of the sacred or the ultimate have been and continue to be expressed in terms relative to all these negated qualities despite their apparent correlations.

Put another way, if Allah has ninety-nine names, characteristics, or
sifat
(attributes), then focusing on any particular one of these is neither separate from Allah’s
tawhidic
totality nor the same as Allah’s comprehensive reality

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
195

which embraces all ninety-nine without mutual contradiction. This is one reason why both the
jamal
(feminine attributes of Allah) and the
jalal
(mas- culine attributes) are related integrally to the totality of Allah. To accept Allah’s mercy requires acceptance of Allah’s wrath. To focus on that mercy is not a negation of the wrath, it is a human predilection influenced by very mundane, and not transcendent, universal or ultimate potentialities. Thus the second reason for my responses to seeming glitches or even contra- dictions in even the Qur’an’s
‘amm
(general utterances) was their historical necessity in a particular time and location while the comprehension of the transcendent reality of the divine cannot be discussed in the boundaries of any human language as a symbolic meaning-making system. “Language is intrinsically unfitted to discuss the supernatural literally.” Words about God and the Unseen “must be used analogically because these matters ‘transcend all symbol-systems’.”
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Therefore, I have never been locked into a literal meaning of Qur’anic text when I explore the Qur’anic intent of universal guidance. This frees human agency to grapple throughout all points in history with what is actually stated in the Qur’an and to observe the deficiencies of all statements in language over meaning, let alone divine potentiality.

As to the matter of Qur’anic
khass
(specific statements), I consider it direct and simple; for example, when the Qur’an addresses the people of Madinah and the wives of the Prophet Muhammad are prohibited from remarrying after his death (33:53). This statement’s restricted application to these particular women has no general, let alone universal, intent. One cannot derive any meaning from it to be applied outside the
khass
of its utterance.
Only
the wives of the Prophet, now fourteen hundred years deceased, have any relationship to the verse, although it is a literal part of this universal text of guidance. In fact, to derive general, let alone universal, intent from such a statement would so obviously misread the statement that it would violate the Qur’an. It is the overt and obvious nature and utterance of this statement with its extremely limited terms of application that should easily alert all readers of the text that the Qur’an does indeed
have
a specific context, and also that the Qur’anic text
was
responsive to that context.

I was not deterred by these nuances. I moved beyond its particular linguistic confirmations and limitations
in
context and looked through it as a window toward the transcendent – toward its potential, as if the words were
ayat
(signs), that point beyond themselves to ultimate meanings for transformation. It requires readers of these signs to invest their human agency, as free-willed and rational beings – in aspiring to surrender to the

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divine will. Such agents investigate the relationship between Qur’anic state- ments and their potential trajectories to point all humankind to divine guidance rather than to literal application of verse after verse, to extremely confined or limited implementations as in the seventh-century Arabian con- text, as if these could fulfill universal guidance.

After all, Qur’anic interpretation is about the human search for the meaning of God. It is not just in our most fundamental belief in the Qur’an as the word of Allah, or God’s Self-disclosure, but in the sense that Allah is and always was and therefore cannot be contained or constrained by text – let alone by the search for meanings of that text by any human being, with all his or her flaws and inadequacies. The Qur’an is, as it were, a window to look
through
, a doorway with a threshold one must pass
over
toward the infinite possibilities that point humanity toward a continuum of spiritual and social development. I could never allow its substance to succumb to the patriarchal audience of its time, nor to the scope of its readership – then or now. I accept that even my own reading is dwarfed by my context in history as well as by human incompetence and lack of understanding. This accept- ance frees me from defending any understanding I develop or meaning I find as the
only
right understanding. This leads my understanding to unlimited change as I grow and encounter both the whole of Allah’s creation, the whole of the book, and the whole scope of human meaning- making under sacred guidance. I am not afraid of my efforts to understand the text, to act upon my understanding, and to share each stage of devel- opment in that understanding as part of the human love, belief, and surrender to the Author of the text, however I might encounter Allah from one moment to the next. The substance of the Qur’an cannot be constrained by its particular utterances, let alone by the narrowness of its readers. Indeed, as Ali ibn Abi Talib asserted in the famous dispute with the Khawarij (extremists),“The Qur’an is written in straight lines between two covers. It does not speak by itself. It needs interpreters, and the interpreters

are human beings.”
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As Muslims we have always been, and always will

be, only human. With our human development of postmodernist and deconstructionist disciplines of meaning, we accept the fact that we are potentially guided by the text, even if not limited to its particular utter- ances.

