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Book Review: Believing Women in Islam – Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Quran

April 12, 2019

Muslim feminists have two tedious battles to fight: one against those who hold on to patriarchal notions within their own community, and the other against feminists who refuse any reconciliation between feminism and any ‘Abrahamic’ religion, including Islam. From both sides, they are belittled, misjudged and dismissed. In ‘Believing Women in Islam’ by Saqi Books, Asma Barlas takes on these two battles with precision, clarity and a clear purpose: first, to ask  whether Islam’s scripture condones sexual inequality and oppression, and second, whether Islam permits or encourages liberation for women. Barlas begins tackling the former by critiquing patriarchal interpretations of the Quran. First, she starts by clearly defining ‘patriarchy’, and what it means for scripture to be patriarchal. Narrowly defined, patriarchy is a ‘mode of rule by fathers’, that is, it assumes a real relationship between the ‘father’ as a male figure and God, and extends this to the husband’s claim to rule over his wife and children. Barlas also adds on to this definition by including the politics of sexual differentiation that privileges males and transforms biological sex into a politicized gender, and thus, it is an ideology that…


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