Engaging the Tafsīr Tradition: A Springboard into a Bottomless Ocean

Abstract

Engaging the Tafsīr TraditionA Springboard into a Bottomless Ocean Hadia Mubarak (bio) Does the Qurʾan chart a new discourse on women and gender—one that upends and subverts patriarchal norms or gender oppression—or does it, on the other hand, entrench patriarchal norms and hierarchies? This has been a persistent question in the scholarship on gender in the Qurʾan, and the answers generated by the past two decades of scholarship are far from conclusive. There have generally been three approaches to this question. One approach is a scripturalist one, which distinguishes between the Qurʾan's portrayal and treatment of women and the exegetical portrayal of women. A few significant works that took this approach are Women, Muslim Society and Islam (1988), by Lamya Faruqi (d. 1986), Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions, and Interpretations (1996), by Barbara Stowasser (d. 2012), and Women and Gender in the Qur'an (2020), by Celene Ibrahim. Stowasser's book was the first significant English-language academic work to be devoted to the subject. Departing from the approach of many scholars to skirt the exegetical tradition in their engagement with the Qurʾan, Stowasser took a deep plunge into this tradition, finding that qurʾanic exegesis and the Qurʾan itself are not always consistent in their portrayal of women. Ibrahim's work, which explores all the major and minor female figures referenced in the Qurʾan, pushes the boundaries of qurʾanic studies through her engagement with the Qurʾan through the lens of "Muslima theology."1 A second approach to this persistent question is to separate the Qurʾan from its exegesis with the specific aim of recovering what authors believe is the [End Page 63] Qurʾan's "anti-patriarchal epistemology" or its egalitarian trajectory.2 This second approach resembles the first; however, it diverges in its a priori conclusion that the Qurʾan is an egalitarian text and in its aim to make a case for the Qurʾan's egalitarian episteme. Scholars who have contributed significant works to a rereading of qurʾanic scripture from a gendered lens are Asma Barlas, amina wadud, Azizah al-Hibri, Riffat Hassan, Abla Hasan, and Asma Lamrabet, among others. The third approach has been a critical reading, one that challenges the subjectivity, "text fundamentalism,"3 and "methodological rigidity"4 of feminist approaches to the Qurʾan. Primarily concerned with philosophical and methodological arguments, scholars working on gender in the Qurʾan who have taken this approach include Kecia Ali, Aysha Hidayatullah, and Ebrahim Moosa. They critique feminist scholars or exegetes for imposing their own contemporary sensibilities upon the Qurʾan, even when the literal meanings of the text appear to contradict their egalitarian aspirations for it. As a way out of the deadlock between the second and third approaches described here, I argue for a fourth approach that more robustly engages with the long history of qurʾanic interpretation. Despite the flourishing of literature on women in the Qurʾan, much of the conversation on the Qurʾan's gender ethics or gender justice is occurring outside the genre of qurʾanic commentaries (tafsīr). A few exceptions to this are Karen Bauer's Gender Hierarchy in the Qurʾan (2015), Ayesha Chaudhry's Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition (2013), Johanna Pink's Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today (2018), Nevin Reda and Yasmin Amin's edited volume Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice (2020), and my own Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands (2022). What does a constructive engagement with tafsīr studies offer the field of women and gender in the Qurʾan? The pluralism of the exegetical tradition offers a gateway for new interpretations, ones that do not presume patriarchy as an inherent feature of the qurʾanic text. A closer analysis of this discipline also enriches contemporary efforts to recover Islam's broader ethics, including gender egalitarianism. Moreover, a serious engagement with tafsīr can recover subtle semantic insights and can provide a clearer understanding of intratextual mechanics and intertextual resonances. A substantive engagement with the Qurʾan's interpretive tradition, tafsīr points to the textual polysemy of Islam's long-standing interpretive tradition. The pluralism...