The text is silent. It needs interpretation, and has always historically and currently been subjected to interpretation. We make it speak for us by asking of it. If we are narrow, we will get a narrow response or answer. If we are open, it will open us to even greater possibilities. Contexts make

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
197

particular interpretations dominant and others inadequate. We are subjects of our own history in the making, as well as to the historical past upon which we rest, knowingly or unknowingly. “Human nature [is] created historically through a dialectic between human biology and the physical environment. This interrelation is mediated by human labor or praxis. The specific form of praxis dominant within a given society creates the dis- tinctive physical and psychological human types characteristic of that society.”
13
Therefore, even our capacity to conceive of any kind of God is prefaced upon our individual as well as civilizational context and the conceptual constructs at our disposal. As civilizations develop so does the human capacity to understand both its own nature and the nature of

God.

The revelation of God is unfortunately also constrained by the minds of the men and women for whom it was revealed. When we do perceive of the Ultimate in Its infinitude, for whatever glimpses or theophonic awakenings we might experience, we are left to integrate them into our own identity as it may yield to and yet be limited within our specific contexts. Then it’s back to the drawing board, to chisel out other less finite possibilities. I do not say that God is in Herself constrained by us. However, our conceptions of God are at best what the Hindu yogi recognizes as the sixth
chakrah
, the place of our “notions of God.” We cannot linger everlastingly at the seventh
chakrah
, or the crown, the place of “God beyond all names and forms,” except for the twinkling of an eye. Or else we be gods ourselves, and though ultimately there is truth in that, our corporeal forms will only allow us intoxicated glimpses of this Reality. Afterwards we are tumbled back in a hangover of separation, yearning, and despair. Our earthly form confines us, and all that is left to us in the wake of that moment of epiphany is a deep sense of alienation.

VERSE 4:34 AND IMPLICATIONS OF LITERAL APPLICATION OF
HUDUD
ORDINANCES

I have used the Qur’an’s contextual patriarchal circumstances with predomi- nant focus on male experiences, including male sexuality, to begin my

research on the complexity of

uncovering meaning from the

Qur’anic

text as well as for implementing the Qur’anic intent for universal guidance. While Muslims accept the Qur’an as universal guidance, the predominant method for achieving that universal in the mundane context has resulted overwhelmingly in the practice of literally applying specific utterances. In

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Qur’an and Woman
, I considered this to have potential contradictions to the spirit of the Qur’an. This reference to the word “spirit” I had concluded from studying Fazlur Rahman’s work in conjunction with my research and experience with gender and transcendence. But the ambiguity of the word also required elaboration.

The existence of so many exegetical works (
tafasir
) indicates that, with regard to the Qur’an, the interpretation process has existed and will probably continue to exist, in a variety of forms. It is essential that the adaptive nature of interpretation, from individual to individual and from time and place to time and place, should continue unabated until the end of time – on the one hand because it is natural and on the other hand,
because only through such continued interpretation can the
wisdom of the Qur’an
be effectively implemented. This implementation will be specific to the varying experiences of human civilization.

No interpretation is definitive.
I have attempted here to render a reasonable plausible interpretation to some difficult matters. The basis for this plausibility is the significance I draw from the text with regard to the modern woman: the significance of her life style to her concerns and interactions in her context.

I believe the Qur’an adapts to the context of the modern woman as smoothly as it adapted to the original Muslim community fourteen centuries ago. This adaptation can be demonstrated if the text is inter- preted with her in mind, thus indicating the universality of the text.
Any interpretations, which narrowly apply the Qur’anic guidelines only to literal mimics of the original community, do an injustice to the text [now and in the future]. No community will ever be exactly like another. Therefore no community can be a duplicate of that original community. The Qur’an never states that as the goal. Rather
the goal has been to emulate certain key principles of human development: justice, equity, harmony, moral responsibility, spiritual awareness and development. Where these general characteristics exist, whether in the first Muslim community or in the present or future communities, the goal of the

Qur’an for society [and piety] has been reached.
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(emphasis and additions mine)

Besides the imbalanced expression of human sexuality in terms most specific to masculine, heterosexual dominance, the second place of dissatisfaction when grappling with textual inadequacies is verse 34,
surat-al-nisa’
.
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