Inspiration and Struggle: Muslim Feminist Theology and the Work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's groundbreaking scholarship has indelibly influenced my own thinking as a Muslim feminist scholar of Islam. Here, I reflect on Schüssler Fiorenza's work and its impact on the emerging field of Muslim feminist theology in North America by discussing (1) the influence her writings have had on my own thinking as a young Muslim feminist scholar, (2) the methodological frameworks she has articulated in which Muslim feminist scholars also are engaged, and (3) the future development of Muslim feminist scholarship in relationship to her work, including some significant divergences between the two. While it is impossible to explore these themes thoroughly in this short essay, I hope my brief reflections may serve as starting points for conversation.¹

As I am a believing and practicing Muslim whose feminist scholarship has developed within the Islamic tradition, Schüssler Fiorenza's confidence in the ethical and liberating possibilities of Christianity has lent me spiritual and intellectual strength both within feminist environments that are dismissive of Islam and within Muslim environments that are suspicious of feminism. Her refusal to surrender Christianity to postbiblical feminism, alongside her refusal to surrender Christianity to sexist interpretation, has helped me clarify my own priorities in imagining possibilities for Muslim feminist theology. Schüssler Fiorenza powerfully articulated from her own perspective what I did not yet have the words to say about my struggles with Islam as a young Muslim student. In a 1978 essay, she described her search for the "liberating vision that came through to me despite all patriarchal packaging and sexist theological systematization" of the Catholic tradition, an observation that deeply resonated with my own struggles with Islam.² Words like these, from Schüssler Fiorenza and other feminist theologians of her generation, first gave me the language to identify the tensions in my own relationship with Islam as both a feminist and a devoted Muslim. Perhaps none were more powerful than her statement of the mission of feminist theology, a mission to which I also felt called in the Islamic context: "to affirm that Christian faith and theology are not inherently patriarchal and sexist and, at the same time, to maintain that Christian theology and the Christian churches are guilty of the sin of sexism is the task of feminist theology."³ Indeed, the clear vision and purpose articulated by Schüssler Fiorenza and others of her generation liberated me from the false and anguished assumption that I had to choose between two mutually exclusive modes of seeking a more just world: either my feminist conscience or my faith in Islam. In a nascent and largely misunderstood field, Schüssler Fiorenza's work has served as a continual example and source of encouragement that it is indeed possible—and one's right—to be devoted both to one's feminism and one's faith.

In my dissertation, I closely examine the works of contemporary Muslim scholars engaged in developing feminist reinterpretations of Islam's sacred texts in North America since the 1980s.⁴ The scholars with whom I am concerned ground their feminist claims within an Islamic framework, using the Qur'an and Prophetic example to argue for the moral and spiritual equality of Muslim men and women. I argue that these efforts signal the emergence of an increasingly coherent body of Muslim feminist theology. In using the terminology of feminist theology to describe these works, however, I do not imply that my work or that of other Muslim feminist scholars are simply "Islamic versions" of Schüssler Fiorenza's work or that of other feminist theologians. Nor do I posit that Muslim feminist theology is the only, or best, signifier to describe these efforts; indeed, it is rare for Muslim women scholars to refer to their work in these terms. I take full responsibility for the imprecision of this phrasing, since it is largely of my own choosing, and I have no interest in imposing it upon the works of scholars for whom I have great respect and gratitude and who may find it problematic or misleading...