GENDER

To speak of gender is necessarily to make a distinction between sex and gender. While sex is the biologically defined capacity of the human body, gender connotes the social significance attached to members of a particular sex. Gender is, therefore, a human construction that nevertheless draws upon divinely inspired texts, social and cultural conventions, and biological capacities to define its role in public and private life and societal institutions.

Gender-Related Verses in the Qur?an

In the Qur?an, which is regarded as divine revelation by Muslims, female life is considered intrinsically valuable (Q. 81:9). The creation of the female is attributed, along with that of the male, to a single soul (4:1) from which the other is created as its mate (4:1). Another verse declares: "Allah created you from dust, then from a little fluid, then He made you pairs" (35: 11). These verses have been interpreted as granting both sexes equality from the perspective of origin and spiritual status. Although the Qur?anic texts do not specify which sex is the primary creation, some argue that the feminine form of the noun "soul" (nafs) in Qur?an 4:1 could be read to suggest that the female was created first. Unlike the account found in the second book of Genesis, the Qur?an does not make the creation of the female derivative from the male or for the purpose of the male. However, such a view enters the Islamic interpretive framework through various sources, chiefly through the writings of the very earliest commentators on the Qur?an, as detailed in Barbara Stowasser's excellent study.

With respect to morality and spirituality, men and women are equally accountable to God for their actions and for their religious beliefs and responsibilities (33:35), and in this regard, the Qur?an holds an egalitarian vision, as has been pointed out by Leila Ahmed. In the social sphere, women are entitled to inherit (4:7) half the portions received by men (4:11), two women's testimonies count in weight to that of a single male's (2:282), and men are placed in charge of women because they excel over them and are financially responsible for them (4:34). Women must remain monogamous, although nowhere is this specified in the Qur?an but rather is implied in the injunction that "all married women" are forbidden to men (4:24). Men are permitted as many as four wives on the condition that each wife be treated equally, with the additional caveat that if a man cannot provide for four he should marry only one. He may also possess as many concubines as he can afford ("their right hand may possess") (4:3). Verse 3:129 further declares that "You will not be able to deal equally between [your] wives, however much you wish [to do so]," suggesting to some Muslims that the Qur?an preferred monogamy as the marital state, but in keeping with the customs of the time allowed polygamy. Men may marry any of the women of the ahl al-kitab ("people of the Book") (5:5) whereas women may marry only Muslim men (this being a traditional stipulation rather than a Qur?anic injunction). Marriage to idolatresses is forbidden (2:221), as is marriage to one's father's wives (4:22), one's mother, daughters, sisters, father's sisters, mother's sisters, brother's daughters, sister's daughters, foster-mothers, foster-sisters, mothers-in-law, stepdaughters born of women with whom one has had conjugal relations, the wives of blood-sons, and two sisters from the same family (4:23) as well as all married women except slaves already owned (4:24). Marriage with former wives of adopted sons is permitted (33:37). Women with whom marriages have not yet been consummated may be divorced, and should a marriage portion have been promised, half of that must be paid unless the woman—who is encouraged to do so as a pious act—is willing to give it up (235–237).

Conjugal relations are forbidden with menstruating women (2:222); otherwise, conjugal relations are permitted at will (2:223). Disobedient wives are subject to a graduated set of measures ranging from admonishment to beating, depending on how the term darraba (admonish, strike) is interpreted (4:34). Should a conflict arise between a married couple, then an arbiter from each one's kinsfolk should be appointed to attempt a reconciliation (4:35). According to the Qur?an, a man who forswears his wife must wait four months (2:226) during which time he may change his mind; however, if divorce is determined as a course of action, then the woman must wait a term of three menses to ensure that she is not impregnated; if the wife is found to be pregnant it is recommended that the husband take her back as his wife (2:227). Should divorce proceed in such an instance, the wife is entitled to support from the husband until she gives birth (65:4), and, if mutually agreeable, while she nurses (65:6). A woman may be divorced no more than twice by the same husband in order to be retained; after the third time, she may not be taken back unless she has married another man in the meantime. In cases where a man chooses to divorce a pregnant wife, the Qur?an urges the man to release her with honor only after the birth of the child. Additionally, the husband must not obstruct her remarriage if there has been a mutual agreement based on kindness. Furthermore, upon divorce, nothing that has been given to the woman can be taken back (2:229–232). Widows may choose their own course of action regarding remarriage after a waiting period of four months and ten days (2:234). A married man who is about to die should make provisions for his wife or wives for a period of one year, including a provision for housing, unless the wife or wives choose to leave of their own accord prior to his death (2:240).

