Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur'an: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender(Lexington Studies in Islamic Thought)

This volume challenges a long history of normalizing patriarchal approaches to the Qur’an and calls for a questioning of the interpretive credibility of many inherited Qur’anic 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 Qur’anic text. The vigilant reading the author provides of carefully chosen texts and commentaries suggests that many interpretive approaches to the Qur’an are dominated by sociopolitical factors alien to the intrinsic values of the text itself. More importantly, inconsistencies across putatively sound books of tafsīr indicate that the Qur’anic text often suffers from historical and systematic drainage of its humanitarianism, gender-egalitarianism, and religious pluralism.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Decoding the egalitarianism of the Qur’an: overcoming deficiencies Chapter 2: Gender egalitarianism in the Qur’an Chapter 3: Marriage in the Qur’an Chapter 4: Female body-ownership Chapter 5: Women’s agency in the Qur’an Conclusion Bibliography About the Author

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

Review :
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. This book helps us to better understand the Qur’an 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. Abla Hasan’s Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur’an is the book many readers have been waiting for. Hasan, a Syrian feminist specializing in the linguistics of the Qur’an as well as Women's Studies, succeeds in the task of arguing in an engaging and passionate way for the Qur’an’s egalitarian message.