Download PDF | (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) Karen Bauer - Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'ān_ Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses-Cambridge University Press (2015).
324 Pages
This book explores how medieval and modern Muslim religious scholars (‘ulamā’) interpret gender roles in Qur’ānic verses on legal testimony, marriage, and human creation. Citing these verses, medieval scholars developed increasingly complex laws and interpretations upholding a male-dominated gender hierarchy; aspects of their interpretations influence religious norms and state laws in Muslim-majority countries today, yet other aspects have been discarded entirely. Karen Bauer traces the evolution of these interpretations, showing how they have been adopted, adapted, rejected, or replaced over time, by comparing the Qur’ān with a wide range of Qur’ānic commentaries and interviews with prominent religious scholars from Iran and Syria. At times, tradition is modified in unexpected ways: learned women argue against gender equality, or Grand Ayatollahs reject sayings of the Prophet, citing science instead. This innovative and engaging study highlights the effects of social and intellectual contexts on the formation of tradition, and on modern responses to it.
Karen Bauer is a research associate in Qur’ānic Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Her publications include articles on the Qurʾān, the genre of tafsīr, and gender, as well as an edited volume entitled Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th – 9th/15th Centuries)
Introduction
In his interpretation of the punishment for recalcitrant wives, the exegete, jurist, and historian Muhammad ibn Jar ̣ īr al-Tabar ̣ ī (d. 310/923) came up with a novel solution for an exegetical problem. The problem, as alTabar ̣ ī saw it, was that the Qurʾān seemed to go against men’s legal rights in marriage. The punishment for recalcitrant wives outlined in Q. 4:34 is that the husband should admonish them, shun them in the beds, and beat them. And if they obey you, seek not a way against them. From this portion of the verse, it is clear that husbands have recourse to three steps, and that each step is predicated on the wife’s continued disobedience. What bothers al-Tabar ̣ ī is the middle step, which I have translated as shun them in the beds.
For him, a wife’s disobedience consisted of her refusal to have sex with her husband, so shunning this recalcitrant wife in bed is hardly a punishment at all; in fact, such a wife wants precisely to be left alone. This did not sit well with al-Tabar ̣ ī, who, incidentally, never married. He reasoned that the earliest exegetical authorities must have missed the point in their interpretations of the verse’s words, particularly wa’hjurūhunna, which I have translated above as ‘shun them’. 1
Al-Tabarī referred to the ‘speech of the ʿArabs’, by whom he means the Bedouins, to interpret the Qur’ān from a perspective that is closer to its original milieu than al-Tabar ̣ ī’s own milieu of urban Baghdad. The first of the three meanings of this word in Arabic, he says, is that ‘a man avoids speaking to another man, which means he repudiates and rejects him’. 2 The second meaning is the ‘profusion of words through repetition, in the manner of a scoffer’. 3 The third possible meaning is one that had not been suggested by any earlier exegete. It is ‘tying up a camel, i.e., its owner ties it up with the hijār, which is a rope (habl ̣ ) attached to its loins and ankles’. 4 For al-Tabar ̣ ī, only the third solution fits the bill. After cautioning husbands that they should never do this to an obedient wife, al-Tabar ̣ ī advises: ‘
If they refuse to repent of their disobedience, then imprison them,5 tying them to their beds, meaning in their rooms, or chambers, in which they sleep, and in which their husbands lie with them’. 6 Sa‘diyya Shaikh, a modern feminist interpreter, is outraged by alTabar ̣ ī’s interpretation. She points out that it ‘epitomises oppressive and abusive gender relations’. 7 For her, this interpretation embodies everything that is wrong with the medieval tradition, and against which she, a modern Muslim woman, must struggle to gain equality. But modern feminists are not the only ones to express their dismay at al-Tabar ̣ ī’s suggestion that husbands should tie their wives up to force them to obey. Although al-Tabar ̣ ī was a well-respected scholar, in this instance his own scholarly community treated him with scorn: ‘this is a deviant interpretation, and it is doubly so considering God’s words in the beds, because there are no ropes (ribāt) in bed ̣ ’, 8 says al-Tụ̄ sī (d. 459/1066), an Imāmī Shīʿī exegete. According to the Shāfiʿī al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058), the narrative that al-Tabar ̣ ī used to support his view contains ‘no proof of his interpretation rather than another’. 9 The most involved rebuttal comes from the Mālikī jurist and exegete Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148). He is astonished, and addresses al-Tabar ̣ ī personally through the two centuries that separate them: ‘What a mistake, from someone who is so learned in the Qur’ān and the behaviour of the Prophet (sunna)!
I am indeed amazed at you, [al-Tabar ̣ ī], at the boldness with which you have treated the Qur’ān and sunna in this interpretation!’ 10 These scholars do not question al-Tabar ̣ ī’s sources or methods; Ibn al-ʿArabī replicates his method of picking and choosing among haḍ īths, performing linguistic analysis, and rejecting some early views in favour of others. To find the true meaning of the verse, Ibn al-ʿArabī reinterprets the reports of early authorities, obscuring their differences in order to find the one ‘correct view’, while chastising al-Tabar ̣ ī for having missed it: ‘And it is indeed strange that, with all of al-Tabar ̣ ī’s deep studies into the science [of the Qurʾān] and into the language of the Arabs, he has strayed so far from the true interpretation! And how he deviates from the correct view!’ 11 Since Ibn al-ʿArabī does not object to al-Tabar ̣ ī’s method as such, it must be that the substance of his interpretation shows his incorrect use of that method. He has obtained an unacceptable result. For these medieval interpreters, hierarchies in society and family life were natural and fair; all of al-Tabar ̣ ī’s medieval critics defend the gender hierarchy and assert that men should have the right to punish their disobedient wives. But even though they accept the premise, they sometimes struggle with the boundaries of a just hierarchy.