Women should suckle their children for two years unless both parents mutually agree to wean the child earlier, and the father is charged with the duty of feeding and clothing the nursing mother appropriately. The child may also be given out to a wet nurse, provided the nurse is adequately compensated (2:233).

In matters of dress and comportment, both men and women are enjoined "to lower their gaze and be modest" (24:30–31); however, in addition women are asked to draw their veils (khumur) over their bosoms, and only reveal of their adornment (?awra, lit. pudendum) that which is manifest, and reveal their adornment only to a specified list of close relatives with whom marriage is disallowed (mahram), eunuchs, and children not yet conscious of women's nakedness. Similarly, women should not stamp their feet in such a manner that might reveal their adornments by drawing attention to their bodies (24:31). Testimony against women accused of lewdness must be brought by four witnesses, and if the charge is proved, the woman must be confined to her house until her death or until God provides new legislation (4:15). Those accused of adultery, including the adulterer and the adulteress, are subject to a punishment consisting of one hundred lashes (24:2).

Special sanctions are placed upon the wives of the Prophet: the punishment for lewdness is doubled compared to other women (33:30), as is the reward for surrendering to God and the Prophet and engaging in righteousness (33:31); they are declared not to be "like any other women" and cautioned to keep their speech customary, not soft, lest it causes another's desire (33:32). They are commanded to stay in their houses (33:33) and abstain from ornamentation, as was the case in the days before Islam. The Prophet's wives should pray regularly, engage in charity, and obey God and his messenger (33:33), keeping in mind the revelations of God and wisdom (33:34). Conversation with the wives of the Prophet is to be conducted from behind a curtain (hijab) and visits to the Prophet's household are to occur upon invitation, with the guests departing after the meal is ended. The Prophet's wives may not remarry after his death (33: 53). They may converse freely only with a stipulated set of males: fathers, sons, brothers, nephews, the sons of their female slaves, or their male slaves (33:55).

Further, the wives of the Prophet, his daughters, and the women of the believers are enjoined to "draw their cloaks" (jilbab) close around them while going out in order that they may be recognized as Muslims and not be harassed (33:59). Women past childbearing age with no hope of marriage may discard such outer clothing, provided they do not reveal their adornments, though it is better for them to retain such coverings (24: 60).

The Qur?an views women as human beings who are creations of God and are vouchsafed full ontological equality with men. With regard to their moral agency, women are not subordinate to men and, like men, they are called upon to surrender to God and the Prophet and embark upon a path of righteousness for which they will be justly rewarded.

In the social sphere, the Qur?an protects and safeguards women's right to life, inheritance, legal recognition, dowry, upkeep, child support after divorce, protection from male voyeurism, and safety while in public. These considerations are laudable given the seventh-century context into which the Qur?an was revealed. As previously stated, restrictions are, however, placed on the portion women may inherit (4:11) and on the weight of their legal testimony. The Qur?an's least egalitarian verse is to be found in 4:34, which declares: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property [for the support of women]. So good women are the obedient." Traditionally, this verse has been interpreted as granting to men authority over women, as well as advocating a social division of labor, suggesting that it is men's responsibility to support women (and hence, that women need not work but rather should tend the affairs of the hearth). Many Muslims, women included, believe that the Qur?an's objective with regard women is to vouchsafe their rights as they apply to the economic and legal spheres, especially during childbearing and child-rearing years. With regard to dress codes, there do not appear to be any specific Qur?anic guidelines for male dress, although both men and women are called to observe modesty, a term that could include dress as well as behavior. Qur?an 34:59 asks the Prophet to "Tell thy wives and thy daughters and women of the believers to draw their cloaks (jilbab) close around them [when they go out]. That will be better, that they may be recognized and not annoyed." The Qur?an's concern here clearly is to protect women from the male gaze, especially harassment from the "hypocrites" or religious backsliders (munafiqun), thereby tacitly suggesting that women are vulnerable to impropriety on the part of males and that males posed a significant threat to women's safety in that era. In all of these stipulations, the Qur?an's spirit of affording protections and rights to women illustrates that it is a sacred document in support of women.

