Moving from Male-Centric Fallacies to Feminist Interpretive Authority

Abstract

Moving from Male-Centric Fallacies to Feminist Interpretive Authority Abla Hasan (bio) Omaima Abou-Bakr soundly argues for finding new implications in the qurʾanic text and applying a form of structuralist analysis that generates more nuanced meanings. Abou-Bakr, along with Asma Lamrabet, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Asma Afsaruddin, Celene Ibrahim, Amira Abou-Taleb, and others, contributes to what is rapidly receiving more recognition and visibility as a Qurʾan-centric exegesis. In Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading (2004), Nimat Hafez Barazangi boldly invites Muslim women and men to reread and reinterpret the Qurʾan. Barbara Stowasser's Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions, and Interpretations (1997) provides a study of scripturalist literature and its symbols. In Women and Gender in the Qur'an (2020), Celene Ibrahim focuses in her tafsīr on qurʾanic female figures. Nevin Reda and Yasmin Amin's edited volume Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice (2020) adds to the ongoing conversation by questioning the assumed timeless validity of the tradition of men's interpretation that arose in the early centuries of Islam. My own work applies a methodological approach using the Qurʾan to interpret the Qurʾan (tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān). The hermeneutic seeks internal qurʾanic answers that do not invite as much external speculation and theorization. To avoid surrendering the text to the interpreters' will and inherent biases, I methodologically prioritize the qurʾanic voice itself over every other interpretive strategy. The Qurʾan, I argue, already contains all the necessary tools for its decoding. This holistic hermeneutical approach can not only help to retrieve the overall lost gender-egalitarian message of the Qurʾan but also can respond to false controversies introduced into the exegetical tradition when exegetes project explanations that result in inherent textual inconsistencies. An example is the traditional interpretation of the expression "strike them [f., pl.]" in Q 4:34. Much has been said and written about what is soundly considered by many as the most controversial verse in the Qurʾan. Among those [End Page 91] who have notably contributed to the discussion are Kecia Ali, Hadia Mubarak, Ayesha Chaudhry, Karen Bauer, Laury Silvers, Saʾdiyya Shaikh, Laleh Bakhtiar, John Andrew Morrow, Juliane Hammer, Celene Ibrahim, and Nevin Reda. In Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur'an: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender, I argue for a holistic hermeneutical approach that starts by reconnecting Q 4:34 to its logical context. The strict application of tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān could reveal another meaning altogether. This verse is an example of what I refer to as the male addressee fallacy. We must observe that the actual addressee of Q 4:34 is not "husbands," and we must reconnect this verse to its true addressee, as specified in the beginning of Q 4:29: "O you [pl., gender inclusive] who believe," that is, the community of believers altogether.1 The word husband is not even mentioned in Q 4:34: the word rijāl means "men." Translating rijāl in Q 4:34 as "husbands" is based on an inaccurate interpretive inference. Likewise, the word nisāʾ should be translated considering the literal and primary meaning of the word: "women," not "wives." Thus, it becomes clear that the verse does not address husbands with recommendations concerning the way they should discipline disobedient wives. Rather, the passage in which Q 4:34 occurs addresses the community of believers altogether and specifies ways to justly punish women whose actions constitute a severe violation of communal law. In other words, the verse in question is not exclusively related to marital conflicts. The same general address applies to Q 4:35, which offers the entire community procedures to help families solve marital conflicts. In contrast to Q 4:34, Q 4:35 addresses marital conflict directly and specifically. As in the case of Q 4:34, appealing to the centrality of the text itself and to principles of qurʾanic coherence, as several other scholars in this roundtable have emphasized, may prove that previously controversial passages in the Qurʾan are only problematic when interpreted through...