Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Qurʾanic Studies

Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Qurʾanic Studies Halla Attallah (bio) In her essay "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory," Rosemarie Garland-Thomson advocates for a theoretical framework that combines insights from both disability and feminist studies. She maintains that a "feminist disability" lens allows scholars to think beyond sexed differentiations to include other value-laden particularities of the body.1 Garland-Thomson's discussion and her emphasis on a theoretically conscious interdisciplinary approach, I believe, is relevant to the current debates in feminist qurʾanic studies. As Hadia Mubarak rightfully observes, much of the discourse is motivated by the question of whether the Qurʾan is "inherently patriarchal," thereby reducing our scope of analysis to simple binaries. This emphasis is understandable, given the stubbornness of Islamophobic tropes that paint Islam as inherently "anti-women"; perhaps this focus is even necessary when we enter "the court of the sultans" that Celene Ibrahim depicts in this roundtable. Moving forward, however, feminist qurʾanic studies would benefit from a critical engagement with scholarship that is also interested in the ethical issues surrounding the body and the power structures defining it.2 A "feminist disability" lens is one such conversation partner that I believe would benefit our work—whether applying an inter- or intratextual reading. My current research examines infertility in the Qurʾan's annunciation scenarios, which recount the tale of the miraculous birth of a son to nonreproductive [End Page 67] bodies.3 To emphasize God's ability to create, the excerpts reference traits that are both gendered, definitively associated with sexed bodies, and—with Mary's chastity as an exception—disabling, preventing one from participating in the valued institution of establishing a household (bayt). Sarah is an "old woman" (ʿajūz)4 who is "barren" (ʿaqīm);5 Abraham and Zachariah are "old men" (shuyūkh);6 and Mary is not a "whore" (baghiyyā).7 Rereading these texts in the context of gender and disability studies helps illustrate the complexities of qurʾanic bodies. In my reading, these texts both affirm and destabilize binary readings of gender. For instance, the absence of an explicit term for male infertility—unlike the female-based term "barren"—suggests that infertility is a strictly female "disability."8 Just as the "barren wind" (al-rīḥ al-ʿaqīm) eradicates the nonbelieving community of ʿĀd,9 a "barren wife" can terminate lineages, disabling the household (bayt). This reading creates a binary between men and women—and between different groups of women, that is, "barren" and conceiving women or "mothers" (ummahāt).10 However, the addition of a disability lens, including what is referred to as the "stigma model," disrupts these binary views.11 While unnamed, for example, male infertility is recognized by the Qurʾan and in narratively creative ways that hint at the experience of social shame. Just as Mary distances herself from the marginalized body of a "whore" by insisting that she has never been "touched by a single man,"12 Abraham [End Page 68] reticently admits his association with an undesired male body by claiming that he has been "touched" but by "old age."13 Here, to be touched is to be marked by stigmatized social-physical markers—premarital sex for women and (perhaps) sexual dysfunction for patriarchs. Some might argue that a theory-based study dissolves the Qurʾan into a Western worldview. I beg to differ, or at least to complicate the idea that such an approach entails a "copying and pasting" exercise that leaves the Qurʾan silent. The late Saba Mahmood's groundbreaking work on Muslim revivalist movements, for example, both complicates Western feminist notions of agency and presents novel insights on female Muslim experiences, allowing her subjects a voice.14 She accomplishes this task (in part) because of her deep and sophisticated engagement with well-established theoretical paradigms, including feminist theories.15 While our work is text-based, there remains a valuable methodological lesson in Mahmood's ethnographic work for gender-conscious scholars of the Qurʾan. By creating a dialogical encounter between the Qurʾan and our intellectual conversation partners—in a way that is critical and transparent—we expose qurʾanic elements that are often ignored by the...