Sources for Gender Construction

Should the Qur?an be construed as a patriarchal text? Later Muslim theology developed the notion that the Qur?an, as a body of revelation, is eternal and a copy of a heavenly prototype, that is, it is eternally valid in all its aspects. The Egyptian shaykh Muhammad ?Abduh (d. 1905) argued that while all Qur?anic injunctions pertaining to ?ibadat (worship or ritual acts) were eternally valid and binding on Muslims, other Qur?anic injunctions, such as those pertaining to maslaha or societal well-being, were valid within the context in which they were revealed. Hence, Muslims must assume responsibility for following the intention, and not necessarily the letter, of the Qur?an in matters pertaining to societal wellbeing. Some modern scholars, such as Amina Wadud-Muhsin, have also argued that the social aspects of the Qur?an should be viewed in a historical and cultural context. From this perspective, pronouncements that were received and intelligible to the patriarchal milieu of an earlier period must be reviewed in light of present-day social arrangements and thus reinterpreted.

Historians such as Leila Ahmed have convincingly shown that Islam did not invent patriarchy; rather, it was a form of social organization well established in the Mesopotamian, Greek, Iranian, and Byzantine spheres of influence that Muslims encountered during the first century of Islam. Thus, the key discourses generated in the classical period of Islamic civilization (from the seventh century to 1250 c.e.) took place within a patriarchal frame of reference. Indeed, Eleanor Doumato has argued that much of the legislation derived from the Qur?an and other sources was consistent with the contemporary Jewish and Christian legal praxis.

There are several strands of literature during the first three centuries of Islamic self-definition that are critical to the formation and articulation of gender constructs. These include the qisas al-anbiya?; the asbab al-nuzul; the hadith; the tafsir; and the fiqh. The qisas al-anbiya?, literally the "stories of the prophets," was one of the pathways through which Biblical lore entered the Islamic realm of discourse, through which Muslims in general—bearing in mind that many Muslims were converts from Judaism or Christianity—gained an intimate familiarity with Biblical figures and stories. The asbab al-nuzul, literally the "context of the revelation," was a genre imbedded within many tafasir (commentaries) on the Qur?an, seeking to explain the reasons for a particular revelation, reasons that were orally transmitted until such time as the Qur?anic commentators sought to incorporate them within their commentaries. The hadith (tradition literature), which recalled narratives of the Prophet's thoughts and deeds, was also orally transmitted through succeeding generations until hadith collectors such as al-Bukhari (d. 869 c.e.) and others sought them out, collated them, checked them for accuracy using various methods, and combined them to form canonical collections in the ninth and tenth centuries. Finally, the fiqh (jurisprudence) drew upon various sources, including primarily the Qur?an, the hadith, ?urf or local custom, and juridical reasoning (variously ra?y, qiyas, ijtihad, ijma?), to formulate the legal regimes adopted by Muslim rulers. It is in these bodies of literature that extra-Qur?anic features of the social construction of gender are largely located. For instance, the interpretive lens through which the Qur?an was understood and utilized as a basis for social organization adopted the essentialized notions pertaining to the female gender that were well established as part of the patriarchal norms of the conquered societies. Further, key social institutions such as the legal regimes that would govern Muslim societies were inscribed with gendered markings consonant with the cultural practices of the conquered societies comprising the Muslim empire. To illustrate, while nowhere in the Qur?an is Adam's partner named or identified as having proceeded from the male, for the purpose or in service of the male, biblical antecedents of the derivative and service-oriented origin of the female from the rib of the male enter the Islamic interpretive frame through biblical lore, most likely through the qisas al-anbiya? literature, thereby ensuring for the Muslim female a subordinate role in society. To be sure, the Muslim interpreters granted greater weight to the subordinate account found in Genesis 2:21 than to the more equitable account found in Genesis 1:27, but they did so in a social and intellectual context in which such a view was favored within their subject peoples. The subordinate role, with respect to the essential nature of the female, however, was firmly lodged through the Muslim appropriation of the biblical notion that the female, unnamed in the Qur?an but named Hawwa by Muslim tradition, was ultimately responsible for the fall of the male, Adam, from the paradisiacal garden as a consequence of her seduction by Iblis, the Arabic equivalent of the devil, or Satan. Such moral frailty on the part of the female is attributed by Muslim commentators variously to her weak intelligence, her willful disobedience, or to her sexually heightened powers of seduction, and punishments similar to those meted to the biblical female sex are attached to the Muslim female. All this despite the many occasions in the Qur?an where either both the primordial couple together or Adam explicitly are named as responsible for the act of disobedience, and where no punishment save expulsion from the beatific state enjoyed in the garden is visited upon the couple; indeed the primordial couple is assured of God's guidance, with the pledge that "whoever follows My guidance shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve" (2:38).

