The Qur’an on Muslim Women’s Marriage to Non-Muslims: Premodern Exegetical Strategies, Contradictions, and Assumptions

This article interrogates the claim that Islam prohibits Muslim women’s marriage to kitābīs (a derivative of the Qur’anic term ahl al-kitāb that is commonly used to refer to Christians and Jews), an argument that has practical and theological implications for Muslims today. By analysing the three Qur’anic verses on interreligious marriage (Q. 2:211, Q. 60:10, and Q: 5:5) and the ways they have been interpreted by several premodern and modern scholars, I show that two of the three verses invoked commonly to explain the prohibition can be read as applying equally to women and men, and the third does not prohibit such marriages. Premodern exegetes justified the prohibition using traditional hermeneutical tools such as qiyās (‘analogical reasoning’), ijmāʿ (‘scholarly consensus’), and takhṣīṣ (‘particularising a general statement’) to collectively interpret the verses as prohibiting women’s marriage to kitābīs. The application of these tools in the context of their specific milieux resulted in interpretations and conclusions that emerged from entrenched social systems which privileged a Muslim religio-patriarchal elite while normalising endogamy and slavery. Each exegete surveyed here has highlighted different elements of the relevant verses that reinforced their own personal assumptions, biases, and priorities, all of which confirm their interpretive power and authority. However, by applying the very same methods, contemporary readers of the Qur’an can arrive at different conclusions, given their own, different, priorities, biases, and contexts. I argue that applying the very same hermeneutical tools that exegetes have historically used can also lead to the conclusion that the Qur’an permits women’s marriage to kitābīs.