Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qur'anic Commentaries

by Hadia Mubarak

Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands brings into conversation the distinct fields of tafsīr (Qur'anic exegesis) studies and women's studies by exploring significant shifts in modern Qur'anic commentaries on the subject of women. Hadia Mubarak places three of the most influential, Sunni Qur'anic commentaries in the twentieth century- Tafsīr al-Manār, Fī Zilāl al-Qur'an, and al-Tahrīr wa'l-Tanwīr - against the backdrop of broader historical, intellectual, and political developments in modern North Africa. Mubarak illustrates the ways in which colonialism, nationalism, and modernization set into motion new ways of engaging with the subject of women in the Qur'an. Focusing her analysis on Qur'anic commentaries as a scholarly genre, Mubarak offers a critical and comparative analysis of these three modern commentaries with seven medieval commentaries, spanning from the ninth to fourteenth centuries, on verses dealing with neglectful husbands (4:128), rebellious wives (4:34), polygyny (4:3), and divorce (2:228). In contrast to assessments of the exegetical tradition as monolithically patriarchal, this book captures a medieval and modern tafsīr tradition with pluralistic, complex, and evolving interpretations of women and gender in the Qur'an. Rather than pit a seemingly egalitarian Qur'an against an allegedly patriarchal exegetical tradition, Mubarak affirms the need for a critical engagement with tafsīr studies among scholars concerned with women and gender in Islam. Mubarak argues that the capacity to bring new meanings to bear on the Qur'an is not only an intellectually viable one but inherent to the exegetical tradition.

Genres: Islam, Feminism, Womens, Religion

366 pages, Hardcover

Published May 6, 2022

Reviews

[Zainab Bint Younus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Y'all. I don't think I've been so OBSESSIVELY IN LOVE with a non-fiction academic book as I am with this one.

Many of you will know how much I hate progressive Muslamic academia, with their incessant dismissal of classical Islamic scholarship & their INCREDIBLY STUPID ARGUMENTS that require just a little more than 2 brain cells to recognize as incredibly stupid.

While I am incapable of discussing those books without descending into thinly-veiled cussword alternatives, Hadia Mubarak is not.

Cue this absolutely brilliant read, wherein she engages in a deep dive of premodern & contemporary mufassireen & their explanations of several specifically gendered ayaat of the Qur'an.

Mubarak beautifully illustrates that proggie academia's takes on classical tafseer are intellectually dishonest and do a disservice to the topic of "Islam and Women" - though she does so with exceeding politeness rather than the full-throttle rage that overwhelms me in these discussions.

In the course of this book, Mubarak brings up positions re: women/gender of mufassireen such as Imam at-Tabari, Imam ar-Raazi, Imam al-Zamakhshari, Ibn Ashur, Syed Qutb, Muhammad Abduh, & Rashid Rida that many - if not most - are not familiar with - in *support* of women's rights and justice.
Even so, she doesn't sugarcoat anything: she acknowledges problematic statements also made about women, but emphasizes the irresponsibility of dismissing all Islamic scholarship as inherently misogynistic.

There's a lot more to be said about this book, so I'll keep it for a video review (or a podcast inshaAllah), but suffice to say that THIS BOOK IS BRILLIANT & MUST BE PURCHASED ASAP.

5/5 🌟

#Bookstagram #muslimbookstagram #muslimacademia #muslamicacademia #IslamAndWomenReads #MuslimWomen #IslamAndWomen #tafseer #MyMuslimShelfSpace #OwnVoices #WomensStudies

[Hijaz Jamal · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Spoiler alert: This book is not about marriage counselling and therapy for couples on the verge of divorce! 😅)

Perhaps, the significance of this book can be best appreciated when situated against the prevalent assumption among some scholars in the western academia, that "patriarchy" and "misogyny" have always been the consistent themes of all Qur'anic commentaries. Mubarak's book, which built upon her dissertation, is therefore an exceedingly important and exciting contribution to the subject of women and gender in Islam, to prove that the exegetical (tafsir) tradition has always been complex and evolving, and is never decidedly patriarchal or egalitarian.