Having appropriated and elaborated upon the Biblical Eve in order to establish women's essential nature as morally frail, seductively powerful in order to create moral and social chaos, and eternally punishable, the Qur?anic commentators continued their implicit project of gender construction through their interpretations of the female figures mentioned in the Qur?an, whether Biblical, pre-Islamic, or Muslim (such as the wives of the Prophet). In this project, they were aided by the bodies of discourse also being produced at that time and by the social and institutional arrangements already in place in Arabia and in the conquered territories. Included in these discourses are the asbab al-nuzul literature that "remembered" the context in which a verse was revealed; the qisas alanbiya literature that glorified the lives and acts of prior biblical figures; and the isra'illiyat literature that comprised the narratives deemed biblical lore. These discourses served both to illuminate and reinforce the contemporaneous understanding of the role of God's prophets and their concomitant social arrangements as divinely ordained rather than as an ever-dynamic result of historical factors, and played a significant role in directing the attitude toward the female gender in the construction of the emerging legal regimes between the first century after the Prophet's passing and the third century (eighth to tenth centuries of the common era).

Stowasser suggests that the Qur?anic commentators interpreted the references to biblical figures mentioned in the Qur?an as paradigmatic for women's behavior. Thus, the story of Joseph and Zulaykha was seen to be reflective of the social chaos (fitna) engendered by a woman, and the story of Moses's future brides was considered paradigmatic for female conduct in the presence of males (work only if there is no other male to do so; walk behind the male, remain bashful and shy in his presence). Ironically, the cumulative effect of such discourse was to define the male in relation to and by contrast to the female, and thus, as argued by Abu-Odin, was far more relevant to the construction of male gender than, as might ostensibly appear, to the construction of female gender. To be sure, the picture was never entirely a simple one: The prophetic status of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was debated, and the wives of some of the prophets were depicted as moral agents in their own right, able freely to choose the path of righteousness or disobedience. However, the notion that a woman might be a moral agent in her own right was not pursued except insofar as how that freedom might be contained given woman's essential nature.

Similarly, in the hadith literature, an ambiguous picture of women emerges again: on the one hand, women are accorded authority by implication through the relatively large number of hadith narrations attributed to women, such as the Prophet's wife ?A?isha; On the other hand, as Mernissi has pointed out, perhaps the adjudicators of the hadith literature's veracity were less vigilant when it came to retaining hadith from sources that reflected unfavorably on women from less than trustworthy sources, as, for example, the hadith stating the prophetic remark, "Those who trust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity" (Mernissi, quoting a hadith cited in Bukhari). Such a hadith inculcated in many Muslims a mistrust of the innate capacity and ability of women to hold political office. In a similar vein, commentators on the Qur?an gave relatively short shrift to the account and interpretation of the female political leader, Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba), mentioned in the Qur?an. Despite the later historical record in which women successfully negotiated their way through political institutions to attain leadership roles (as, for instance, the medieval Yemeni Sulayhid queen Sayyida Hurra) and the modern record in which there have been more female heads of state in Muslim nations than in North America, the force of the hadith continues to be cited by opponents as an impediment when Muslim women agitate for inclusion in the political process or in political leadership.

