Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (2 page)

Readers of
Inside the Gender Jihad
will be taken on an intellectually rigorous and truly thrilling journey not just through the problems that confront Muslims today, or the many gender injustices that plague contem- porary articulations of the Islamic faith, but also through the many forms of intolerable oppression, including racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, and economic exploitation – all of which have become interminable causes of human suffering in our world. As I say intellectually rigorous, I hasten to add that this is an accessible book written to reach a broad audience and that it can be engaged by any serious reader who cares about Islam or simply human beings.

What makes this book particularly accessible is that it is semi-autobio- graphical – with remarkable candor and transparency the author walks the reader through her own intellectual and ethical struggles as a woman, as a mother, as an African-American, as an academic, as a Muslim, and, most importantly, as a human being. Yet because of her awe-inspiring honesty, this is one author who resists categorization or any form of reductionism. Professor Wadud cannot comfortably be fitted with a label such as feminist, progressive, liberal, or Islamist. The author does wage a
jihad
against gender prejudices and other injustices, including what she describes as the erasure of human beings and their dignity. But with a level of frankness, conscientiousness, and self-consciousness that is rarely found, she is simul- taneously critical not just of conservative or traditional Islam, but also of progressive Muslims, feminism, and even, when need be, herself. The author’s transparency and ability to engage and interrogate Islamic texts, and her fellow Muslims, as well as interrogate her own thought and

viii
inside the gender jihad

intellectual development allows the reader to gain unique insight into the very real challenges that confront modern Muslims.

As a Muslim reading this book, I felt at different times variously engaged, enriched, enthralled, excited, upset, angered, and enraged. At times, I found myself strongly disagreeing with some of the author’s arguments about Islamic law, but at all times I could not but feel a deep

sense of

respect

for her

integrity,

courage,

and honesty. This is

hardly surprising in a book written by an author who does not mince words, engage in double-talk, or hide in ambiguities. But even more, I believe that this is an author who would not be happy with an uncritical and complacent reader, and would be flattered by disagreement if it were the result of a serious and engaged reading of her text. Professor Wadud is the living embodiment of someone who takes to heart the Qur’anic command to bear witness for God’s sake in justice even if it is against her loved ones or herself. In essence, this is a scholar who practices what she believes and preaches, and instead of theorizing from the cushioned safety of an ivory tower, she is down in the trenches fighting for what she believes, and suffering enormously for it. Professor Wadud does share with the reader some of her experiences from this frontline, but she does not emphasize the extent to which she has consistently suffered, and has been

ostracized, attacked, and

even

persecuted for taking her religion very

seriously –

in fact, more seriously than most Muslims. Consequently,

she is better positioned than most scholars to understand and explain the realities of Islam as lived and experienced by its adherents. And, indeed, Professor Wadud’s book avoids the essentialisms, stereotypes, prejudices, apologetics, and sheer fantasies that fill so much of the literature on Islam that crowds the shelves of so many bookstores.

The author continues to wage a gender
jihad
from the trenches against an entrenched and stubborn patriarchy, and, in part, this book is a faithful record of that moral struggle. But, unlike so much of the sensationalistic, and at times Islamophobic, writings that are published these days, this is not a book about the trouble with Islam, what went wrong with Islam, why Islam is a problem, or why Islam is some type of implicitly failed religion. Sadly, there are too many readers in the West today who hope to find a self-hating Muslim blathering or spewing venom about the countless evils inflicted upon the author’s poor suffering Muslim soul by a religion he or she supposedly chooses to follow. These types of ugly gyrations by self-declared Muslims who prostitute their own religious tradition in order to appease bigots or who clamor to serve certain vested political interests

Foreword
ix

have become all too common. Of course, as to these self-hating confessional writers, one cannot help but wonder why, if Islam torments them so, they continue to associate themselves with the Islamic faith. Whatever their personal motivations, however, the reality is that there is a vast difference between those who gaze inwards while standing on a firm grounding of knowledge and those who do so while swimming in a sea of ignorance. There is also a vast difference between those who critically engage the Islamic tradition while believing that Islam is a problem and those who do so while believing that Islam is the solution. Unfortunately, particularly in the West, works by pretenders who pretentiously act out the role of reconstructionists have considerably obfuscated that critical line that differ- entiates learned reformers from ignorant sensationalists who are motivated by nothing more than the most prurient interests.

