Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (41 page)

204 inside the gender jihad

The jurists, the poets, the Sufis, the dialecticians, the philosophers, and the linguists, women and men,
all
took part in interrogating textual mean- ings to build a global community of balance or equilibrium – a just society. We can rewrite the law, the
shari‘ah
, through
fiqh
. In fact, we must rewrite the law. The
fiqh
of earlier times, just like that of our time, only has meaning as
fiqh al-waqi‘ah
, the
fiqh
of lived reality, that assists in estab- lishing codes of conduct to facilitate the achievement of a just and moral social order as mandated by Qur’anic principles. At the time of revelation, gender was not a category of thought, examined in light of diverse, relative living realities. The absence of such a category of thought was not sexist at the time of revelation, but it is palpably so today. Whatever sexism might be found in the words of the immutable Qur’an is a reflection of the historical context of Qur’anic revelation. Today, sexism is rejected in all its expres- sions of asymmetrical theories and practices where men are privileged to the detriment of women by deterring them from reaching their fullest potential as divinely assigned full human agents. By rewriting the legal codes, through distinguishing their sexist assumptions, we can achieve an Islamic reality more

meaningfully reflecting Qur’anic principles in a harmonious equilibrium.

Just as there are medical ethics, where we must rely upon specialists in other areas, in this case we have particular specialists in social and psycho- logical fields of human knowledge, to help augment our continued journey to where the Qur’an can potentially lead us. Clearly, we were able to stop practicing the institution of slavery and never charged ourselves with vio- lating the text. Even the most conservative of Muslim fundamentalists do not argue for a return to the Qur’anic position of accepting slavery under the seventh-century practice. What more impetus to correct gender imbalance could there be than the Qur’an’s own tenacious insistence on dealing with the issues in a most despicable and despised context of pre-Islamic patri- archy? There are more verses in the Qur’an regarding the full human dignity of women than any other social issues. Surely the Qur’anic trajectory as uni- versal guidance should not be made into retrograde patriarchal standards and practices.

Ultimately, we can exercise the continued progression of human agency and rewrite the basic paradigmatic core of what can be considered Islamic ethics by a multiplicity of means now available to human understanding about what it means to acquire, practice, and assert how we live as ethical beings and moral agents of the divine will. Gender, as a category of thought, is one of the most significant aspects of this development of human under- standing and is essential to raising the level of an Islamic ethos to more

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closely resemble the universal intent of the divine message as contextually disclosed in the revelation of the Qur’an.

ON LINGUISTICS AND A HERMENEUTICS OF GENDER JUSTICE

Instead of trying to change the immutable words, we grapple with and challenge the inherent sexist biases of the historicity of words. As agents we surmise what are particulars and what are universals to establish general mechanisms for achieving the fullest justice of our time. Muslim scholars help point us toward the theoretical foundations of that justice. Legal scholars must represent the people’s need for full justice, unhampered by its relative reflections during past historical movements but rather inspired by their relative potential, and consolidate these with today’s historical realities, without narrow authoritative intolerance, so that we can lead toward the many possible futures of Islam, when surely new circumstances will require freedom in achieving the continuity of the interrogative process toward the goal of a just social order.

While researching and compiling
Qur’an and Woman
, as an agent, African-American, woman, believer, transitioner, and thinker, I occupied a place of extreme anonymity. This allowed me a freedom to examine our tradition through my mind and my heart. I have lost that freedom since the ideas made a public d
é
but. On the one hand, this has forced me to broaden my research perspective of what “Islam” can be, and what it means to me, through various areas of study like progressive Islam, feminism, and postmodernism, Third World and Western political theory and politics, liberation theologies, the new globalization, and of course, through experi- ences. On the other hand, I have lost the protected insulation around my heart and mind that I possessed when I was free to focus solely upon how an open heart moves toward understanding the divine through text. Now that I know more, my heart is burdened more. I am painfully aware of the need to manage multiple audiences, as the Prophet advised, by
“
speaking to the people in the way they understand.
”
This is the challenge I must meet, and I can no longer work solely from or for my own spiritual inspir- ation, but must acknowledge the complexities of the entire Muslim world, including those who have a predilection for divergent opinions, let alone those who are violent against the innocent.

Without the luxury of solitary heartfelt inspiration, I am responsible for engaging in discussions of interpretive possibilities and making comparative

206 inside the gender jihad

analysis about the Qur’an’s centrality as a prerequisite to all intellectual discourse, and yet still as one indisputable core of spiritual realization. As the primacy of the underlying spiritual inspiration of the Qur’an is almost wholly lost in textual analysis, my initial discussion was more at liberty to highlight that aspect, like a river running beneath the intense layers of liberal and progressive thinking about language, context, and hermeneutics. Allah is, has always been, and will always be, present. Allah has endeavored to inform free-willed moral agents of Her presence through many
ayat
–
in the text and everywhere in the universe. Revelation can be seen as an

ayah

of crisis intervention as well as
dhikr
(a reminder) and a
furqan

(proof) of Allah’s continual presence, continual creation, and/or continual Self-disclosure. For language-dependent human minds, revelation is the ultimate sign of Allah’s presence or Self-disclosure to guide human hearts in the surrender to Its divine will. Through extensive analysis of the text, we have learned how language is a most unique gift to humankind, imbued with immeasurable power and potential, while paradoxically one of the most fallible. In human language, we can lie. What is more, we can become trapped in our own lies through denial or blatant hypocrisy. When the Qur’an says, “Why do you say that which you do not do? It is a grievous injustice to say that which you do not do” (61:2), humans can stand forward to speak on the very issues of human well-being that they privately violate. As long as the truth of our actions is kept secret from our public personae then we can wear this false persona as easily as we can violate truth through our private actions. I want to mean what I say, and say what I mean. Even more, I want to be the Muslim I aspire to be as best as I understand and attempt to articulate in the context of the human language facility.