The legal regimes developed over the course of this formative period, from the eighth to the tenth centuries, again reflect a patriarchally informed lens that led to a greater weighting of the socially restrictive verses in the Qur?an over the morally equitable verses also found in the Qur?an. Thus, for instance, the legal formulators found it far more important to lay down the rules under which polygamy was to be practiced than heeding the Qur?anic suggestion that God was aware that men would not be able to deal justly with more than one wife. The discrepancies with respect to gender issues between the various Sunni legal schools, and between the Sunni and the Shi?ite legal schools, suggest, at the very least, that jurists exercised their discretionary interpretive skills in addressing issues of gender, thereby belying the notion that the legal regime is divinely ordained, eternally valid, and therefore immutable. The jurists also saw fit to inscribe legal codes with concurrent views of gender, thus, for instance, although the Qur?an says nothing about the validity of ritual prayer as predicated on proximity to women, a legal code invalidates all prayers performed by men if not distanced from women by a space of at least two arms' length, perhaps in keeping with the segregation of men and women in Jewish and possibly Christian ritual prayer contexts. The essentialist views pertaining to women's weakness that enter the Islamic commentarial discourses through biblical lore may explain why the statement found in 4:34 ("Men are in charge over/superior to women") resulted in the legal arrogation of guardianship rights to the male, extending to women's buying and selling property, their commercial activity, and their ability to contract their own mates and so forth, again, none of which rights are accorded to men in the Qur?an explicitly. Rather, these rights are given over to the male through the explicit statement found in 4.34, and the creative interpretation of a Qur?anic verse that required guardians to handle the legal affairs of orphans and children (4:6) and those of inferior intellect (4:5).

The present observations regarding the legal regimes produced in the three centuries following the Prophet's death are not meant to suggest that males willfully and misogynistically curbed women's legal agency and comportment. Nevertheless, the claim that authoritative discourses in the Islamic world are divinely decreed or generated needs to be more carefully examined and analyzed, as it does not take into account the historical and social factors and processes through which shari?a law came to be constructed, defined, and implemented, a process that took at least a couple of centuries. Further, the claim imputes to the divine being legal and social discrimination against women, who are creatures considered in the Qur?an to be equally worthy of life as men, created from the same soul, equally morally accountable, and as much moral agents as men. Such a claim does not stand up to theological reason. Rather, the historically and sociologically constructed nature of many of the authoritative discourses in the Islamic world must be acknowledged, namely, that the hadith collectors, the Qur?anic commentators, and the jurists were doing the best they could to contribute to and illumine a self-understanding of what it meant to be Muslim in their day, in social frameworks intelligible to and consistent with the cultural modes of the time in the diverse geographical locales of the Muslim empire(s). Studies in legal praxis, such as those of Mir-Hosseini and Tucker, indicate that jurists treated the shari?a as a fluid set of directives that allowed them some limited scope in taking context into account and in treating each case on its own merit, something that one sees in practice in Iran today.

The Challenges of Gender Reform

Several developments at various points in history left in their wake significations of gender that are almost impossible to dislodge, and render gender legal reform difficult in the contemporary world. A brief examination of three such developments is merited. In the first, the influential theologian and jurist al-Ghazali (d. 1111) who, in a move reminiscent of St. Augustine, linked piety to shari?a observance. He suggested, thereby, that a Muslim, by definition, was one who adhered to the shari?a, in contrast to the more loosely articulated view that defined a Muslim as one who ascertained the shahadah (lit. testimony, namely, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger," to which Shi?a add: "and Allah is the Master of the believers"). In addition to according the shari?a quasi-divine status, such a move on al-Ghazali's part ensured the difficulty of ameliorating the shari?a in any manner as to do so would be to suggest that it was a humanly crafted instrument for the governance of society, albeit one taking its cue from a divinely ordained text, the Qur?an. The implications of this theological development for gender are immense: Does any attempt to introduce gender-equitable treatment under the shari?a then suggest that one is tampering with what it means to be a Muslim? It is no surprise that the Hudood Ordinances introduced by President Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan in 1978 under the advisement of the shari?a bench have proven to be one of the greatest obstacles in assuring Muslim women in Pakistan equal consideration under the law. Indeed, the infamous zina? (adultery) laws have provoked international debate with respect to the setback rather than the protection, let alone reparation, they provide raped women who, as a consequence of these laws, are punishable for the rape. Muslim women academics and activists, such as Asifa Qureishi, have proposed different ways in which the issue of rape might be conceived within an Islamic framework.