Those readers who are searching for the tormented soul of a self-hating Muslim or the gyrations of a sensationalist eager to please Islamophobes had better leave this book alone. On the other hand, readers who are seeking to engage in a journey of conscientious struggle and learning will find this book nothing short of enlightening. For this author, it is Islam that nourishes her struggle for justice, that forces her to be uncompromising in her honesty with others and with herself, and ultimately, that motivates her to stand steadfastly in the trenches discharging her duties as a fully autonomous moral agent. Significantly, Professor Wadud does so in the context of critically analyzing Islamic theology and reconceptualizing the relationship between a Muslim and her God. The author carefully con- structs what she calls a Tawhidic paradigm – a paradigm not only of pure monotheism but of a sincere and total submission to God.

According to the author’s paradigm, a person who makes the commit- ment to surrender to God accepts a covenant of conscientious moral and autonomous agency. The divine covenant offered by God to human beings entails an unwavering commitment to justice, integrity, truthfulness, and resistance to all forms of dominance and oppression. Injustice as well as all forms of dominance and oppression undermine and at times completely obliterate a human being’s moral agency – they rob people of their auto- nomy – of their ability to be responsible before God for their own moral judgments and actions. Surrendering to God, however, is laden with chal- lenges – meaningful surrender means that one must be vigilant in waging a relentless
jihad
against human weaknesses such as vanity, cowardliness, apathy, mindless conformity, self-deception, dishonesty, arrogance, and acquiescence in ignorance. Further complicating the challenge to surrender

x inside the gender jihad

is the sheer magnanimity, limitlessness, and omnipotence of the Divine. The Divine cannot be constrained or fully represented by a text, a code of law, creation, or the actions or thoughts of created beings. In order for human agency to be a true exercise in autonomy and for the surrender to be meaningful, it is imperative that Muslims critically interrogate their texts, laws, customs, and thoughts. This critical stance vis-à-vis the divine text or law is not done for its own sake; it is an essential component of the Muslim covenant with God, as it is a critical part of the ongoing struggle to surrender meaningfully by gaining mastery and autonomy over oneself, and as it is a necessary part of the persistent quest for justice.

One cannot fully surrender what one does not own, but self-ownership, or, more precisely, self-mastery, has many impediments. Those impediments include everything that compromises the self and renders its surrender to God false, artificial, or spurious. Upon reflection, most Muslims will agree with the above statements, and they are likely to recall the oft-repeated Islamic polemic that only through sincere submission to God does one attain true liberty. But what is often overlooked or intentionally ignored is the difficulty of this surrender. Consequently, Professor Wadud’s insightful and painfully honest discourse on the struggle to surrender is not just precisely the point but is also inspirational. What many Muslims fail to realize is the extent to which the exploitation of human beings, oppression, authoritarianism, and despotism are truly potent impediments – impedi- ments that render the whole human dynamic with the Divine covenant plagued with falsehood, insincerity, and hypocrisy. As the author recog- nizes, despotism and oppression take many forms and are perpetuated under a variety of guises. From a theological point of view, the worst forms are when human beings usurp the role of God, and exploit the name of the Divine in the process of erasing the autonomy and will of other human beings. Professor Wadud perceptively describes the many ways by which the Divine authority, text, or law are transformed into instruments exploited by those in power in order to erase the other. This, in turn, brings us full circle to the necessity of interrogating the tools or instruments that are used to commit the religious and moral offense of erasing other human beings in God’s name.

