Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam

by Amina Wadud

In 2005, Amina Wadud made international headlines when she helped to promote new traditions by leading the Muslim Friday prayer in New York City. In her provocative new book, /Inside the Gender Jihad/, she brings a wealth of experience from the trenches of the jihad to make a passionate argument for gender inclusiveness in the Muslim world. Knitting together scrupulous scholarship with lessons drawn from her own experiences as a woman, she explores the array of issues facing Muslim women today, including social status, education, sexuality, and leadership. A major contribution to the debate on women and Islam, Amina Wadud’s vision for changing the status of women within Islam is both revolutionary and urgent.

Genres: Islam, Feminism, Religion, Nonfiction, Gender, Womens, Gender Studies

427 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 25, 2006

About the author

Dr Amina Wadud is a professor of Islamic Studies and a mother of five. She is the author of "Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective."

Reviews

[Brian Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a class that I didn't enjoy so this review is difficult. That being said I do enjoy Wadud's approach but have only one major problem: her message is so far off to the right that she fails to be relevant to the Islamic world outside of the most radically liberal/Western circles. Perhaps that is what she wants and she feels that the dynamic needs to change and refuses to take part in the traditional discussion. I do get angry however that many of her views, which I think are necessary for the Islamic world, are destroyed and cast off because she and others choose radical action (having a non-veiled woman make the call to prayer in a church in Boston for example) as opposed to critical, scholarly discussion which I think she is more than capable of.

[Malin Näfstadius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've come across so many disillusioned individuals in the Muslim world that adamantly claim that reform is a naive utopia. That fossilised clergy has such a strong hold on interpretation and on the majority of believers that thinking outside the box has become impossible, even dangerous. Yet that is exactly what Amina Wadud does, making her a controversial figure both home and abroad. "The implication is that for any who wish to be accepted as truly Muslim, their struggles cannot go beyond established patriarchy or male authorities, otherwise they face the potential consequence of being labelled outsiders to Islam"

But Wadud is not naive, she has been on the discriminated end of every context possible, as an African American in USA, as a single parent of 5 in a society without sufficient child care, and as a woman in Islam, in the West, not to mention academia. Yet she has nurtured a deep faith for more than four decades, and excelled as an Islamic scholar. I was struck by how logical her arguments are, rooted in that if Qur'an is for all times and all people, it must therefore be interpreted through the context of all those times and people. The essence of Qur'an is justice, and we must all strive towards it in the context we experience. Circumstances have changed immensely since the time of revelation, and new interpretations must emanate from the world as it is today, with awareness of human rights and a global economy that requires women to carry as much of a financial burden as men. For those that deny this possibility and staunchly claim that there only can be one interpretation of the scripture they ignore that "as they analyse the same sources, their diverse conclusions indicate that what is basic to "Islam" results from only the human interaction with those texts - an interpretive process. Ultimately textual meaning is neither fixed nor static . Hermeneutics, as core to the act of interpretation, must be emphasised, since a single source can and has lead to diverse conclusions."

There is quite a bit of semantics that may get tedious for those that aren't interested in too much of a deep dive, but I understand why she stresses on the importance of definitions, such as using "engaged surrender" rather than "submission", or on the right to claim who is and is not a Muslim: "It is just as easy for liberal Muslims to dismiss Muslim terrorists by saying they are not "true" to Islam. When I engaged in such oversimplification and reductionist claims, I inadvertently implied I actually had the power to express and possess the "true" Islam. The arrogance of this claim allowed me to remove myself from the responsibility of standing against certain evils performed in the name of Islam". "Despite numerous definitions, historical and current, whether explained or not, knowingly or unknowingly, each user assumes some authority that justifies him or her to determine when others would be considered adherents to their understandings, practice, and limitations of "Islam" ". How many that seem to forget that judgment is in the hands of God, and not their own.

Wadud believes there are egalitarian qualities in Islam, that we in its practice must have full moral agency to be able to actively surrender ourselves to Allah. Patriarchal control of women's lives limits that agency, and "according to shari'ah women are not full, autonomous, and independent agents in the family. They are only a facility to its wholeness and wellbeing. They are taught to sacrifice or develop personal interests to the higher goal of family wellbeing. Meanwhile men and sons are encouraged to develop ideas of manhood as unlimited empowerment". I so recognise her description of "double-talk", men that start a sentence with that "men and women are equal in Islam", and continue with BUT "men have a degree above women", basically that "if she is truly Muslim, she must remain satisfied with her rightful status - even if actually second-class", I don't know how many times I've seen this comment in social media.

She is not aiming for secularism, since her "analysis differs from secular articulations of social justice in that the total well-being of the human creature is not limited to the physical or material", and she (conscious of what the label would bring on?), nor does she call herself a Muslim feminist, but "pro-faith" and "pro-feminism". And even tho she stresses on that women's liberation in the Muslim world must be different from that of the Western, she freely admits to borrowing much of its rhetoric, such that "the personal is political", meaning that the free labour that women have performed throughout time must be recognised by bringing it into public policy.

