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ON HIJAB AND AWRAH OF WOMEN AND SLAVES ( from FROM EL FADL’S ‘speaking in God’s name p.481-484)

ON HIJAB AND AWRAH OF WOMEN AND SLAVES ( FROM EL FADL’S ‘speaking in God’s name p.481-484)-reproduced verbatim There are several material elements that are often ignored when discussing the issue of ḥijāb or the ‘awrah of women. These elements suggest that the issue of fitnah might have dominated and shaped the discourse on the ‘awrah of women, but they are also informative as to the possible authorial enterprise behind the fitnah traditions. There are six main elements that, I believe, warrant careful examination in trying to analyze the laws of ‘awrah, and that invite us to re-examine the relationship between ‘awrah and fitnah. Firstly, early jurists disagreed on the meaning of zīnah (adornments) that women are commanded to cover. Some jurists argued that it is all of the body including the hair and face except for one eye. The majority argued that women must cover their full body except for the face and hands. Some jurists held that women may expose their feet and their arms up ...

Expert Witness Report on Gender Interactions and Women Clothing in the Islamic Tradition

Expert Witness Report on Gender Interactions and Women Clothing in the Islamic Tradition Adis Duderija The injunctions pertaining to women clothing in the Islamic interpretive tradition and gender relations in general (primarily Islamic jurisprudence known as fiqh) are result of interpretive processes that have taken several centuries to form. What is today considered four mainstream Sunni Islamic schools of law only reached large degree of hermeneutical stability after over 400 years of juristic and legal methodology reasoning (Hallaq 2004 ; Jackson 2002). Jackson, who uses a Darwinian metaphor of the survival of the fittest, describes this process of the formation of mainstream Sunnism as follows by the end of the 4th/10th century, the madhhab had emerged as the exclusive repository of legal authority. From this point on, all interpretive activity, if it was to be sanctioned and recognized as aut...

Khaled Abou El Fadl's Approach to the Hadith

Khaled Abou El Fadl's Approach to the Hadith Khaled Abou El Fadl (b.1963) is one of the most distinguished scholars of Islamic law today. He is also one of the few progressive Muslim scholars who has fully engaged with the postmodern episteme, post-enlightenment hermeneutics, and literary theory, as well as applied them in relation to gender issues in Islam, including the interpretation of hadith pertaining to gender. Much of his Qur’anic hermeneutics and approach to Islamic jurisprudence is in agreement with scholars such as mohsen Kadivar and nasr Abu Zayd , and need not be repeated. However, El Fadl’s work also includes discussions pertaining to (in)determinacy of meaning, ambiguity of textual hermeneutics, and the process of meaning derivation as employed, for example, in literary theory and semiotics (which he has applied to both Qur’an and hadith texts) (El Fadl, 2001, 88). El Fadl has systematically engaged in these discussions and has applied them to the issue ...

Critical-Progressive Muslims: On Islamic hermeneutics, Gender and Interreligious Dialogue

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