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Opinion Reading the Qur'ān justly: Why there is no need to understand the Qur'ān as a male-privileging text


Can we call a religion just or unjust, given the fact that religions don't interpret themselves ― we do? This much is obvious from the way people have interpreted the same religious texts differently. In which case, who is accountable for unjust readings: a text or its readers, or both? If it's partly the reader, what do they mean by justice or injustice? And if a religion itself is unjust, what then does it mean to speak of building community and identity? Or, rather, what sorts of communities and identities can an unjust religion enable or impede?

The process of wrestling with these questions over many years has raised several others for me ― particularly with reference to Islam. If Islam is unjust, aren't all Muslim communities unjust by extension? And, if they are unjust, can one's identity as a Muslim be ethical or even healthy? And, if Islam is just, why do Muslim communities treat women as inferior to men and subject them to discrimination and violence? And, if these communities are unjust, how can we trust their interpretations of the Qur'ān? And, if it is the Qur'ān that authorises injustice against women, doesn't that mean God is unjust given that we consider the Qur'ān to be God's word?

Moreover, how can it be that Muslims who believe in a just God, attribute injustice against women to God's word? Here I should note Toshiko Izutsu's observation that divine justice is described in the Qur'ān as not doing zulm ― that is, as not transgressing against the rights of another. How do we square the Qur'ān's affirmation of a God who does not do zulm with the idea that the Qur'ān sanctions zulm against women?

Conservative Muslims would, of course, deny that reading the Qur'ān as male-privileging is a form of zulm, but we know from both history and experience that institutionalised male authority involves continual transgressions against the rights of women. Indeed, it is this view of the Qur'ān as a male-privileging text that is prompting many secular and feminist Muslims to question whether the Qur'ān is God's word. Since I’ve questioned both these tendencies ― of grafting an ideology of male supremacy onto the Qur'ān and of questioning its divinity ― I will share parts of my reading as a way to contrast different approaches to the Qur'ān; the reader can then judge between them for themselves.


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I will start, though, by contextualising the conservative and secular/feminist claim that the Qur'ān is a patriarchal text. First, this claim draws only on the "hierarchy verses" (verses that are read as mandating gender hierarchies between men and women) and, second, there are only six or so such verses out of more than six thousand in the Qur'ān. These are interpreted as saying: God made men to be women's guardians, allowed them to have as many wives as they want and to beat a disobedient one; God gave men twice a woman's share in property and made their testimony twice the value of a woman's.

This exegesis has prompted some feminists to question, not only whether the Qur'ān's teachings are just, but also its own status as revelation. As Aysha Hidayatullah puts it, the Qur'ān's inability to deliver "feminist justice" should lead us to ask whether God is just or whether the Qur'ān is God's word. Kecia Ali, too, expresses scepticism about the Qur'ān's divinity based on her exegesis of two verses on sex. Even Amina Wadud, who once held that the Qur'ān is neutral toward patriarchy, now claims that, "Whatever the word of God means, the Qur'ān is not God; words are fallible."

Disputing the Qur'ān's divinity is not an option for observant Muslims ― actually, doing so puts one beyond the pale of Islam. But we can certainly ask if the only or best reading of the Qur'ān is as a patriarchal text given how such an exegesis justifies violence against women. This isn't to say that violence is a peculiarly Muslim problem; rather, as we know, it is a universal one. But, the difference between Western and Muslim societies is that in the former, men don't justify their violence by taking refuge in religion, even if the men in question belong to one. In Muslim societies, on the other hand, people ascribe the violence to the Qur'ān even when the man in question may not be religious. It is this pernicious tendency I've challenged in my own reading.

There are four aspects to that reading: theological, hermeneutical, ethical and theoretical.

The theological argument is that our understandings of God's word must be congruent with our conceptions of God. To this end, I seek some of the hermeneutical keys for interpreting the Qur'ān in the nature of divine self-disclosure (how God describes God in the Qur'ān). The three aspects of this self-disclosure I've explored are God's unity (Tawhid), justice (not doing zulm) and incomparability. The doctrine of Tawhid is that God is absolute ruler and brooks no rivals. As I see it, men who set themselves up as rulers over women ("earthly gods") or as intermediaries between God and women are violating this tenet of Tawhid (committing shirk, a derogation of God's sovereignty). The fact that God doesn't do zulm, on the other hand, means we need to avoid imputing zulm against women to the Qur'ān. Men living in patriarchies may not see these as cruel and oppressive, but that is precisely what they are since they allow men to debase and abuse women. Lastly, the Qur'ān declares that "there is none like unto God." For this reason, it even forbids using similitude for God. I take this to mean that its references to God as "He" are just linguistic conventions and also that God is beyond sex/gender, hence beyond sexual partisanship as well. This is, of course, a rather simplified summary of a complex argument.

The hermeneutical aspects of my work rest on two general principles: that each text has multiple meanings and that not all readings are contextually legitimate. I also draw on the Qur'ān's counsel to privilege its foundational verses over the allegorical; to read it as a whole instead of dividing it into "arbitrary parts"; and to search for the best in its teachings. This last injunction is conveyed in different contexts. In one verse, for instance, God tells Moses to "enjoin Thy people to hold fast By the best in the precepts" (7:145). In another instance, the Qur'ān says, "Those who listen To the Word And follow the best (meaning) in it … are the ones Whom God has guided, and ... endued With understanding" (39:18). I read these verses as being both hermeneutically and ethically significant. For one, they establish that not all our readings of the Qur'ān may be appropriate and, for another, they put on us the ethical and moral responsibility of judging between them. In addition to confirming that the Qur'ān is polysemic, the concept of "the best" also suggests that we need to continually reinterpret it since our ideas of what is good or better are likely to change over time.