I really enjoyed Waduds's vision, and she does not shy away from discussing problematic passages in scripture that can't be rationalised away (such as 4:34), tho I will go on to read her previous publication where textual interpretation is in focus. But sadly her aim at change from the inside is far from on the verge of taking root in any majority Muslim communities (or other), since "theories were always based on the presumptions of the male Muslim as the normative human being", and that foundation will not easily budge. But "the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house", and progress cannot be achieved within old interpretation. It is time that women "appropriate Islamic primary sources, especially the Qur'an" rather than to remain on the pedestal prison where they have been put by male scholars.

[/d. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inside the Gender Jihad is an interesting mix of autobiography and feminist analysis of the Muslim world. I enjoyed reading about Wadud's story and how she discovered Islam for herself. There is a lot of useful info in this book but overall Wadud strikes a tone that is simply too fundamentalist for her credibility as a professional academic not to suffer:

These discussions do disempower men, although they, as a class, have exerted power over and dominated and destroyed the ecological environment and global economics for their own selfish utility, under the name of "civilization"

Is this a Guardian column? For all her interesting views, much of Wadud's writing is oozing these stereotypical radical feminist slogans that do more in terms of virtue-signalling than that they contribute to a healthy and constructive debate.

My biggest issue concerns Wadud's handling of verse 4:34 - also the reason why I picked the book up in the first place. On page 203 Wadud claims that it is ok to say "no" to a translation of daraba as meaning "to strike; to hit" if we reject the implication of verse 4:34 legitimizing physical violence against women. This is an argument that has been made by counless people, particularly those that reject the Qur'an Only Approach - with reference to the corpus of the ahadith/hadiths - in favor of tafsir - the exegetic interpretation of the holy text. While daraba can of course potentially carrying a meaning other than "to strike", it is plainly absurd to rule out the latter translation entirely, because daraba can at the end of the day most certainly mean "to strike" (which is how it the word primary, non-idiomatic meaning) and no reformist reading of the verse can change that (I storngly recommend reading Jonathan Brown's Misquoting Muhammad for a much more nuanced discussion of the verse.).

What really annoyed me though was how Wadud used the exact same verse> to argue that women who refuse their husband sex are guilty of nushuz and can therefore be beaten. In other words, Wadud spends 20 pages to explain how verse 4:34 does NOT mean men are allowed to beat their wives, only to argue that women are in a particularly tight spot because 4:34 ledgitimizes their husbands beating them. It's like Wadud wants to eat her cake and have it.

There is a lot of insightful analysis of the struggles of her own career that merit a read but at the end of the day the book lost its cerdibility in both its frequent indulgence in radical platitudes and the blatant contradiction illustrated above. It's an interesting read, but please complement it with something more balanced and thought-through, such as the book mentioned above.

[Sahar Alshehri · Rating 4 out of 5]

تم ترجمته لمن أراد في موقع النيل والقرات ، في الحقيقة تحسفت اني قرآت كتاب محمد عمارة "خارج السرب "قبل ان أقرآ كتاب و فلسفة أمينة ودود بنفسي، الحمد لله إني قرأته وعرفت فلسفتها الرائعة عن طريق تأكيدها لمعرفة ٣ مفاهيم قرانية ( التوحيد، التقوى ، الخليقة) وبيت المساواة والعدالة الربانية بين المرأة والرجل عبر هذه المفاهيم ، وذكرت تجربتها كونها امرأة مسلمة من عائلة مسيحية و تجربتها في تدريس الدراسات الإسلامية في الجامعات الأمريكية . .
كتاب يستحق القراءة

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wadud takes an interesting and novel approach to Islamic theology and grounds her arguments in Islamic terms, but ultimately, her argument is based on a single verse from the Quran, khalifah or agency. Unfortunately, most Muslims would not accept her arguments as valid; furthermore, she glosses over or completely ignores much of the built-in Islamic misogyny.

[Lucy Pluimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to kinda speed read this for a research paper but it was an incredibly interesting read. Wadud’s experience with the subject matter is vast and gave me a whole new perspective on women’s rights in Islam

[char · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wadud is absolutely brilliant, and it really shows through her past efforts to affirm her place within Islam as an African-American woman, her observations about gender, and her interpretations of the Qur'an and how those interpretations affect the ummah as a whole. She writes with a power and determination that are really admirable, and challenges a lot of harmful assumptions about the hijab, sexuality, femininity, and motherhood. I particularly loved her reimaginings of central Islamic terms such as tawhid (which she reframes as the unity of humankind) and her Hajar paradigm, which uses the story of Hajar (Hagar in the Torah/Bible) to empower single mothers.

[Zahra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish the rating system had more gradations.

I liked the points she makes and there are some heart breakingly illuminating ideas in the book.

The reason for my lower rating is I found it hard to take the book as a coherent whole. Each chapter feels like a distinctly different topic with only a small attempt to tie them together.

[Wawan · Rating 4 out of 5]

ini dia, baru saja mulai baca, jadi ya ... gak bisa ngasih tahu apa-apa, selain covernya bergambar sepasang mata seorang perempuan yang diasumsikan sebagai perempuan muslim, dan warna putih yang melingkupi itu diasumsikan hijab lengkapnya...

[Steph]

loved it