Instead, interpretations of the Qur'anic verses by exegetes (mufassir) are diverse, and in constant engagement with the exegetes' particular historical, intellectual and political context, responding to Western, feminist and indigenous secular critiques of Islam's treatment of women. Mubarak demonstrates this through the exploration of three modern Qur'anic commentaries, which were all written in twentieth-century Egypt and Tunisia:

1. Tafsir al-Manar by Muhammad 'Abduh and his disciple, Rashid Rida
2. Fi Zilal al-Qur'an by Sayyid Qutb
3. Ibn 'Ashur by Al-Tahrir wa'l-Tanwir

She compares them with several other major premodern commentaries from various centuries, focusing on four Qur'anic verses (dealing with "neglectful husbands" i.e. male nushuz [4:128], "rebellious wives" i.e. female nushuz [4:34], polygyny [4:3] and marital hierarchy [2:228]) which often become points of contentious debates surrounding gender injustice. By doing so, modern shifts (and continuities) in Qur'anic interpretations as a result of the above exegetes' respective milieu are thus identified.

I think Mubarak's book exudes intellectual honesty. She highlights the faithful commitment of exegetes, both modern and premodern, towards Islamic notions of justice in their commentaries, but also responsibly points out problematic interpretations which may be detrimental towards women (e.g. Ibn Kathir's commentary of 2:228).

Anyway, this is probably the best book that I read in 2022. Highly recommended for those who are interested in tafsir studies, and the subject of women and gender in Islam in particular!

Note: Among the main premodern commentaries discussed are those by al-Tabari, al-Zamakhshari, Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi, al-Razi, al-Qurtubi, al-Baydawi and ibn Kathir.

[Abdullah Mushtaq · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a good and well-written academic book. The author compared the exegesis of pre-modern (Tabari, Qurtubi, Zamakhshari, Ibn Kathir, Al Razi, Ibn Al Arabi ) and modern (Abduh & Rida, Syed Qutb, Ibn Ashur) exegetes on the following verses: 4:128 (neglectful husbands), 4:34 (rebellious wives, 4:3 (polygyny) and 2:228 (marital hierarchy).

Author's main thesis is that tafsir is not a monolithic subject rather it encompasses pluralism. So, to discard the entire traditional corpus as "misogynistic" will not help the modern gender egalitarian efforts to reinterpret Quran. Although, one may ask why is there even a need to make Quran compatible with the modern notion of gender equality? Is it necessary to accept the modern definition of gender justice as equivalent to gender equality. Well that's not the subject of this book rather this book is an attempt to show that both pre-modern and modern commentators may make "egalitarian" as well as "patriarchal" interpretations.

The author does seems to lean towards the neo-traditionalist Ibn Ashur's commentary of 4:128 and 4:34, as it reinforces her thesis that a more egalitarian interpretation of Quran can be done by using the very traditional hermeneutics instead of outright rejecting them. On the other hand, Qutb's commentary on 2:228 seems more "original" to her as it restricts man's degree over women to just the matter of divorce as opposed to general understanding of it as pointing towards man's qawwamah. One may ask that whether the concept of ilm-ul-munasaba that Ashur uses in his interpretation of 4:128 and 4:34 applies to 2:228 as well or not? In fact, it is quite plausible to assume that Ibn Ashur reached his "conservative" interpretation of 2:228 using the above-mentioned concept that he championed. Similarly, the limits and rules of Khusūs (specificity) and Umūm (generality) can also discussed in correlation with Qutb's commentary on 2:228.

[Mansur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muslim World Book Review 43(4), pp. 25-29.