A final aspect of my method is to apply a precise definition of patriarchy to the Qur'ān which readers before me hadn't done. Essentially, I conceive of patriarchy as a continuum at one end of which is rule by the father/husband (religious/traditional patriarchy) and, at the other, a politics of sexual differentiation that privileges men because they are biologically, males (secular/modern patriarchy).

If one applies this method to the Qur'ān, one is hard pressed to find support in it for either form of male authority. First and most importantly, the Qur'ān repudiates the patriarchal imaginary of God as father or male. If God is neither, there is also no theological or logical reason to assume that God would favour men in their capacities as father/husband. Indeed, the Qur'ān is replete with criticisms of father-rule. Second, the Qur'ān doesn't use biological sex to discriminate against women or to privilege men. Indeed, it doesn't link sex with gender, which means that the gender hierarchy we see in some verses is that of the seventh century tribal Arab patriarchy to which the Qur'ān first spoke.

Yet, even the "hierarchy verses" do not claim that men are made in God's image and women are not, or that men are superior to women by virtue of being males. To the contrary, the Qur'ān teaches that God created both from the same nafs (self), made them khalifa (vice-regents) on earth and each other's awliya (mutual guides). And, at the end of time, God promises to judge each nafs by the measure of her own endeavours. Conveniently, those who read male privilege into the Qur'ān ignore or belittle such foundational teachings.

As to the "hierarchy verses," they comprise 0.01 per cent of the Qur'ān and we can also read them in a manner differently than they have been read. For example, the root of the word that is translated/ interpreted as "strike" in verse 4:34 — a translation that seems to justify "wife beating" — also means to leave, cite (to authorities), go away from and so on. Moreover, if we read 4:34 as allowing wife-beating, how do we reconcile that reading with the Qur'ān's frequent counsel to spouses to live with one another in love and mercy (sukun)? Or, its forbidding men to inherit women against their will ― a command that recognises women's right to exercise one? Or, to its cautioning husbands to forgive a wife who is his enemy and not to forget liberality toward one whom he is in the process of divorcing? Or, its advice to marry only one wife so as not to be partial to others?

One can make similar counter-arguments against dominant interpretations of other verses. Thus, the Qur'ān speaks of polygyny only twice and both times as a means to secure justice for female orphans. That is, only some male wards of the orphans can marry more than one, and only then under certain conditions ― yet even to these men, the Qur'ān says monogamy is better. In the same vein, the word Muslims translate as signalling men's guardianship over women, qawwamun, can denote financial upkeep, not guardianship, which is how some classical Muslim exegetes interpreted it. As to the degree (darajah) men have over women, it is only in matters of a divorce and it's not clear in what (in pronouncing a divorce or initiating a reconciliation). Then, too, not all men inherit twice a woman's share, since mothers and fathers get equal shares from a child's estates. Finally, a wife's testimony counts for more than her husband's if he accuses her of adultery on his own witness. The Qur'ān allows her to refute his charge on her own witness and, if she does, her word is legally the last.

I should also point out that the "hierarchy verses" are often framed in the present continuous tense, as if men are already in authority over women, not as if they should always be so. After all, the Qur'ān also urged equitable treatment of slaves without making slavery mandatory or normative. More to the point, even within the confines of a seventh century patriarchy, the Qur'ān addressed women; admitted their evidence in legal cases; broke the silence on their abuse; allowed them to inherit property and forbade men to inherit them; gave them a say in marriage contracts; instructed men, not just women, to remain chaste and behave modestly and even to lower their gazes in the public arena; banned an existing form of divorce on the pleas of a wife; promised men and women the same rewards; tasked husbands with caring for their families and being just to their wives, divorced wives and orphans in their care; and included fathers in its injunctions about childbearing/rearing while warning that God will call to account all those who kill their girls. More crucially, the Qur'ān taught that men and women are ontologically equal in that they originate in the same self.

Many people today, especially secular/feminists, judge the Qur'ān through the prism of minority trends within contemporary feminist discourses and find it lacking. This is disingenuous since we know it's not a feminist text. Even so, it ascribed agency, will and subjectivity to women a millennium and a half ago and we could, if we wanted, interpret its "hierarchy verses" in light of these revolutionary teachings. After all, the gender hierarchy these verses addressed has long since passed into time and though its reincarnations remain, we don't have to sacrifice all that is liberatory in the Qur'ān to these patriarchies.

All this to say that, in the end, it is up to us whether we read justice or injustice into the Qur'ān. My own preference is to read it as the word of a Creator who is just, merciful and non-partisan. If we can find this God in our hearts, perhaps we will also be able to find more ethical ways of knowing one another.

Asma Barlas is Professor of Politics at Ithaca College. She is the author of Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an, now issued in a revised edition, and Islam, Muslims, and the US: Essays on Religion and Politics. This article is a revised version of a keynote address presented at the conference (Un)Just Religion: Building Community and Identity, at Wilfrid Laurier University, Toronto, on 16 March 2019.