They do not describe a husband’s control as unbounded, unconditional, or absolute. Al-Tabar ̣ ī’s proposition for correcting a disobedient wife overstepped the mark: he went beyond the meaning and intention of the verse. The responses cited here highlight much that is important in the genre of Qurʾānic interpretation (tafsīr): the early exegetical authorities, in theory, trump later interpreters like al-Tabar ̣ ī, but in turn, their views can be reinterpreted; there is room for many conflicting views, but not every view is tolerated; respected works by respected scholars are read across the boundaries of legal schools; and the correct interpretation is bounded by common practice, common understanding, and ideas of right and wrong. Medieval interpretations of the gender hierarchy shed light on what these scholars considered to be good, just, and correct in their societies. Today, the Qurʾānic gender hierarchy poses a different problem for religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ).12 Their tradition takes hierarchy for granted.
But for many believers, the very notion of hierarchy is outdated: modern ideas of fairness are often based on the ideal of equality. Saʿdiyya Shaikh’s reaction to al-Tabar ̣ ī’s interpretation is representative of many modern Muslims’ struggles with the hierarchical and male-orientated medieval tradition. Squaring the medieval tradition with modern notions of fairness and egalitarianism is a challenge for both conservative and reformist ʿulamāʾ. For conservatives, the challenge is to prove that the patriarchal system outlined in the Qurʾān’s hierarchical verses is appropriate today, in a time when many women are able to be educated, earning, and socially equal to men. Reformists support gender egalitarianism. For them, the challenge is to reinterpret the plain sense of these verses, to explain away centuries of interpretation, and to justify the correctness of their rereading. Through discussions of the gender hierarchy, ʿulamāʾ today indicate their adherence to a larger set of interpretative values, involving the role of tradition, reinterpretation, and human reasoning. Not all Qurʾānic verses on women are hierarchical. Some verses affirm that believing men’s and believing women’s prayers and good deeds will be rewarded; others name specific women as either good or bad examples to all believers. As believers, women and men alike can either do good or go astray.
They each seem to be responsible for their own spiritual destiny regardless of sex. Verses about the nature of the relationship between men and women in the world, however, draw distinctions between the sexes, and I argue that this distinction is hierarchical. Four such ‘difficult’ verses are the core of this study. Q. 4:1 deals with the creation of the first humans, widely understood to be Adam and Eve. Q. 2:228 and Q. 4:34 speak of the marital hierarchy: men’s ‘degree’ over women, the necessity of wifely obedience, and the husband’s right to punish his recalcitrant wife. Q. 2:282 refers to a woman’s testimony as half of a man’s testimony, which raises the question of the worth of a woman’s word and of her mental abilities. The following pages examine the content of these verses and their context in the Qurʾān, and trace how the ʿulamāʾ have interpreted them through time, from the earliest interpretations to the most recent, living interpretations, in the form of interviews with ʿulamāʾ from Iran and Syria.13
Through their views on women’s role in marriage, creation, and testimony, the ʿulamāʾ define their stance towards tradition and reinterpretation. In turn, their views on both women and interpretation are determined not only by a textual heritage, but by their own social, intellectual, cultural, and political circumstances. The portrayal of women in these texts may reveal more about their (male) authors’ own attitudes towards hierarchy than it does about women’s actual social position: women are portrayed as the proper subjects of an idealised, just male rulership in medieval texts, and today the Qurʾān’s verses on women have become an axis of reformist–conservative debate over the place of traditional social, political, and legal structures in the modern world. In this book, the gender hierarchy becomes the lens through which to explore the Qurʾān and its interpretation, the links between medieval and modern interpretations, and the effect of social and intellectual context on the production of religious knowledge.
medieval interpretations, modern responses The notion of tradition is immensely important for the ʿulamāʾ, and their grounding in tradition differentiates them from other groups who interpret the Qurʾān.14 I use ‘tradition’ to refer to aspects of the medieval social and intellectual heritage: the Qurʾān and its interpretation, haḍ īths, historical narrations, law, and custom. As others have noted, religious thinkers often reference an idea or impression of tradition, rather than a concrete reality.15 However, although the ʿulamāʾ regularly draw on this rhetorical notion of ‘tradition’, certain aspects of tradition are more than just a rhetorical notion: they are traceable. ‘Tradition’ partially consists of specific interpretations that are passed from generation to generation, and yet continually reinterpreted, appropriated, and repurposed through time as the ʿulamāʾ engage with their intellectual legacy in changing circumstances.
In the example given in the previous section, al-Tabar ̣ ī records, but then rejects, the early authorities’ views of shun them in the beds. These early interpretations were revived and defended by his detractors, reformulated entirely by Ibn al-ʿArabī, and ultimately judged by a modern feminist. It is possible to trace particular elements of tradition and show precisely how they have been adopted, adapted, or rejected through time. Scholars of history and religious studies have long acknowledged that the past is subject to appropriation and reinterpretation.
In a context where many Muslim countries base aspects of their laws on medieval sources, the appropriation of tradition has important implications for women’s rights. The most restrictive interpretation of women’s rights is often equated with the most traditional. This popular perception is sometimes reflected in the language used to describe the range of interpretations among today’s ʿulamāʾ. Ziba Mir-Hosseini describes three types of clerics she encountered in Qom, Iran, in 1997, which she labels the traditionalists, the neo-traditionalists, and the modernists. By ‘traditionalist’, she means a cleric who adheres strictly to pre-modern Islamic law.
The ‘neo-traditionalists’ adapt traditional rulings for today’s times, accepting that a certain amount of change is inevitable in Islamic law, and that circumstances must determine understanding. The ‘modernists’, not bound by medieval laws, boldly advocate new interpretations of traditional sources.16 The ‘traditionalist’ label is adopted by the ʿulamāʾ themselves.17 Such terminology is no accident: it plays directly into the question of authenticity. As Zaman says: ‘The ʿulamāʾ ... are hardly frozen in the mold of the Islamic religious tradition, but this tradition nevertheless remains their fundamental frame of reference, the basis of their authority and identity’. 18 By adopting the label ‘traditionalist’, conservative ʿulamāʾ are portraying themselves as the authentic, authoritative ʿulamāʾ, those who truly represent the past.