This book is about the intersection of modernity and Sunni exegetical thought in Islam. The author studies four North African modern exegetes from four different intellectual permutations: Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) (Islamic modernist) and Rashid Rida (d. 1935) (modernist Salafi), Sayyid Qutub (d. 1966) (Islamist), and Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn Ashur (d. 1973) (traditionalist). Dr Mubarak compares and contrasts the aforementioned scholars’ exegeses with seven premodern tafsirs of the Qur’an. The book primarily focuses on four verses of the Qur'an: 4:34 (rebellious wives), 4:128 (neglectful husbands), 4:3 (polygyny) and 2:228 (men’s degree of superiority).
The book can be read from a number of perspectives. On one level it is a response to and an accusation of ‘well meaning’ Muslim feminists who do not engage with the tafsir genre and yet are quick to discard it as monolithic, patriarchal, misogynist and bereft of women's voice. A detailed study of women related verses reveals that Muslim feminists’ approach to Qur'anic studies lies in its end result (meaning of a verse) and not the process and art of tafsir which is a ruled-governed activity. It is this rule-governed approach that produces polyvalent meanings (p. 5).
It is a call to Muslim feminists to not indulge in disciplinary confusion. If one wants to engage the Qur’an, then they need to do so within the field of tafsir studies and not superimpose methods from other disciplines. The book is also about the interpretive powers of pre-modern exegetes to have a say in modern issues. In this sense it is a response to Asma Barlas, Ayesha Chaudhury, Amina Wadud et. al. who see no value for women in the pre-modern tafsir genre. Finally, it is about the efficacy of atomistic tafsir (to be read as pre-modern philological tafsir) over thematic tafsir (which is marred with subjectivity) as well as the place of tradition in contemporary efforts of Islamic reform. In this respect, the book follows the methodology of my colleague Dr Shuruq Naguib, who in a brilliant chapter on the menstruation verse, convincingly demonstrated that constructing an uncompromising set of binaries such Qur’an vs. hadith, feminist vs. masculine, egalitarian vs. misogynistic are not helpful analytical categories. Like Naguib, Mubarak wants to also problematise the issue that classical tafsir should be rejected; she argues that ‘cookie-cutter’ labels such as ‘patriarchal’ and ‘egalitarian' must be avoided to start any meaningful conversations.
The book pivots on three main questions:
1. Is the Qur'an a patriarchal monolith? How much do modern exegetes depart from their pre-modern counterparts and does the heightened gender consciousness of the modern age produce a more egalitarian reading of the Quran?
2. How do the modern exegetes’ own positionality effect their reading of the Qur'an, a process called eisegesis (as opposed to exegesis)?
3. And most importantly how have exegetes managed to posit new opinion, reject old ones, and modify existing ones whilst remaining anchored to the tradition? (p. 4).
The book comprises of an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion. Chapters 1–3 are setting-the-scene contextual chapters. Chapter 1 situates the four scholars within their context. Quoting Gadamer, time and time again Mubarak argues that not only should we study tafsir, but we should also study the exegetes and their context. Chapter 2 is a brief analysis of the views of the four interlocuters vis a vis women's issues, whilst in chapter 3, the author compares the broader aims of the 3 tafsirs studied. The final 4 chapters are dedicated to each of the verses mentioned above. These fours chapters are the crux of the book and have been excluded from this review (in order to not spoil it for the readers).
In chapter 1, Mubarak argues that the difference between Islamic modernism and modernist Salafism is their attitude towards reason; that contrary to popular belief, Abduh was not influenced by Afghani and that Ibn Ashur was "the epitome of loyalty" of both camps: the traditionalists and the rationalists.” Out of the four scholars studied, Qutb is the only one who is not classically trained: his turning point in not moral but political (p. 33). And yet, out of the four authors and three tafsirs, his tafsir is the one that has had the most effect in the Arab Muslim world, because of its journalistic style of writing.
In chapter 2, Deflecting the colonial gaze, the author discusses how the colonial gaze is turned over on its head by her four interlocutors. The chapter is a brief analysis of the views of the interlocuters vis a vis women's issues. The context of their discussion is that that colonialism has made women's treatment as a yardstick to measure Islam's compatibility with modernity. Some Muslims have wholly accepted the colonial critique and have blamed Islam and Muslims for their failure towards women. A gender-conscious approach to women's issue, then, not only functions as an analytical category in modern Qur'anic discourse, but about Islam's relevance to modernity itself.
Abduh, Rida and Qutub's critique is to deflect the colonial critique on itself. They do this by contrasting how women were treated in Europe until the modern period with how Islam honoured women from its inception. Qutb as an Islamist goes one step further. He takes the feminist agenda head-on. For example, he argues that polygyny is more dignified than extra-marital affair. As an Islamist, his solution lies in applying Islam properly. His choice of language is inflammatory and euphemistic (p. 62). If Islam was to be applied properly then there would have been no need for gender battles. Society would not have been steeped in jahiliyya and women would not have been mistreated. Interestingly, according to the author, Qutub makes the most women friendly interpretation ever written either from modern or classical scholars on their understanding of the verse of 'darajah' or degree (Q. 2:228). Which he argues relates specifically to situation of divorce and not normative gender relationship.
Ibn Ashur, on the other hand, Mubarak, argues, is the jurist par-excellence, who does not make his arguments based on passionate rhetoric or polemics, but on considered rational and legal arguments. Unlike Mubarak’s other three interlocuters, Ashur does not set up straw-men arguments. He does not believe that women were mistreated (as the other three claim) in pre-Islamic Arabia. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that women were given more rights in Islam.
In chapter 3 (p. 69), the author sets out to compare the four personalities. In the process, she also takes the opportunity to critique the academic bias of studying that which is novel and creates fissures and ruptures, whilst ignoring the scholarship which is continuous and has a long legacy in the past. It is because of this bias, that scholars like Ibn Ashur and their tafsir is seldom studied. Thus, this book fills this academic lacuna. She argues that not all innovative methods yield new results, and not all previous scholarship is static. In fact, if used properly, the latter provides interpretive change couched within a scholarship of interpretive authority; a method which the author labels as a 'pluralistic and evolving notion of tradition'. (p. 71)
In this chapter the author endeavours to answer four questions: (1) what is tafsir? (2) who do modern exegetes build upon the works of ancients? (3) To what extent do innovative methods reflect new understanding? And (4) how these three tafsirs blur the boundaries between the genres tafsir bil ra'y (rationalistic tafsir) and ma'thur (transmission based tafsir)?
Starting with Tafsir al-Manar, She argues that the tafsir is unique in its style (catering for the lay-person), its emphasis on the plain sense meaning of the Qur'an, its journalistic origins, its relevance to people’s immediate concerns through expansion of the scope of what should be included in the tafsir (which paradoxically will become outdated very quickly), establishing a natural law theory and rationality as a hermeneutical tool, and its qualified rejection of Biblical narrations (israiliyyat).
For Qutb the Qur’an is not an abstract intellectual exercise to be mentally relished. Rather the Qur’an is an action-inducing manual for a religion which at its core is movement-based. Qutb's entire religious oeuvre including the tafsir pivots on this axiom. Right down to the lyrical and musical rhythm of the Qur'an.
Ibn Ashur's tafsir, on the other hand, is the opposite of Abduh and Qutb's thematic tafsir. For Ibn Ashur, tafsir is a scholarly endeavour to discover the rich tapestries of meaning. In its form, not content, it is similar to the classical philological tafsirs. His tafsir is further a critique of the modernist tafsirs which, in his opinion, read modern issues into the Qur'an. In other words, Ibn Ashur is arguing that other modern commentaries are eisegesis (reading into the Qur'an one's own biases and predilections, in other words tadabbur) and not exegesis (tafsir) which is based on pure philology. One can critique Ibn Ashur on the basis that the philological interpretations can be exhausted making the tafsir redundant in some time or place. But more importantly, even philology is based on a (subjective) presupposition about the nature of language. Choosing one language theory over another may also be deemed to be a subjective exercise.
The author, Dr Hadia Mubarak should be commended for writing this original and important piece of work. The book is original in the sense that it is the first time a study has been done on the impact of colonialism and modernisation on modern Qur’anic exegesis with relation to gender significant verses in the Qur’an. It is a project to carve out a space for traditional Islam in modernity. It’s originality also lies in the fact that it addresses a blind-spot in the academic literature on Muslim reform-studies — to study only the views of those scholars who create ruptures in the traditional understanding — by making a detailed study of Ibn Ashur’s views on gender significant views. Ibn Ashur is clearly the undisputed hero of the book.

[nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was an excellent and brilliant read that opened my eyes to the realities of both premodern and modern exegetes and their approaches to interpreting the Quran!

the book introduces itself with an important fact admist the "Muslim women discourse" that non-Muslims often forget: the status of Muslim women around the world are far from a monolith. some Muslim nations have elected female leaders and have a higher female-to-male ratio of students in STEM, while others discourage women from having careers or even forbid them from higher education. so, what can be concluded from this? is the Quran misogynistic and violates women's basic rights, or is the Quran egalitarian for uplifting women to an equal level of men? the primary error non-Muslims and Western academics make is conflating the terms "Muslim" and "Islam":

As Donald Emmerson notes, a scholar’s decision to use the term “Islam” or “Islamic” rather than “Muslim” “drains attention from a multiplicity of differently living Muslims and concentrates it on the definitional uniformity of the singular noun Islam as one monotheistic faith— one God, one book, and by implication one community as well.”14 In contrast, “the plural term Muslims is centrifugally humanizing. . . . Other things being equal, when discourse shifts from Islamic to Muslim, the infallible Word of God gives way to a welter of human imperfections.”15

there are far too many factors--political, social, cultural--that prevent us from drawing a one-one-one causation of Muslim's behaviour to Islam. Western academics and anti-Islam activists dismiss this fact, while some Muslim scholars like Muhammad Abduh--one of the modern exegetes examined in this book--lament how distant Muslims are from actual Islamic teachings, as seen from their treatment of women. while i obviously disagreed with some of his opinions on women (which were based of Greek philosophy rather than Islamic principles), Abduh's critique of Muslim men and their failure to abide to Islamic principles of women rings extremely relevant today, and it is often Muslim men who contribute to the stereotype that Islam is misogynistic; Abduh's example of the Frenchman's shock witnessing a woman entering the mosque is just a microcosm of this systemic injustice.

