Hagar’s Textual Agency: Diversifying Christian Womanist Sources of Interpretation

ABSTRACT In this article, I converse with two women – Muslim religious scholar, Aysha Hidayatullah and Arabic poet, Mohja Kahf – to constructively explore the story of Hajar/Hagar through an interreligious Christian womanist theological lens. In her classic work Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, womanist figurehead Delores Williams rightly highlights Middle-Eastern socio-religious culture in her exploration of Hagar’s story as a critical resource for Black women’s Christian religious thought. I continue in this interpretive vein by centreing contemporary scholastic reflection and poetic interpretation concerning Arabic women’s visibility and voice through the themes of water, abandonment, and wandering, ultimately illumining Hagar’s permanence; hers is a narrative always in accompaniment to Abraham’s.