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Towards a Qur'anic Hermeneutics of Social Justice: Race, Class and Gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Amina Wadud
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Extract

From the onset, one must dispel the idea that addressing gender issues or referring to “women” and “woman” is marginal to larger considerations of civil society and current global dynamics. Double standards with regard to images and treatment of women are indicators of distorted visions of social justice. Without remorse, women are often consigned to a sub-category in the estimation and construction of the social order through which we acquire justice.

What I discuss here are some preliminary ideas about social justice. My vision of social justice is predicated upon two things: my personal experiences of inequities because of race, class and gender; and my search in the Islamic tradition, and more precisely, in the Qur'anic text, for a perspective on civil society which dispels the tendencies towards oppression and social injustice.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , 1995 , pp. 37 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1995

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References

1. See for example, Khadduri, Majid, The Islamic Conception of Justice (Hopkins U Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Kotb, Sayed, Social Justice in Islam (Misr, Maktabat, Hardie, John B. trans, 1945, reprint 1970)Google Scholar; Rahbar, Muhammad Daud, God of Justice: A Study, in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qur'an (Leiden, 1960)Google Scholar.

2. Bellah, Robert N., Meaning and Modernization and Between Religion and Social Science in Bellah, Robert N., Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World 64, 237 (Harper & Row, 1976)Google Scholar.

3. For further consideration specifically addressed to Islam and the social justice or equal citizenship of women and non-Muslim minorities in Islamic countries see An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Islamic Law, International Relations and Human Rights: Challenge and Response, 20 Cornell Intl L J 317 (1987)Google Scholar; also see An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Toward Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law (Syracuse U Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

4. For further consideration of the construction of women's “other”-ness, see Knopf, Alfred A., ed, The Second Sex (Parshley, H.M., Knopf, Alfred A. trans, 1952, reprint 1964)Google Scholar.

5. For an in-depth discussion of this correlation between social systems and psychological consciousness, see Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (Plenum Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Research on the residual psychological effects of American slavery on the perceptions of present day African-Americans, as well as their white counterparts, still remains insufficient.

7. Tarvis, Carol, The Mismeasure of Woman 29 (Simon & Schuster, 1992)Google Scholar.

8. Understood as implementing each verse into their lives.

9. Mir, Mustanir, Thematic and Structural Coherence in the Qur'an: A Study of Islahi's Concept of Nazm (U Mich Microfilms Intl, 1987)Google Scholar.

10. Although not concerned with the consideration of gender justice, see Ali, Salah Salim, Misrepresentations of Some Ellipted Structures in the Translation of the Qur'an by A.Y. Ali and M.M. Pickthall, 12 Hamdard Islamicus 27, 33 (Winter, 1994)Google Scholar.

11. Izutsu, Toshihiko, Koranic Key-Terms in History in Izutsu, Toshihiko, Cod and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung 36 (Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964)Google Scholar.

12. Izutsu, , God and Man in the Koran at 45 (cited in note 11)Google Scholar. “… Islam produced many different systems of thought in the post-Koranic periods.… Each of these cultural products of Islam developed its own conceptual system, i.e., its own ‘vocabulary’.…” Also see Wadud-Muhsin, Amina, Qur'an and Woman 94 (Malaysia, 1992)Google Scholar.

13. God is neither male nor female.

14. Burke, Kenneth, On Words and The Word in Burke, Kenneth, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology 7 (Beacon Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

15. It is also stated explicitly in the text, for example at 9:70, 10:44, 29:40, 30:9. The Message of The Qur'ān, 272, 298, 612, 618 (Dar Al-Andalus, Ltd, Asad, Muhammad trans, 1980)Google Scholar.

16. Defined as equity, justice established, respectively.

17. Buber, Martin, I and Thou 3 (Charles Scribner's Sons, Smith, Ronald Gregor trans, 1958)Google Scholar.

18. Although much remains unsaid, I will reserve other points about zulm and its categories of usage in order to move toward the conclusion of this discussion regarding women and injustice in Islam.

19. Laa yu'minu ahadukum nana, yuhibba li-akhihi, maa yuhibbu li-nafisihi. (In reference to text: the Prophet said, “One of you does not believe until he loves for his brother (or sister…) what (or as) he loves for himself.” (Translation by author).

20. This dimension of Qur'anic exegesis is currently still completely unresearched.