These categories represent real differences between the interpreters. However, the terms ‘traditionalist’ and ‘modernist’ are problematic when used to describe modern conservative and reformist ʿulamāʾ: they can imply that only progressive or reformist readings are modern, and that the most conservative interpretation always emerges from the tradition. Yet neither of these assumptions is true. For instance, when I interviewed the Grand Muftī of Syria, Ahmad H ̣ ̣assoun, in 2005, he told me that he had a new initiative to train women to be muftīs for other women.19 A muftī is a person qualified to issue valid opinions on the law; unlike the opinions of a judge, a muftī’s judgment is non-binding. He presented the initiative to train women as muftīs as a reinterpretation of tradition in women’s favour, and a way of involving them in legal authority. It is a reinterpretation of medieval law, but not in the direction of equality. According to almost all Sunnī schools of law in the medieval period, women were allowed to be muftīs for both women and men. The modern rereading, which restricts women’s activities to other women, and to ‘women’s issues’ such as menstruation and childbirth, does not grant women the same leeway that they were granted in medieval law.
Conservatives and reformists approach tradition in different ways.20 The primary aim of conservative ʿulamāʾ is to preserve particular interpretations of past laws; but they pick and choose, use modern justifications, and sometimes create entirely new laws. Reformists seek to reinterpret past laws by rereading traditional sources. These varied approaches to tradition lead to practical differences between conservative and reformist interpretations on women. Conservatives explain the continued necessity of a gender hierarchy by saying that the Qurʾānic verses indicate differences in men’s and women’s innate characteristics and minds. To justify this today, they refer to scientific arguments about the natural differences between men and women. Reformists argue against the hierarchy by asserting that the Qurʾān’s hierarchical verses were addressed to a specific time and place. Both groups claim tradition as their keystone, but they also use modern tools, arguments, and reasoning to re-examine and re-interpret their tradition. Through time, the ʿulamāʾ have formed their views, in part, as a response to their particular intellectual context.
Intellectual context includes textual genre, an interpreter’s legal school, his personal opinion, his forebears, and his intended audience: teachers, students, and peers. It also includes the named sources of his interpretation, the Qurʾān and haḍ īth. Each of these aspects of intellectual context affect interpretations in different ways. Kecia Ali describes the importance of genre with regard to legal texts. She points out not only that the jurists ‘use specialized terminology and rely on a wealth of assumed knowledge’, but also that ‘the rhythms or modes of argument characteristic of legal texts shaped the jurists’ views’. 21 As in the juridical texts described by Ali, works of interpretation have their own language, methods, and lines of argumentation.
Authors within each genre are involved in particular discursive contexts. The context of intellectual jockeying can have a profound effect on discussions of ‘women’s status’. Often, a statement that seems integral to women’s status is presented as a part of a wider argument, for instance, for or against a particular school of Qurʾānic reading, law, or grammar. Arguments that can seem vehemently to defend or deny women’s rights, for instance their right to testify in court or to assume judgeship, may be primarily rhetorical attempts to discredit rival schools of law or interpretation.
This type of argumentation leads to real differences in interpretations; but it is important to investigate the intellectual context of these arguments in order to understand their nature, particularly since ideas of women’s rights have changed so radically in the modern age. A modern reader might assume that certain statements or rulings – such as the ruling that a single woman could testify to the live birth of a child – was an argument for, or at least towards, equality. But what a modern reader might regard as a natural corollary of a certain statement or law was by no means natural for its medieval author: they explained that women’s testimony was only accepted out of necessity. In the classical period and beyond, the idea of sexual equality in the worldly realm seems to have been absent. In the worldly realm, hierarchies were the norm, and statements about women’s rights were made with the underlying presupposition of the justice of these worldly hierarchies.
structure & sources This project started as a study of medieval Muslim interpretations of the gender hierarchy. I was curious to know whether, in the medieval interpretations of the Qurʾān, there was any notion of gender egalitarianism akin to the feminist notions common today (the short answer is no). To research this question, I undertook a study of the interpretation of three Qurʾānic verses, primarily in medieval works of exegesis (tafsīr al-Qurʾān). That project became my PhD dissertation on sixty-seven medieval interpretations of verses on creation and marriage – now, in a modified form, Chapters 3 and 5 of this book.22 However, as I was working on my dissertation, it became apparent to me that these interpretations were shaped by certain types of constraints.23 In order to undertake a deeper exploration of exactly what I was reading, I expanded the scope: this study includes the important question of women’s testimony, goes outside the genre of tafsīr, and is based on both medieval and modern sources, drawing on both the earliest available Islamic source – the Qurʾān itself – and the most recent, in the form of interviews with the ʿulamāʾ. The following pages detail the structure of the book, as well as expanding on my use of Qurʾān, medieval and modern written tafsīr, and interviews as source material. This book is divided into three main parts:
Testimony, Creation, and Marriage. Testimony focuses on interpretations of Q. 2:282, call to witness two of your men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, so that if one of the two women errs, the other can remind her. Many ʿulamāʾ, both medieval and modern, attribute the difference in testimony between men and women to a difference in their minds. I have chosen to open the book with this issue since the question of mental equality is at the basis of the gender hierarchy as a whole. Creation discusses the creation of the first woman in the Qurʾān and its interpretation, centring on the interpretation of Q. 4:1, fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and from it created its mate. Medieval exegetes considered Eve, and by extension all women, to be secondary creations. Modern interpreters view men and women as equal in their created form. This fundamental transformation in references to women, from a discourse of inherent inequality to one of inherent equality, amounts to a change in consensus among the ʿulamāʾ. Underlying this change in discourse is a tectonic shift in notions of correctness, orthodoxy, and the sources of authority. Marriage describes how the ʿulamāʾ interpret verses that raise ethical issues around the nature of and reasons for the marital hierarchy.
