Women and Gender in the Qur'an
Author: Celene Ibrahim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year of Publication: 2020
Print Length: 232 pages
Genre: Islamic Studies / Quranic Studies, Science; Qur’anic Reflection, Non-Fiction / Religious Studies
Topic: Allah ﷻ, Islam, Qur’an, Gender, Woman and Femininity, History & Origin, Sexuality, Sexual Etiquette, Love, Beauty, Family, Friendship & Companionship, Marriage, Forgiveness, Hope, Humanity
Stories about gendered social relations permeate the Qur’an, and nearly three hundred verses involve specific women or girls. The Qur’an features these figures in accounts of human origins, in stories of the founding and destruction of nations, in narratives of conquest, in episodes of romantic attraction, and in incidents of family devotion and strife. Overall, stories involving women and girls weave together theology and ethics to reinforce central Qur’anic ideas regarding submission to God and moral accountability.
Celene Ibrahim explores the complex cast of female figures in the Qur’an, probing themes related to biological sex, female sexuality, female speech, and women in sacred history. Ibrahim considers major and minor figures referenced in the Qur’an, including those who appear in narratives of sacred history, in parables, in descriptions of the eternal abode, and in verses that allude to events contemporaneous with the advent of the Qur’an in Arabia. Ibrahim finds that the Qur’an regularly celebrates the aptitudes of women in the realms of spirituality and piety, in political maneuvering, and in safeguarding their own wellbeing; yet, women figures also occasionally falter and use their agency toward nefarious ends.
Women and Gender in the Qur’an outlines how women and girls – old, young, barren, fertile, chaste, profligate, reproachable, and saintly -enter Qur’anic sacred history and advance the Qur’an’s overarching didactic aims.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration and Translation
Abbreviations
Introduction
Bearing Revelation / Women and Girls in Qur’anic Narratives / From Adam’s Spouse (Haawa’) to Heavenly Companions (Huris) / Women Personalities in Islamic Sacred History / Deciphering Qur’anic Narratives / The Tentative Mufassira / Power and Privilege in “Qur’anic Studies” / Muslima Theology and Feminist Qur’anic Exegesis
1. Female Sex and Sexuality
Sex and Telos / Recognizing Anatomical Difference / Qur’anic Depictions of Intercourse / Qur’anic Terms for Spouses / Regulating Sexuality and Licit Partnerships / Guarding against Illicit Sexual Desire / Vice, Virtue, and the Viceroy’s Wife / Negotiating Marriage Arrangements / A Marriage Made in Heaven / Sexual Slander / Sexual Assault / Sexual Misconduct, Advocacy, and Redemption / Beauty: Virtue, Not Aesthetics / Otherworldly Sexualities / Sex, Gender, and Angelic Beings / Ethereal Creations / Sexed Bodies and Sexual Pleasure in Paradise / Sexual Difference, Sexual Intercourse, and Regulating Desire
2. Female Kin, Procreation, and Parenting
God and Procreation / Family-in-Life, Death and Eternity / Guidance for Parents and Caregivers / Gendered Dimensions of Child-Parent Relations / Motherhood in Qur’anic Metaphors / Forebears in Qur’anic Narratives / Jesus’s Grandmother and Other Qur’anic Matriarchs / Additional Positive Depictions of Mother Figures / Parenting and Piety in Qur’anic Narratives / Additional Narratives of Parental Negligence / Father-Daughter Relations in Qur’anic Narratives / Foster Mothers and Foster Daughters / Sister Figures in Qur’anic Narratives / The Womb and Beyond
3. Women Speakers and Interlocutors
Queenly Speech and Exemplary Leadership / The Secret Cries / God’s Revelation to a Woman / God Hears Women’s Grievances / God Recognizes Women’s Piety / God Speaks to the First Woman / Endemic Chauvinism and Female Speech / God Addresses the Women of the Prophet Muhammad’s Family / Damned Women / Lying Speech from a Woman / Affective Dimensions of Female Speech / The Words of Women
4. Women Exemplars for an Emerging Polity
Early Negative Female Exemplars / Persecution of Prophetic Families / Women Figures Incurring God’s Wrath / The Regal Proselyte / An Abrahamic Polity, from Mecca to Medina / Kindred Prophetic Missions / “Chosenness” and Continuity / Women, Law, and Polity / Not Your Mother’s Back / A Test of Loyalty: “When the Believing Women Come” (Q 60:10) / Punishments for Slandering Upright Women / The Qur’an and the Female Presence
Conclusion
Women and Girls in the Stories of Revelation
Qur’anic Stories in a Gendered Social World
Future Directions
Appendices
Bibliography
Index of People and Places
Index of Qur’an Citations
Index of Subjects and Terms
Celene Ibrahim is a scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic intellectual history and applied ethics. She is best known for her monograph Women and Gender in the Qur’an, published by Oxford University Press, which won the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies Book Award in 2021 and was featured for Women’s History Month by the American Academy of Religion. She is also the author of the primer Islam and Monotheism (2022), published by Cambridge University Press and the editor of the book One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019).
Her research interests include Islamic moral psychology and virtue ethics, postcolonial theology, and spiritually informed activism. Her current research project examines Islamic ethics related to issues of gender and sexuality.
Source: https://www.celeneibrahim.org/about
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