On Critique and Careful Reading

Feminist theorist bell hooks notes that scholars sometimes hesitate to criticize colleagues’ work, fearing that their criticisms will be received as personal attacks rather than as invitations to deepen and improve scholarship.¹ Given this tendency toward self-silencing, I am heartened by recent rigorous engagements with gender-egalitarian, woman-friendly, and feminist interpretations of the Qurʾan. One of the most important contributions Raja Rhouni and Aysha Hidayatullah make in their books is to engage systematically and critically with the writings of predecessors and peers.² In her impassioned critique of the critics published in this issue, Asma Barlas, whose “Believing Women” in Islam was a germinal contribution to the field, continues in this vein. I welcome her contribution even as I am troubled by some of her interpretive maneuvers.

A necessary preface: though my primary field of interest and expertise is Islamic jurisprudence not Qurʾanic exegesis, I sometimes write and often teach about the Qurʾan. I regularly assign work by Barlas, including her overview of amina wadud’s interpretation, the chapter in “Believing Women” where she decimates any sacralization of fatherhood, and—separate from her work on the Qurʾan—her concise, incisive explanation of why she rejects the term feminist.³ I have also criticized elements of her exegetical strategies, most notably in the chapter on Qurʾan interpretation in my book Sexual Ethics and Islam—which she, in turn, criticizes in her essay for this roundtable.⁴ My response here focuses on a few instances of her engagement with my writing in “Secular and Feminist Critiques of the Qurʾan: Anti-Hermeneutics as Liberation” to make two larger points. First, Barlas mischaracterizes others’ arguments by weaving together decontextualized snippets and misconstruing specific phrases. Second, rather than engage in sustained exegetical debate based on careful readings of her interlocutors’ scholarship, she resorts to theological scrutiny, questioning the religious bona fides of those with whom she disagrees.

Let me begin by expressing appreciation for one vital correction she offers. Barlas argues that some feminist interpreters have too quickly dismissed instances of scriptural egalitarianism, focusing instead on seemingly patriarchal and hierarchical verses. Those, like me, who have criticized others for avoiding difficult passages and their implications, are guilty of a parallel offense: a “heavy-handed focus on the so-called anti-women verses” (111). She suggests, reasonably, that directing our attention to these verses may grant them disproportionate weight in an analysis of scripture. Speaking only for myself, I would respond that my zeal to insist that one must grapple with uncomfortable, unpleasant verses asserting or accepting male dominance arises not from the conviction that these constitute the ineluctable core of the Qurʾanic message—I never meant to imply and certainly never explicitly stated any such thing—but rather out of a frustration with pro-woman, pro-justice, or gender-egalitarian interpretations that fail to confront squarely the difficulties inherent in interpreting such verses, let alone, as Laury Silvers puts it, the theological problem posed by their “mere existence.”⁵

Perhaps this sort of intervention, which seemed necessary a decade ago when I wrote Sexual Ethics and Islam, led to an overcorrection. Even if so, the field has not stagnated. Today, Qurʾanic studies is flourishing, with scholars from many perspectives taking various approaches to studying the text and the tradition that surrounds it.⁶ In an essay in progress on the Qurʾanic Mary, I cite Barlas and discuss intermittently antipatriarchal moments in the text.⁷ I still believe, however, that it overstates things to call the Qurʾan an “egalitarian and antipatriarchal” text, even if it is susceptible to (more or less persuasive) egalitarian and antipatriarchal readings.⁸

Barlas, however, thinks I oppose any such interpretive project. She presents my overall stance thus: Ali “says the Qurʾan is ‘thoroughly androcentric,’ and ‘the project of egalitarian interpretations … [is] fundamentally dishonest and ultimately futile.’ She also disputes the usefulness of our methods, which she calls the ‘strategies of historical contextualization and principle-extraction’” (116). Barlas’s first sentence cobbles together three snippets from Sexual Ethics and Islam. Here are slightly fuller...