The verses at the centre of this discussion are Q. 2:228 and Q. 4:34. Q. 2:228 is about men’s and women’s rights: women have rights like their obligations according to what is right, and men have a degree over them. Q. 4:34, which today is one of the most controversial verses in the Qurʾān, reads: Men are qawwāmūn [in charge/supporters/maintainers] over women, with what God has given the one more than the other, and with what they spend of their wealth; so the good women are obedient, guarding for the absent with what God has guarded, and those from whom you fear nushūz [ill conduct/disobedience], admonish them, abandon them in the beds, and beat them; and if they obey you, do not seek a way against them, for God is mighty, Wise. Ethical notions are tested by a verse that orders wifely obedience regardless of considerations of the husband’s piety, and allows a husband to beat his recalcitrant wife. This part of the book addresses the effect on interpretation of ethics, social mores, and truths taken for granted. The interpreters see each of these verses as a part of a whole picture: the arguments they make about one verse are predicated on those they make about the others. So, thematically, all of the parts of this book are interrelated; but in terms of overall argument, each also builds on the last. Testimony broadly examines the way that generic conventions shape a discourse. Creation focuses on the development within, and sources for, one genre, that of tafsīr. Marriage focuses on the ethics of interpretation, describing how ethics, social mores, and culturally taken-for-granted arguments can influence interpretation, and how as these notions change through time, so does interpretation. Together, these parts document a subtle shift in the authorities cited in the medieval genre of tafsīr, from a genre that relied almost exclusively on the reports of early exegetical authorities, to one that relied much more heavily on reports attributed to the Prophet himself. Another shift in authoritative sources occurs in the modern period, when haḍ īths are frequently dismissed or discounted, and science is used to frame and explain interpretations. While it is possible to examine the trajectory of tafsīr and law on gender without ever really engaging with the text of the Qurʾān, each part of this book begins with a modest reading and contextualisation of the verses in question. I focus on the Qurʾān in part because it is so central to the ʿulamāʾ today. Non-Qurʾānic sources of authority shift through time: the ʿulamāʾ readily admit that disciplines such as tafsīr and fiqh are a human creation, and therefore fallible; even the collections of haḍ īth include non-authentic material.
The Qurʾān is the unchanging core. My Qurʾānic reading is an attempt to get at the ‘plain sense’ of the verses by comparing them with other Qurʾānic verses with similar themes, content, and vocabulary. By ‘plain sense’ I mean the most straightforward reading that can be gleaned from the Qurʾānic context. Taking into account other verses of a similar theme or those that use similar language, what was the likely meaning of this verse? Interpretations vary; However, the ʿulamāʾ presume that verses with similar themes work together to form a coherent whole, despite a scattered placement or piecemeal presentation. I believe that most ʿulamāʾ would disagree with postmodern theories of interpretation that state that the text is empty, or that it gains meaning solely through interpretation. For the ʿulamāʾ, it is not empty; they work with words and a text that they believe has an inherent meaning, which they must understand clearly as a part of the act of interpretation and response. By undertaking to understand the plain sense of the Qurʾān, I share their fundamental assumption that there is meaning inherent in the text. A prominent component of this study is its diachronic element: it is a study of how interpretation develops through time. Each of the three main parts of the book has a medieval chapter that examines the Qurʾān and medieval interpretations of specific verses, and a modern chapter, including written tafsīr, the oral interpretations of the ʿulamāʾ given to me in interviews, and references to their books. By ‘medieval’, I mean, essentially, the entire precolonial period, from the earliest interpretations in the 8th century through around 1800. The following paragraphs address the issue of change and development within the medieval period and between medieval and modern texts. Scholars of medieval tafsīr have long acknowledged that this genre develops through time, and that, just as it was never static, the genre was never monolithic.
There were different types of works, written for different audiences: short, medium, and long works of varying levels of difficulty.24 The genre has certain characteristics: it is inclusivist, home to more specialised branches of knowledge; it is often polyvalent, meaning that it includes many, sometimes conflicting, interpretations; and it is first and foremost the record of the views of certain early authorities.25 The importance of these early authorities goes back to the origins of tafsīr in their teaching sessions.26 The earliest exegetical authorities are in some ways akin to the founders of legal schools, in that almost all subsequent works refer, obliquely or overtly, to their views. These works were written in a way that seemed simply to record and preserve the views of the earliest authorities and the Prophet. Yet they not only preserved, but also modified and even erased past interpretations.
The term ‘stratigraphy’ has recently been applied to historical writings in Islamic studies.27 Stratigraphy, originally the name for a branch of geology, studies the layering of rock. When applied to historical texts, this term refers to the layering of meaning and interpretation: one story or interpretation can be retold in many different ways, with layers of detail added in subsequent generations. Used in this sense, the term stratigraphy can describe the continual accretion of meanings in the genre of tafsīr. Through time, interpretations built up in layers, and the very process of building up could also impose new meanings on the text and on earlier interpretations. This is how Ibn al-ʿArabī treated the views of the early authorities in the example cited at the beginning of this Introduction. Rather than acknowledging that the views of the earliest authorities were incompatible, he reinterpreted disagreement so that it became agreement, thus imposing new meanings on the earliest authorities’ words.
The accretion of interpretation in the genre of tafsīr, and its repurposing, is complicated by considerations both practical and stylistic. We know that patterns of citation/accretion were fragmentary. When writing a work of tafsīr, authors would selectively pick and choose from previous works, usually without crediting the original author. But we know very little about the practical mechanisms that enabled such picking, choosing, and selective accretion of tradition. Walid Saleh has claimed that the whole tradition is available to exegetes at any moment; thus picking and choosing is up to the exegete alone.28 However, the idea of the availability of the entire tradition discounts the way that book production, distribution, and preservation worked in the medieval Islamic world. Not all books were widely distributed or kept intact. In one of the only library catalogues that exist for the medieval Islamic world, many of the works of tafsīr are partial.29 Fragmentary patterns of citation might reflect not only an author’s choice, but also practical considerations of which works were available to him and in what state. While it is important to explore the variations in interpretation specific to particular genres or authors, it is no less important to attempt to understand the wider context of these variations, and to investigate the likely presuppositions of their authors.