This brings me to the most important contribution of this book. Unfor- tunately, an inordinate number of Muslim men, and also women, fail to recognize the many ways that patriarchy is an offense against morality and Islam. Too many Muslims and non-Muslims are not sufficiently sensitized to the fact that patriarchy is despotism and that it is a morally offensive

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condition. As an institution, patriarchy feeds on the eradication of women’s moral agency; it erases and marginalizes women; and, most significantly, it negates the possibility of true surrender to God. Likewise, an inordinate number of Muslims fail to reflect upon the extent to which patriarchy exploits the instruments of religious authority but ends up displacing God’s authority altogether. Professor Wadud’s frank and generous narrative about the many ways in which Muslim women, including the author, experience erasure in their various respective communities is compelling evidence of this lack of sensitivity, reflection, and awareness. Often erasure is purposeful and sinister, as when it is the result of willful animosity to women, but what is more challenging and also endemic is when erasure is subtle, inconspicuous, and nearly imperceptible because it is the outcome of moral ambivalence, or a well-theorized and well-fortified act of self-deception. After all, what could be more potent and dangerous than the seemingly endless ability of human beings to deceive themselves into believing that those who are erased are actually being affirmed, that the oppressed are actually in the process of being liberated, that the margin- alized are well sheltered and protected, and that, ultimately, they like it this way?

Centuries ago the Qur’an warned human beings against the psychology of ambivalence – the dealing with moral failures through escapist strategies of displacement and projection. The Qur’an warned that the psychology of ambivalence creates people who are oblivious to the true nature of their conduct – such people corrupt the earth while insisting that they are doers of good. Corrupting the earth is a Qur’anic expression that refers to conduct that fundamentally undermines and tears apart the fabric of God’s creation. The Qur’an gives several examples of such conduct, including: oppression, exploitation, duress and compulsion (
al-istid‘af wa al-istibdad wa al-ikrah
), destroying life in all its forms, the attempt to annihilate the richness and diversity of human societies and their ability to intercourse with one another and reach greater understanding (
al-ta‘aruf
), impeding reflection and thought, and the pursuit of knowledge (
al
-
tafakkur wa talab al-‘ilm
), preventing people from worshiping and supplicating God each according to his or her particular way and
shari‘ah
(
likulin shir’atan wa minhaja
), planting the seeds of acrimony, friction, and warfare, the destruc- tion of places of worship, including temples, churches, and mosques, the spreading of fear, insecurity, and terror (
al-khawf wa al-irhab
), and robbing people of their sense of safety, serenity, and tranquility (
al-aman wa al- mann wa al-salwa
), and usurping people of their livelihood and properties

xii inside the gender jihad

(
al-ma’ash wa al-‘amlak
). However, the quintessential act of corruption is, whether intentionally or obliviously, to perpetuate conditions that rob humans of their agency and thus their ability to partake in God’s covenant in any meaningful way. A part of this corruption is to attempt to erase the Divine presence, to replace God’s role by usurping and claiming the authority of the Divine as one’s own, to arrogantly and pretentiously stand ready to issue judgments about God’s will without due diligence, critical moral reflection, or conscientious pursuit of learning. It is the psychology of ambivalence that is responsible for the virtual flood in self-designated so-called experts indulging in
ijtihad
-talk and simultaneously spewing a plethora of ill-informed
fatwa
s. Speaking one’s mind is an exercise in autonomy and agency, but the practice of
ijtihad
has its own equally compelling ethics, the most essential and basic of which is well embodied by the meaning of the word itself, which is: to exert and exhaust oneself in the pursuit of thought and knowledge in search of the Divine will. Without question, Muslims ought to be free to speak their minds and voice their opinions, but it is a different thing altogether to pretend to speak the mind of the Divine and, instead of humbly voicing one’s opinions, presump- tuously endowing oneself with the voice of God. I think the current state of affairs in the Muslim world is a living proof of the chaos and confusion that is borne when people lose their sense of self-respect, which is the only real barrier against people speaking out of ignorance. Perhaps it is this widespread condition of ambivalence that is responsible for the fact that so many Muslims have forgotten that learning, reflection, investigation, and invention are integral parts of the covenant to civilize the earth and spread justice throughout its corners. Perhaps it is this widespread condition of ambivalence that has made so many Muslims forget the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings about the nature of piety – piety as a struggle to understand, as the pursuit of learning, and as an ethic of humble reserve in which the process of seeking enlightenment is considered far more deserving of respect than the claim of having become enlightened. I suspect that it is the psychology of ambivalence that erased and marginalized the Prophet’s tradition that once uplifted Muslims into understanding that learning is a never-ending process of
jihad
, and that, taught that in the sight of God, it is far more honorable to read and think than to speak.