Islam and Gender

by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the re-introduction of Sharica law relating to gender and the family, women's rights in Iran suffered a major setback. However, as the implementers of the law have faced the social realities of women's lives and aspirations, positive changes have gradually come about. Here Ziba Mir-Hosseini takes us to the heart of the growing debates concerning the ways in which justice for women should be achieved. Through a series of lively interviews with clerics in the Iranian religious center of Qom, she seeks to understand the varying notions of gender that inform Islamic jurisprudence and to explore how clerics today perpetuate and modify these notions.

Mir-Hosseini finds three main approaches to the issue: insistence on "traditional" patriarchal interpretations based on "complementarity" but "inequality" between women and men; attempts to introduce "balance" into traditional interpretations; or a radical rethinking of the jurisprudential constructions of gender. She introduces the debates among the commentators by examining key passages in both written and oral texts and by narrating her meetings and discussions with the authors. Unique in its approach and its subject matter, the book relates Mir-Hosseini's engagement, as a Muslim woman and a social anthropologist educated and working in the West, with Shii'i Muslim thinkers of various backgrounds and views. In the literature on women in Islam, there is no account of such a face-to-face encounter, either between religion and gender politics or between the two genders.

Genres: Feminism, Gender, Religion, Nonfiction, Iran, Islam, Middle East

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mir-Hosseini conducts action research, arranging networks of debate and traveling around Iran for challenging discussions with both traditionalist and progressive religious leaders. Sometimes she encounters brick walls, and sometimes discovers surprising levels of support for gender justice among leading clerics.

[Paniz K · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is certainly very interesting (it's nice to realize that the central thesis of the book, that Muslims have different views of gender, is much more accepted now) but you have to be REALLY interested in the topic to be able to get through the interviews with religious scholars, specially if you don't have a background in Islamic law.

[Tessa Patiño · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for a book written by an Anthropologist. Even though I have only a limited understanding of Islam, this book was still accessible and I was able to understand her thesis. If you’re looking to know more about Islam, Iran, and views of gender, this is a great book. It is certainly a dense, academic read, so you may need to re-read some passages if you aren’t as familiar with Islamic law but this makes it very informative. No word is without purpose!

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mir-Hosseini is a feminist Iranian Muslim and a social anthropologist, based in London at the time of writing. This book is her account of a series of conversations she had with Iranian clerics about gender issues between 1995 and 1997.

The clerics are all male, as female clerics in the Shia centre of Qom refused to speak to her. They represent a range of views - one, for instance, was a regular contributor to an Islamic feminist journal based in Tehran, whereas others were traditionalists. Mir-Hosseini's account is a very personal one that highlights her own reactions, successes and mistakes; this makes for quite an engaging read. She generally finds the clerics more open to issues of women's rights and more critical of the Iranian government's particular implementation of Sharia than she expects, and she (and hence the reader, or at least this one) also comes away with a greater appreciation of the realpolitik that is involved in working for change in Iran. There are moments when Mir-Hosseini's conversation partners take distinctly more progressive positions than she does; the editor of a neo-traditionalist women's magazine shows a much clearer awareness than Mir-Hosseini of the impossibility of completely impartial scholarship, for instance, and pushes her to locate her own scholarship, without much success. At one point she admits to being rendered speechless when an ayatollah of the Dynamic Jurisprudence school advocates a form of affirmative action in favour of women. Another cleric effectively seems to argue for wages for housework.

Wearing my Biblical Scholar hat, some of her comments on the difficulties of translating Persian into English were also interesting to me, especially when she comments on the specific difficulties caused by different rhetorical conventions. Some of the conventions she mentions also crop up in Koine Greek Christian scriptures and cause similar problems. I was also interested in historical comments by some of the clerics to the effect that certain of the more sexist hadith can be attributed to attempts by Sunni opponents to discredit Fatima Zahra, one of the daughters of Muhammad, who was an important Shia figure. I don't have enough background knowledge to assess whether that is correct. Another thing that struck me was the almost-but-not-quite postmodern flavour of some comments by the clerics on the damaging effects on women of the male gaze; they clearly are not postmodern in their approach, and it is inappropriate to try to impose Western secular categories on an internal Islamic debate, but I think a dialogue between those clerics and someone versed in postmodern analysis, along the lines of the way Mir-Hosseini debates with them from the perspective of feminist analysis, could be a fascinating read.