The second development was the caliphal prerogative, rendered justifiable by his titular mandate as "Defender of the Faithful," to set up institutions whereby his office could govern society in manners he saw fit. Thus, for instance, in Abbasid and Ottoman times, the caliph could and did set up institutions through which criminal, property, and foreign policy law was handled by his appointees, while laws pertaining to worship and to the family were rendered under the jurisdiction of the religious specialists, thereby further linking worship with laws pertaining to gender issues and making it even more difficult to modernize or otherwise ameliorate the latter without implicating the former. Legal institutions under the direct control of the caliph, on the other hand, were more amenable to context-driven adjustments, as reflected in the work of the Ottoman administrator Ahmad Cevdet Pasha (d. 1895), a member of the ulema, who took his inspiration from Roman and French legal systems, while remaining within the fold of Islamic principles in working out the Ottoman code in order to take into account early modern legal challenges and approaches.

The third development concerned the colonial, especially British, practice of relegating personal and family law issues to the control of religiously defined communities, thereby undermining traditional or customary practices developed over time and resurrecting and perpetuating legal regimes developed by religious institutions that were, in the Muslim case, formulated several centuries ago. Such a practice further reinforced the connection of family law with religious identity and perpetuated gender equities inscribed in the religiously formulated legal system. The colonial attitude of pointing to the "backwardness" of Islamic societies by holding up, for example, the segregation of women from public spaces, has ironically created, as observed by Leila Ahmed, the very signifiers through which Muslims now assert their identity as different from the West and their former colonial masters. In other words, the bodies of women are the sites on which the postcolonial struggles to define and delineate the authenticity, integrity, and marks of an Islamic identity are to be fought. Such a resignification of women's bodies, comportment, and legal status has been no more vociferously and proudly proclaimed than by resurgent Muslim groups. Such groups, often armed with a political agenda that includes taking control of the institutions of governance—assisted by all the tools of modern technology, including print, Internet, and educational media—and attempting to convince Muslim youth disenchanted with global Western political and economic hegemony, as well as with the ineptitude of local government and economic instability, that wearing one's Islamic identity on one's head and a public expression of Muslim piety establish one's identity as a site of resistance to the West. There is no doubt that modern Muslims face significant challenges, both internal and external, to building viable and healthy postcolonial societies; however, the use of religion for political ends has resulted in the creation of organizations calling themselves Muslim who serve to whip minorities, governments, secularists and non-Muslims into pious (thereby unquestionable) submission to a specific political aim in the name of God by offering the indisputable promise: (their form of) Islam is the solution. Their goals and methods run contrary to the Qur?anic call to humans to believe, to act righteously and with social justice (76:5–9; 90:13–17), and to impose no compulsion in matters of religion.

In contemporary times, Muslim women are caught in the nexus of Islamic resurgence, state agendas, feudal social structures, and the economic forces of globalization with its sometimes devastating impact on developing societies. State agendas include the desire to deliver education, training, health, and legal parity in order to facilitate social development that can harness the productive capacity of women in order to build viable societies. However, the need for states at times to buy into the legitimating power of Islamic parties has meant a nimble bartering away of women's rights, or simply a stalling of reforms in exchange for political power. Islamist parties have often reinforced feudal social structures that reinforce a gendered division of labor, thus dovetailing nicely with the Islamist perception of gender roles and laws. The effects of globalization have resulted in an increasing number of women finding it essential to join the paid workforce, a labor migration in search of work, often separating families or creating a subclass of domestic worker or sex-worker slavery, and a movement away from the rural areas into urban outskirts in search of work, leading both to urban congestion and rural impoverishment, thereby providing increasing fodder for Islamist movements. Globalization paradoxically supports both the state agenda for its female population and the Islamist resistance to western economic hegemony, leaving the often already weak state machinery further vulnerable to negotiations with the political threat posed by Islamist parties. Any attempt at discussion of gender issues in many parts of the Muslim world has been silenced through tactics that have attempted to delegitimize the discussant; such tactics include accusing the discussant of being brainwashed by the West, being a western feminist, blaspheming, and so forth.