That the gender hierarchy was considered natural in the medieval period is apparent in legal rulings, such as that for the blood-money payment in the case of killing: 100 camels for men, 50 for women. It was also widespread in haḍ īths, one of which asserts that woman was created ‘crooked’, from a rib of Adam, while another claims that women are deficient in rationality and religion.30 Men in these haḍ īths are the model: they are complete humans, while women are defective. These haḍ īths are often reinterpreted today; but in the medieval period, they were taken at face value. In their view of women as unequal, subservient, and deficient, medieval Muslim interpreters are on common ground with medieval interpreters from other world religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity. Medieval Jewish interpretations of the Biblical verse Genesis 3:16, to the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbirth severe; with labour you will give birth to children, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over thee’, are similar to Medieval Islamic interpretations of Q. 4:34.31 Although I describe important differences in opinions between medieval interpreters, their interpretations are always bounded by certain common presuppositions.
Theoretically, ‘modern’ interpretations could date from around 1850 onwards. Muslim intellectuals of the 19th century were deeply engaged in larger societal debates about women’s place in society, the relationship between science and revelation, religion as an expression of cultural values, and the relationship between ‘the West’ and ‘the East’, which are all central themes for the contemporary ʿulamāʾ in this study. But within the genre of tafsīr, the first ‘modern’ work, meaning one that deals with these themes at length, and in a new way, is the Tafsīr al-Manār of the Egyptian Muhammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) and his student Rashīd Ridạ̄ (d. 1935). They were deeply influenced by the colonial encounter and sought to engage with the modern ideas and ideals that were matters of widespread discussion in their day. In the words of J. J. G. Jansen, ‘Before Abduh the interpretation of the Koran was mainly an academic affair. Commentaries were written by scholars for other scholars ... to this kind of scholarly exegesis Abduh objected on principle’. 32 ʿAbduh intended his commentary for a wider public, as a solution to the problems of the day.33 It is these modern aims, ideals, and ways of writing that form a break from the medieval texts, which nevertheless exert a strong influence on most modern interpretations.
In the modern period the audience for, and methods used in, these works have changed. With the advent of mass literacy, many more people are reading works of tafsīr than in the past. Whereas in the medieval period such works might have been used as scholarly references by preachers, and then summarised and condensed into arguments suitable for a mass audience, today some of the most prominent and popular works of tafsīr (such as Tafsīr al-Manār) are themselves collected sermons. The boom in audience has resulted in a different way of writing. No longer is polyvalence common: now, the norm is to present one unified conclusion, an argument, rather than a number of possibilities. Following from the work of ʿAbduh, there is also a strong feeling that modern works must address pressing social concerns. Concurrently, women’s rights have become a pressing social concern in a way that they were not in the medieval period. These modern ways of writing and thinking have a striking effect on interpreters’ descriptions of the gender hierarchy. Today’s ʿulamāʾ have, on the whole, jettisoned all talk of women’s inferiority.
The language of equality pervades texts from the modern period, even when the ʿulamāʾ do not advocate legal equality between the sexes. Another common feature of modern interpretation is the recourse to science. An example of these trends is to be found in modern interpretations of women’s testimony. Some modern conservative interpreters assert that the medieval rulings on women’s testimony should remain today. But rather than justifying these rulings by saying that women are deficient in rationality, as did medieval interpreters, they claim that women and men can reason equally well, but that modern science proves that women and men have different mental strengths. As opposed to this approach, modern reformists assert that medieval rulings on women’s testimony should be overturned, and that scientific proof is on their side. They claim that science proves that men’s and women’s minds are equal and that they should have equal testimony in all or most cases, and that this equality is deeply embedded in the spirit of the Qurʾānic verse, if not in its wording. My analysis of the gender hierarchy shows not only development, but important elements of continuity between medieval and modern works in the genre. As I have mentioned, the pre-modern genre of tafsīr was a scholarly venture: works were often written for specific levels of scholar, or for scholars with particular interests or sets of interests. Writing a tafsīr was one way for an author to prove his scholarly credentials. In the modern period, although they address a wider audience, authors still write works of tafsīr to prove their scholarly credentials.
Like pre-modern works, modern works of tafsīr relate directly to their precursors within the genre, citing or quoting previous works, with or without attribution. While modern authors have different aims for their works, and this is expressed in their methods and their engagement with various types of sources, they nevertheless still choose to write this type of work to demonstrate their familiarity with the tradition. I thus argue that the genre of tafsīr in the modern period is one that is both conservative and circumscribed. Modern works of tafsīr do not represent the whole range of modern interpretations of the Qurʾān.
The circumscribed nature of the genre of tafsīr was one of the main reasons that I decided to incorporate interviews into my source pool, which led to my travels to Syria (2004 and 2005) and Iran (2011). My transcription of the Iran interviews ran past 150 pages; these pages were to become the core of the modern chapters in this book. By interviewing the ʿulamāʾ, I was able to get beyond the constraints of tafsīr texts, while still remaining within the bounds of tradition. When I spent three months in Syria in 2004, I was in graduate school, and this project was in its formative stages. I was fortunate to be able to conduct interviews with some of Syria’s leading clerics at the time: Member of Parliament Muhammad al-H ̣ ̣abash, Grand Muftī Ahmad ̣ Ḥassoun, and popular preacher Saʿīd Ramadạ̄ n al-Būtị̄. Unfortunately, I conducted these interviews using a tape recorder with poor sound quality, and my transcriptions were of only limited use to me years later while writing the final iteration of this project. But the experience of being in Damascus and hearing living, interactive interpretations had an indelible effect on my work and thought. While there, I attended the mosque lessons of Ḥannān al-Lahḥ ạ̄ m, who preached to other women in the basement of a mosque in Damascus. She had just published a work of tafsīr of Surat al-Baqara (the second chapter of the Qurʾān), which she taught in her lessons. But far from the dry, medieval-sounding interpretations that were presented in the book, her lessons were interactive question-and-answer sessions with a group of lively, engaged women. She brought the text to life, elaborating on the written interpretation and speaking to the current concerns of her audience. Suddenly, through her, I gained some insight into Islamic scholarly circles of learning, and the world beyond the textual tradition. Even in mosque sessions with less interactive methods, such as those of Hudā alḤabash at the Zahra mosque, the audience was deeply engaged as the teacher made the text relevant to their daily lives.