Yet this language facility is also applied to understanding the tran- scendent nature of the divine.
Within
the paradox of multiple meanings of the language medium, to say nothing of the direct lie, there can be huge gaps rather than mutual understanding between Muslims as one group among many recipients of revelation. God’s disclosure through text in the fallible human language medium can never completely disclose That Which is also disclosed through countless other mediums, signs, or
ayat
. Complete disclosure can never be contained by any means, least of all the heavily flawed means of human linguistic communication.

This

has already

been

addressed

by the

dispute

between the

Mu‘tazilites
and the Asha‘rites as to whether

the Qur’an is
eternal

with God or
created
. There are other questions to ponder. Is Allah multi- lingual, so that She can reveal in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, or is Allah

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meta-lingual
, not constricted by any language? Every language is a con- straint on complete divine Self-disclosure. Is Arabic preferable, divine, or just the most convenient tool to use with an Arab prophet? Is the divine message limited to (or by) words – of any language? Do Muslims truly recognize the presence of Allah in words, or deem themselves gods by enforcing their understandings and misunderstandings of those words? Is recognition of the presence of Allah limited to reading the words of the Qur’an? Since the majority of Muslims are non-Arabic speaking can they know the presence of Allah?

I have heard the recitation from many a
hafiz
(Qur’anic memorizer) who cannot render comprehensible phraseology in their recitation, but instead only parrot the sounds they learned by rote memorization, and it sounds like gibberish, not meaningful communication. Meanwhile, a
hafiz
who has specifically learned the Qur’anic linguistic worldview can bring tears to the eyes of a comprehending listener. Is Allah’s presence so limited? No. Allah’s presence is everywhere as He continues to create and recreate at every second sustaining the universe in the bosom of His love. And like the infant child
knows
he or she is loved in the arms of the mother or the father, so the believer knows the presence of Allah, before, during, after, and without reading the Qur’an. In other words, whatever “the word of God” means, the Qur’an is not God. Words are fallible. Hence Muslims can and have used it for justice and as well as for despicable violence. It is “Muslims” in response to their own hearts and minds in interaction with the words that determine the results. The Qur’an is the source; people are the resource. That is why I stress not only the significance of interpretation, but also the relationship of interpretation and actions.

THE SUN NEITHER RISES NOR SETS

When we read the words “
gharabat ash-shams
” in the Qur’an, literally, “the sun wests,” sun is the grammatical actor, the subject of the sentence. The basic sentence structure requires a subject and a predicate. The predicate is the grammatical act, indicated by a verb. The action of the subject in a sentence is articulated as a particular verb. Here, the sentence contains a verb that does not exist in English, “
gharaba
.” Etymologically this verb can be traced to the word
gharb,
which means
west.
The Arabic sentence in the Qur’an depicts the place of the sun at the end of the day – in the west. But it cannot be literally translated into English as “the sun wests (itself).” To “west” itself, as this sentence states, despite the absence of an

208 inside the gender jihad

English verb equivalent to “west,” makes the sun as the subject/actor, and

west
as the verb or action.

In another sense, this sentence might be describing a movement somewhere in the universe, which results in the location of the sun’s evening appearance in the west. From the perspective of earthly creatures the sun appears in the west. With no English equivalent for the verb “west,” trans- lators use the idiomatic English equivalent, “The sun sets.” The English sentence has subject and verb as well. In it, “the sun” is subject and “set” is verb. Whereas it is insignificant in the Arabic sentence whether the verb here implies that the sun, a star in the universe, actually moves itself, vis-à-vis the earth, to the west, the action of the English sentence is very significant. The results of the Arabic sentence is that the subject, “sun,” is connected to its location in the west, as indicated by the verb. It is a logical and scientifically accurate statement, whether we know or not from the verb how the action of “westing” is achieved. Some movement of the sun could achieve it, or some other movement, like the earth turning on its axis could achieve it. The result, however, is that the sun is west with respect to human perceptions on the earth.

Unfortunately, the absence of a verb “to west” in English requires the translator to reduce the sentence to the only semantic English equivalent, literally “the sun sets.” We accept this translation based on the absence of a verb “to west” in the English language. We stick to the translation, “the sun sets,” with the implication that the sun performs the act of setting, even though the sun actually makes no motion. The earth moves on its axis until the sun appears in the west. Our English sentence reflects the time when human knowledge actually thought the earth was the center of the universe and the sun’s appearance in the west meant that it was the sun itself that had moved west resulting in sunset. But the sun does not set. No English statement exists to reflect the reality about the workings of the earth in

relation to the

sun. “The

sun

sets”

only

expresses

the

limitations in

prior human knowledge as well as in the resulting articulation
in language
to the limitations of human perspective historically. Oddly, this linguistic limitation persists until now, despite our subsequent development in scien- tific knowledge, which has taught us that the actor is really the earth. So still today, we say “the sun sets,” making no reference to the sun’s persistent location vis-à-vis the movement or action of the earth.

Although a word equivalent to “set” exists in Arabic (
nazala,
to descend), and actually occurs numerous times in the Qur’an, it is a technical term of special semantic implication and most frequently refers to the

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