Can One Critique Cancel All Previous Efforts?

I enter this roundtable first with an acknowledgment of Asma Barlas’s eloquent response to the latest round of critiques of gender inclusive analysis of the Qurʾan found in Aysha Hidayatullah’s book Feminist Edges of the Qurʾan. I wish to thank Barlas for her essay, which does not need me to repeat her excellent points. Instead, I focus on other areas in the discussion. I read Edges twice, once as a personal read and then again for critical details. Thus, I have two responses to it. I start with the personal.

It is well and good to propose the end of feminist exegesis when the long, lonely, and arduous road is barely at its beginning. A much bolder step would have been to pronounce the end of patriarchal exegesis and then include a comprehensive demonstration of just how that is done, since it is clearly necessary. Instead, Hidayatullah stands on the shoulders of those who came before her, who attempted to unveil more gender-inclusive possibilities to the full breadth of the Islamic science of tafsir, without acknowledging the constraints, multiple layers of opposition, and even personal sacrifices that went into their labor.

Such a location lacks generosity and regard under the guise of intellectual rigor. I have no intention of overlooking that. Mostly because when I began my work there was no shoulder to stand on, no footprint on the path for me to follow. There was and still is a great deal of male delegitimization coupled with complete silence from other women, including scholars and activists. I am long past those days, but it seems to me that at least one aspect of sisterly camaraderie would be to give credit for the arduous struggle it was to engage in such a process at that time, even when two or three decades later she could contribute to the field by offering detailed critique. Had there not been a pathway carved out before her, she would have nothing to contribute. I am still uncertain what contribution she makes.

On reading Edges, I have found a tendency to further reify the male gaze, the patriarchal exegesis and call it “critical feminist.” Hidayatullah’s location on certain matters of text is exactly where patriarchal readings have taken it and no further. I described this as making patriarchal readings divine. She blames God for what men do with the revelation. It is a much more radical act to “unread” patriarchy. When we unread patriarchy, even for passages that juxtapose male agency to female passivity, we see the impact in progressive terms that have led to actual reforms in the policies and practices that limit Muslim women’s access to a full personal, political, and spiritual well-being. The application of women-friendly interpretations is a major component in the movement for equality in the Muslim family, as demonstrated by Musawah (www.musawah.org).

Nothing of substance will come out of the discussions in Edges except more discussions. For that matter, Asma Barlas’s book, “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qurʾan also has no application mapped out, taken up, or further developed. I claim an exceptional role in this matter of Muslimah theology from these two women and their scholarship. By 1989, I had begun to take a direct and continued responsibility for pragmatic application of textual interpretations toward the lived realties of Muslim women. This activism challenged me to take up the methodology for saying no to the text in the case of certain particulars. It has also shown me how important a flexible approach to specific passages must be aligned with grassroots activism and political will to create changes where needed. Such changes cannot come about just by looking at verses in the Qurʾan without a direct relationship to their application within the larger rubric of Muslim Personal Status Law. Both Barlas and Hidayatullah are excellent scholars with an ethnic or cultural connection to a Muslim majority country, but neither they nor their work has a relationship to the activism on the ground in Muslim countries or any others. They...