It was my Syrian experience that led me to pursue a trip to Iran to complete the research for this book. When I went to Iran in 2011, I learned that the very concerns that motivated my work were also central for some of the ʿulamāʾ. Like me, they meditated on the relationship between the text and its context, between medieval interpretations and the modern world, and between culture and interpretation. In interviews, I was thus able to ask not only about an interpreter’s view, but also about why he or she took that view. Although my interview subjects often gave me books that they had written, the interviews went beyond their written words. For instance, in her book on women’s rights, Dr Fariba ʿAlasvand barely touched on the issue of women’s testimony. But in our interview, she explained why she believes that women’s and men’s testimony should be counted differently in most cases, and also explained the scientific theories upon which she draws as proof. As a non-Muslim trained in the ‘orientalist’ tradition, I embodied a particular type of audience for my interview subjects. The trope of West versus East looms large in modern texts and in my interviews on the issue of women’s rights and the marital hierarchy. For some of the ʿulamāʾ, discussing these verses with me was not just arguing an academic point: it was defending their religious culture against my secular one. In this conservative-minded dynamic, a defence of the status of women in the family and society is a synecdoche for the defence of traditional Eastern cultural values against Western incursion. For some conservative clerics, feminism is seen as the hallmark of the West; to argue for a form of patriarchy is to argue for cultural authenticity. Yet my readings and interviews revealed few simplistic arguments against equality.
Instead, almost all modern interpreters embrace some aspects of equality while rejecting others. And while many ʿulamāʾ defend patriarchal systems in various forms, some argue against them: rather than asserting that the patriarchal model is the only culturally authentic model, reformists use narratives from the past and present to argue for gender equality.34 To take one example, Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei asserted that Q. 4:34 describes particular social circumstances: for the Qurʾān’s original audience, husbands were in charge of wives. Today, not all marriages conform to the description in the Qurʾān; according to him, marriage does not have to be hierarchical.35 The interviews in Iran provided a valuable counterpoint to my Syrian interviews, by highlighting broad elements of similarity and difference between modern Sunnī and Imāmī Shīʿī interpreters. One area of similarity was the substance and nature of conservative interpretations. Often, Sunnī and Imāmī Shīʿī conservatives used the same or very similar arguments. However, Sunnīs and Shīʿīs approach their sources of interpretation differently, particularly haḍ īths. While Sunnī interpreters were likely to preserve haḍ īths by explaining, justifying, or reinterpreting them, Shīʿīs were more likely to dismiss haḍ īths irrespective of whether they had been transmitted from Sunnī or Shīʿī authorities. Shīʿī interpreters on the whole accepted the use of human reason (ʿaql) as a means of critiquing haḍ īths and deriving the law, and some accepted human reason as a basis for the law and interpretation. Thus, the sources and methods of Sunnīs and Shīʿīs differ even when the substance of their interpretations is quite similar. In writing about my interviews, I highlight these methods, particularly the interpreters’ own views of the role of tradition versus that of human intellect. In this way, the subject of women sheds light on the approaches that the ʿulamāʾ take to Qurʾānic interpretation as a whole.
There are a number of caveats on the conclusions to be drawn from interviews. Like texts, interviews are intended for a particular audience; and, whether as a representative of the West, as an academic, as a nonMuslim, or as a woman, my presence shaped the answers I was given. There are limits on what is presented in interviews, just as in texts. In the words of Mir-Hosseini, about her own interviews: ‘As with any other debate in the Islamic Republic in the 1990s, there were limits that cannot be transgressed, and I was never sure how far I could go’. 36 In both Iran and Syria, I could very much relate to her feeling of unspoken limits and boundaries on what could, and could not, be expressed. Because of my focus on the Iranian interviews, the modern chapters are slanted towards the Shīʿī perspective. I have used my interviews and textual studies to draw comparisons between the views of Sunnī and Shīʿī ʿulamāʾ, but such comparative work in gender studies is still in its infancy. Finally, it is possible to read too much into the ‘conservative’ and ‘reformist’ labels I have chosen for the ʿulamāʾ.
There is undoubtedly a relationship between politics and interpretation in some sense, but an individual’s perspective on gender does not necessarily correlate with his political views.37 In this book, the labels ‘conservative’, ‘neo-traditionalist’, and ‘reformist’ point to the substance of an ʿālim’s interpretation on gender issues, and are not intended to convey political affiliation. Regardless of these caveats, the interviews shed light not only on how the ʿulamāʾ respond to the concerns of a secular outsider, but also on the limits of the textual sources which are commonly the sole basis of analysis in the field of Qurʾānic studies.
theoretical and practical perspectives on the interpretation of the qurʾa¯ n This book is, in part, a meditation on the nature of Qurʾānic interpretation. To conclude the Introduction, I now describe some of the theoretical considerations that bind the interpreters studied here. Gadamer’s ideas about historical consciousness are relevant to the study of Islamic interpretation, because he speaks about the relationship between the historian and the past; seemingly like the Muslim interpreter of the Qurʾān, the historian seeks to obliterate self and to return to a past time. But, according to Gadamer, such obliteration is impossible. ‘Even in those masterworks of historical scholarship that seem to be the very consummation of the extinguishing of the individual’, he says, ‘it is still an unquestioned principle of our scientific experience that we can classify these works with unfailing accuracy in terms of the political tendencies of the time in which they were written’. 38 The interpreter of the Qurʾān presents ‘truth’ by calling forth past witnesses, as does Gadamer’s historian. In this case, those witnesses include the Prophet’s haḍ īths, the interpretations of his Companions, grammatical analysis, and the interpretation of past exegetes. But like Gadamer’s examples of historical works, works of Qurʾānic interpretation are rooted in particular times. The present always shapes the interpretation of the past. According to Gadamer, it is our present concerns and hopes that make the past real for us.39 My analysis is predicated on the idea that context influences interpretation. But it was not always taken for granted that context must have an influence on the interpretive venture, and that therefore interpretation is time-bound and changeable; many of the interpreters in this study attempt to abide by theories of interpretation developed in the classical period by al-Tabar ̣ ī and others.
