Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur'an: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender

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Description

This volume challenges a long history of normalizing patriarchal approaches to the Quran and calls for a questioning of the interpretive credibility of many inherited Quranic commentaries. The author presents a fresh reading of the sacred text and Islamic teaching traditions as the rediscovery of a lost humanitarian and gender-egalitarian textual richness that has been poorly and loosely handled for centuries. The book stresses the importance of reviewing the interpretive linguistic choices that jurists and exegetes over the last fourteen centuries have adopted to semantically reshape the Quranic text. The vigilant reading the author provides of carefully chosen texts and commentaries suggests that many interpretive approaches to the Quran are dominated by sociopolitical factors alien to the intrinsic values of the text itself. More importantly, inconsistencies across putatively sound books of tafsr indicate that the Quranic text often suffers from historical and systematic drainage of its humanitarianism, gender-egalitarianism, and religious pluralism.

Reviews

Hasan, while respecting the sacred nature of the Qu'ran, uses her background in linguistic philosophy to provide a much-needed corrective to centuries of (mis)interpretation. The result is a Muslim feminist reading of the Qu'ran from inside the tradition. -- Sidnie White Crawford, Princeton Theological Seminary
This book helps us to better understand the Quran by illuminating the gender egalitarianism of the text. It is useful both for scholars who seek new ways to examine an ancient scripture, and for believers who need new theological resources for their faith. -- Amir Hussain, professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

Author Bio

Abla Hasan is associate professor of Arabic language and culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.