Muslim gender activists, mostly but not exclusively women, have explored various routes toward addressing issues of gender equity in Muslim societies. In Iran, for instance, women's magazines have taken on the challenge of reexamining patriarchal interpretations of the Qur?an, arguing that the verse supporting male privilege could be understood differently if greater attention were paid to the language of the Qur?an, as in the spirit of the work of the Moroccan feminist sociologist Fatima Mernissi and the American Muslim activist Amina Wadud. Iranian Islamist women, as elsewhere, have also sought to create a parallel universe for women that would enable women to participate in activities not normally possible in a gender-segregated society, as for instance in the Iranian Women's Games. Islamist women in various parts of the world have argued that nowhere do sacred texts prevent women from acquiring an education or participating in the political and the legal spheres. Many Islamist women hold the position that the broad display of headwear and piety has earned them the right to have a say in public affairs, and here the example of the Egyptian Zaynab al-Ghazali comes to mind. Islamist women also argue that the application of Islamic law has ameliorated women's rights over and against feudal or tribal or customary practices. Characteristic of all these approaches is the underlying assumption that Islam as a social and legal system offers gender equality, often drawing upon the oxymoronic adage "equal but different" that bears the semblance of erasing hierarchy but reinscribes it in making the woman the upholder of the shari?a vision of respectability as the "difference" inevitably reintroduces differential equations of power. In the current climate of Islamic resurgence, it is likely that the Islamist form of gender activism, which entails a form of reinscription of Islamic legal frameworks, is likely to prevail and will continue to do so until such a time as Muslim societies can work out forms of governance that keep Islam out of politics and enable a fresh approach to juridical principles that emphasize women's agency, control over their bodies and destinies, and full humanity. Such a prospect requires fresh thinking on how it might be possible to remain a Muslim spiritually while allowing for clear thinking on what an egalitarian and just society might look like without being fettered by social and legal norms developed historically under very different circumstances. In this regard, issues of health, poverty, and universal access to education, work, and childcare should be addressed, and regimes seeking populist affirmation through Islamization policies need to be examined closely.

Another approach has been to argue that a Muslim cannot be Islamized, since a person who is already a Muslim should not be made subject to punitive laws in the name of Islam or be subject to an interpretation of Islam that does not accord well with its principles of fairness and social justice. Further, one does not need to be an Islamist, that is, one who believes that public and state institutions must adhere to shari?a prescriptions, developed under different circumstances several centuries ago, in order to work for the benefit of society, especially with respect to gender. Thus, for instance, Maha Azzam has argued that the challenges facing Muslim women ought to be articulated and addressed "with the use of analytical frameworks that, for example, draw on the sociology of religion and on the political and economic dynamics of nationalism and dependency" (quoted in Esposito and Haddad, p. 49) and not conducted within a religious framework that dispenses what the correct comportment of a Muslim woman should or should not be from a seventh-century social perspective. Others, such as the sisters Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani Jahangir in Pakistan, have sought to address gender equity issues under the rubric of the law and state enforceability, while activist lawyers, academics, and other intellectuals such as Asifa Quraishi, Amira Sonbol, Riffat Hasan, and Amina Wadud in North America have sought to address issues as widely divergent as rape laws in Pakistan, gender issues in legal regimes in parts of the Muslim world, honor killings, and rereading sacred texts, to name a few. A significant form of activism is the consciousness raising evident in the production of literary and analytical works by Muslim women throughout the world, which, if read by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, may result in transnational feminist activism that may finally unmask and address the endless varieties in which Islam, as all world faiths, is used for patriarchal purposes.

See alsoDivorce ; Feminism ; Ghazali, Zaynab al- ; Marriage ; Masculinities .

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