In classical interpretive theory, the ultimate sources of Qurʾānic commentaries lie in the past and are timeless: the language of the Qurʾān itself, the haḍ īths of the Prophet and his Companions. These timeless sources in some ways imply an essentially stagnant and unchanging venture of interpretation. A basic template of the idealised sources of Qurʾānic commentary might look like Figure I.1, which includes the words of the Qurʾān, haḍ īths on the authority of the Prophet, his Companions, and their Followers, and the interpreter’s own legal school and precedent from exegetical authorities. Figure I.1 is an idealisation, and in this depiction, the theoretical sources of interpretation remain constant. Exegetes through time have recognised that these sources are not unmediated, and they differentiate their own contribution by describing their methods of interpretation; but even with methodological development, these theoretical sources remain unchanging. The aim of the exegete, as in the theory of Gadamer, is the extinction of the individual self, and the return to a mythologised past time. The overall development of theories of Qurʾānic interpretation has not been the subject of a sustained study; but it is likely that, like interpretations themselves, the theory of interpretation depicted in Figure I.1 developed through time and emerged in conversation with alternate and competing theories.40 I base this observation primarily on analogy with recent studies of legal theory (usụ̄ l al-fiqh). Though the genres of exegesis (tafsīr) and law (fiqh) are separate, it is not unreasonable to suppose that legal and exegetical theories developed in similar ways, or that their authors share certain concerns. David Vishanoff has shown that what came to be accepted as classical Sunnī legal theory was not inevitable and that it evolved after the jurist al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820).41
In legal theory, the Sunnī approach emerged in debates with the Muʿtazilī and Shīʿī approaches. One key point of difference between the Sunnī approach and the Imāmī Shīʿī approach (as each was eventually formulated) lies in the acceptance or rejection of the use of human reasoning in the derivation of law. It is worth saying a few words about these differences in legal theory, because the tension between transmitted text (naql) and human reasoning (ʿaql) which is central to the discussion of Islamic law also affects the interpretation of the Qurʾān, and indeed this tension endures throughout the history of interpretation.
This division came to be described by the interpreters themselves as tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr and tafsīr bi’l raʾy (exegesis according to transmission, and exegesis according to opinion). This is not the place to enter into an in-depth discussion of usụ̄ l al-fiqh. But broadly speaking, after an initial period of development, most Sunnīs came to accept certain sources of law and interpretation, including haḍ īths and analogy.42 In general, Sunnīs do not accept the use of human reasoning (ʿaql) as an independent source of law, although some Ḥanafīs, particularly those under the influence of the rationalist Muʿtazilī school of thought, accept istihṣ ān, which has been translated as ‘subjective reasoning’. 43 In distinction to the majority of Sunnīs, Imāmī Shīʿī ʿulamāʾ accepted human reasoning as a source of law. Gleave writes about the emergence of the proof of rationality (dalīl alʿaql) as a source of Shīʿī law in the medieval period.
He describes how the Muʿtazilīs held it as a ‘central tenet’ that ‘human reason, without the aid of revelation from God, could discover certain truths’. 44 This Muʿtazilī doctrine was passed on to some Sunnī schools and most Shīʿa, particularly in the Buyid period (334/945–447/1055). Thus, ‘those Shīʿa who held that morally (or legally) relevant information could be derived from reason were compelled to add ʿaql (reason) to naql (transmitted revelatory texts) as a means of obtaining knowledge’. 45 After the introduction of Muʿtazilite doctrine into Shīʿī thought, this doctrine developed through time, culminating in the work of ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325). He overtly accepted the use of ijtihād (independent reasoning by a qualified jurist), rather than just reliance on the words of the Imāms.46
The jurists who held the doctrine of acceptance of human reasoning in some form were called Usụ̄ līs. The Usụ̄ lī approach to the sources of law might be depicted in a simple diagram such as Figure I.2. Akhbārism, which developed as a response to Usụ̄ lī doctrine, is a school of thought more akin to the mainstream Sunnī model. For Akhbārīs, human reason is misleading: transmitted texts are necessary for humans to understand which actions are good and evil.47 This doctrine may have developed in the 17th century with the work of Muhammad ̣ Amīn Astarābādī (d. 1036/1627), who explicitly rejected the use of ijtihād, or it may have developed considerably before then, closer to the time of ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī. 48 In a nutshell, Usụ̄ līs accept the use of ʿaql as a means of deriving the law, and even as a source of law; Akhbārīs, on the whole, reject it.