the different approaches of premodern and modern exegetes in interpreting verses pertaining to women (especially 4:34 and 2:228) were intriguing: premodern exegetes did not bother to justify any of their claims while modern exegetes, living in a time where western critique was ubiquitious and secularism was rising, felt the need to respond to these critiques while rationalizing and defending Islam's stance on women (or perhaps more accurately, their personal stance of women that they projected onto the Quran). some modern exegetes like ibn Ashur and 'Qutb arrived to newfound interpretations of the Quran or revived minority opinions, even though they utilized the same methodology as premodern exegetes. some exegetes came to gender-egalitarian conclusions of women that affirmed their rights while simultaneously regurgitating essentialist notions of women found in premodern exegeses yet were not founded on Islamic teachings. ultimately, both modern and premodern exegetes shared two similarities: that their interpretations of women-pertaining verses were influenced by the sociohistorical contexts they lived in, and that even the same exegete can hold both empowering interpretations and distasteful interpretations about women.

indeed, these two conclusions were the most important messages of the entire book, and that Dr. Hadia Mubarak justifiably emphasizes. firstly, the Muslim community (mainly conservative Muslim men) need to recognize that tafsirs + Islamic scholarship was never completely unbiased, as if every exegete/scholar was perfect and immune to the norms and customs of their time. scholars/exegetes were definitely influenced by outside ideologies (this book particular taught me about isrāʾīliyyāt, or using biblical texts to justify interpretations even if they have no authority) and the social contexts of their time. we need to stop treating every scholarly opinion as accurate readings of Islamic texts: if we were to do so then we'd have to accept wildly contradicting opinions and live in cognitive dissonance. let us recognize the humanity of these scholars/exegetes alongside the authority they earned due to their tireless efforts.

next, the Muslim community needs to get rid of the common assumption that Quranic commentaries (and Islamic scholarship) is "static, monolithic, and rigid": the conservative Muslim male believes so to justify his own misogynistic opinions, and the liberal Muslim feminist believes so to justify abandoning these important Islamic fields as "every male scholar/exegete is misogynist". rather, we see that the genre of tafsir is pluralistic and diverse, capable of accommodating multiple interpretations despite using the same data source. some exegetes derived distasteful intepretations about women while others derived more gender egalitarian readings: and these exegetes were often the same individuals. generalizing the entire genre of tafsir/Islamic scholarship is inaccurate when even individual exegetes/scholars held both misogynistic and empowering readings of women. Dr. Hadia Mubarak's critique of (Western) feminists looking to reinterpret the Quran was also great in this regard: ironically, just like the scholars who derived misogynistic readings, feminists also interpret the Quran through their own preconceived notions of gender justice that they believe is authoritative, even though the Quran's view of gender justice will not necessarily align with theirs.

One’s reading of the exegetical tradition should therefore bear in mind that just as medieval exegetes’ readings were sometimes influenced by their particular contexts, so are ours.

although the book focuses more on modern commentaries, i found it more interesting to read Dr. Hadia Mubarak's analysis on premodern exegetes, and it really furthered my understanding of the genre of tafsir in general. particularly shocking for me was to learn how premodern exegetes ignored At-Tabari's gender egalitarian reading of 2:228 in favour of their own misogynistic ones, even though they relied on At-Tabari's sources to make that claim in the first place! there was also al-Zamakhshari and his opinion that "women's souls are desirous of men", a claim that was not based on any authoritative source and remains more of his own subjective reading, yet Al-Razi and Al-Baydawi continued to cite it anyway (Dr. Hadia Mubarak does explain that they cited his opinion due to their respective intellectual contexts and not necessarily to parrot and endorse his opinions, but i was surprised to just hear about how unsubstantiated claims can seep their way into the genre of tafsir).

i honestly have a lot to praise about this book, and perhaps i'll come back and write even more about it, but for now, i can confidently say that i recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about modern and premodern exegetes' insights on how they came to certain interpretations on controversial Quranic verses! you'll likely have some of your assumptions about tafsir dismantled and adopt a more nuanced view on this very important field.

[Abu Kamdar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched academic work comparing various tafsirs on gender-related verses.