The medieval Usụ̄ lī–Akhbārī attitudes towards the use of human reason in interpretation roughly correlate with the modern reformist– conservative groupings I have described. Many reformists explicitly accept the use of their own reason in deriving the law, or even as a basis for the law. Many conservatives follow Akhbārī methods, particularly insofar as these methods correlate with the Sunnī sources of interpretation outlined herein. In the latter ideology, transmitted texts take priority. However, just as there is some crossover in reformist and conservative methods and interpretations, there is also crossover between reason and revelation as sources of law or interpretation. Among Usụ̄ līs, the areas in which knowledge could be obtained through ʿaql were disputed, particularly around the question of whether reason could determine ‘legally relevant knowledge’, 49 or in other words, the type of knowledge on which laws are based. Usụ̄ lī doctrine holds that human rationality can determine good and evil independently of the Lawgiver, but that there is a correlation between the assessment of human rationality and God’s law.50
Therefore, for the Usụ̄ līs (and some Akhbārīs), human reason has the ability to recognise good and evil independently of the Lawgiver, but most Usụ̄ līs also say that rationality agrees with God’s law. Modern reformists who accept the use of reason, like pre-modern Usụ̄ līs, generally assert that their reasoning leads them to the same conclusions as those in the revealed texts. Some, however, allow that human reason can go beyond the transmitted text or the Prophet’s example. But does theory matter? As Vishanoff says, ‘The discipline of legal hermeneutics ... represents not a record of some interpretive process whereby Islamic law was actually brought into being, but a choice to imagine Islamic law in a certain way’. 51 It is worth investigating whether theory says more about the process of imagining ideal sources than it does about the realities of the interpretative process. Sadeghi’s study of the relationship of law to the binding texts proposes a model in which there are three main sources for law: canon (by which he means Qurʾān and sunna), received law, and the jurist’s contemporary conditions and values; all of these are moderated by the individual jurist’s hermeneutical-methodological approach.52
Thus, he argues, the text of Qurʾān and haḍ īths do not determine law, which is usually determined by received law; but even received law is moderated by other factors.53 Sadeghi’s findings are in some ways analogous to what I have found to be the mechanisms of interpretation in tafsīr. Received interpretation is highly important, but it is affected by the exegete’s hermeneutical approach, conditions, values, and individual reasoning. It may be impossible to account for everything that influences interpretation, but I would propose a general model that accounts for the fluidity of the venture of interpretation. In Figure I.3, the Qurʾān, haḍ īth, and legal school/precedent have been joined by an exegete’s individual reasoning, genre constraints, social custom/common sense/ethical considerations, and recourse to rational or scientific proofs. In the model depicted in Figure I.3, the mechanism of interpretation is not fixed and static: it is dependent on many factors. An interpreter’s theoretical approach matters, but it is not the only determinant of interpretation. Figure I.3 depicts a basic template of the actual source of interpretation for the early works of interpretation, including al-Tabar ̣ ī and those who preceded him. The relative weight given to each factor in this basic template depends on the individual; yet, as I show in the following chapters, there are broad trends in the use of these sources through time.
Theoretically, the sources of exegesis are static and rest ultimately on the sayings of the Prophet; but in practice, the earliest interpreters put the greatest weight on early exegetical authorities, rather than on sayings that they trace directly to the Prophet. These early authorities are often Successors (those who transmitted on the authority of Companions) who had some connection to the Companion Ibn ʿAbbās. Through time, their interpretations still underlie much of what is said in the genre of exegesis, but in the classical period sayings attributed directly to the Prophet are cited much more frequently. Everything else stays relatively constant: each interpreter incorporates these elements as he sees fit. In the modern period, particularly among the Shīʿa, much greater weight is given to rational and scientific proofs. Basic templates for the classical and modern approaches are depicted in Figures I.4 and I.5. Notably, gender has been left out of these basic templates; but it should be considered as a part of cultural context: in the genre of tafsīr, the authority to interpret has until very recently been held by men, and only those men educated in a specific system as mufassirūn. Muslim feminists such as Amina Wadud have pointed out that medieval ʿulamāʾ took for granted the patriarchal mores of their societies, and that they read these into the Qurʾān. I have called Figures I.3, I.4, and I.5 ‘basic templates’, rather than ‘models’ because a model can predict an outcome, whereas these figures represent a much more fluid system: certain elements are likely to take precedence, but much is left to the preferences of the individual author.
What do these fluid templates mean for the Qurʾān? Can we say, like Stanley Rosen, that ‘there is no difference between the written lines of the text and the blank spaces between them’? 54 Previously, I referred to Gadamer’s notion that social context must affect interpretation. The effect of context goes right back to the origins of the genre of tafsīr. Versteegh argues that the genre of tafsīr started in oral teaching sessions, in which the expert helped the believers apply the Qurʾānic dictates to their own daily lives.55 In this way, the interpreters sought to influence social practice. But the question is the extent to which it worked the other way around: how did social practice affect interpretation? The interpreters studied here sometimes use social arguments to justify their interpretations – such as the assertion of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143) that it is ethical to expect wives to do the housework, because it is the common practice. I argue that social conventions can and do shape exegetes’ notions of right and wrong; moreover, today the gender hierarchy has become an issue bound up with both politics and cultural identity, and it is almost impossible not to see this as having some effect on its interpretation. Intellectual context is no less important. Early exegetical authorities and subsequent generations of interpreters within the genre are the interlocutors in an ongoing conversation about the true meaning of these verses, and through time the ʿulamāʾ have formed their interpretations as a part of this conversation. Occasionally, as in the case of Ibn alʿArabī’s words to al-Tabar ̣ ī, they address their long-deceased colleagues directly, personally, as though through scholarly attentiveness and close reading they had become bosom friends. The interpretive stance of the ʿulamāʾ is always taken against the backdrop of the medieval textual tradition. As will become obvious in the following pages, understanding the medieval heritage is necessary for understanding the modern religious discourse of women’s rights and roles.
Ultimately, because the ʿulamāʾ commonly agree on a certain ‘plain sense’ reading of the Qurʾān, to some extent the Qurʾān does determine its own interpretation. The ʿulamāʾ are bound by historical antecedents and the plain sense meaning up to a certain point of uncomfortability, sometimes resolving this by saying that the rulings do not seem fair, but must be obeyed.56 But when the plain sense of the Qurʾān violates the interpreters’ deeply held beliefs, they sometimes use hermeneutical strategies to interpret the Qurʾān away. There is always interplay between the words of the Qurʾān and the social and intellectual contexts of interpretation. This interplay is not straightforward, particularly when it comes to the question of haḍ īths mitigating the words of the Qurʾān, or to the question of determining what the Qurʾān means versus what it says. For the very nature of haḍ īths as authoritative sources changed through time, and meaning is a slippery concept, bound up not only with what the Qurʾān says, but what it intends, the discovery of which is at the heart of the venture of interpretation.
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