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

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

http://bookzz.org/book/929570/e9d7f6

This book is a must read in my view on issue of islam and gender : http://bookzz.org/book/1174627/9624db

The Burqini Dilemma By Dr.Adis Duderija Islamic Studies  University of Melbounre What do we do when competing ethical systems with incommensurate ethical conceptualizations of the ‘good’/’reasonable’ and ethical priorities clash? The burqini issue is yet another in a series of other dilemmas that have emerged in the recent years in the context of immigrant Muslims’ presence in the West. Other examples of similar aporias include what to do with ‘radical’ imams, infiltration of ISIS fighters via refugee routes into Europe, Muslim male polygamy, the issue of niqab, female genital cutting, western nation-states foreign policy in relation to the Muslim majority world, shaking of hands with the opposite sex, establishment of Muslim arbitration tribunals to name but the most prominent.  Both Muslims and non-Muslim disagree with each- other and within their respective communities as to what the real causes and solutions to these dilemmas are. The possible answers can be approa

The Hermeneutical Fight for Muslim Women’s Rights: Toward a Scriptural Hermeneutic of Islamic Feminism Dr. Adis Duderija, Islamic Studies, University of Melbounre The fight for women’s rights in the Muslim majority world has a long history. The idea of Islamic feminism as part of this struggle is of more recent provenance and probably dates back to the 1980s.Since that time many Muslim scholars, particularly women, have attempted to dislodge the firmly entrenched male epistemic privilege  on the basis of developing  their own  interpretations of the Qur’an  and Sunna/hadith as well as the larger Islamic  tradition ( turath) as they realised, especially in the post-revolutionary Iranian context,   that women’s rights cannot be secured in the long run unless they are systematically justified in religious terms. In my article    Toward a Scriptural Hermeneutic of Islamic Feminism that was published in late 2015 in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion I outline a number of

I often read articles (or engage in online debates) that either conflate progressive Islam with liberal Islam or employ the term progressive /liberal without much conceptual theorizing. So I have decided to reproduce a chapter from my 2011 book in which I outline some delineating features of progressive Muslim thought ( in relation to the modern period- in chapter 2 I do it in relation to the pre-modern) that are not available in my other separate publications on the topic in hope to clarify some of these conceptual/terminological issues :https://www.academia.edu/27992301/CHAPTER_FIVE_PROGRESSIVE_MUSLIMS-CONCEPTUALISING_AND_ENGAGING_THE_ISLAMIC_TRADITION

https://www.academia.edu/27572114/TOWARD_A_SCRIPTURAL_HERMENEUTICS_OF_ISLAMIC_FEMINISM

https://www.academia.edu/27142639/The_Custom_urf_Based_Assumptions_Regarding_Gender_Roles_and_Norms_in_the_Islamic_Tradition_A_Critical_Examination

BOOK REVIEW: WHAT IS ISLAM: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ISLAMIC , by Shahab Ahmed, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS,2016. Is violence by ISIS and similar jihadi-salafist groups Islamic?  Is wife -beating Islamic? Is the killing of homosexuals Islamic? Is subjugation of non-Muslims Islamic? Is the resistance to abolition of slavery Islamic ? (the list can go on). These and similar kinds of questions (and accompanying ethical aporias) confront Muslims perhaps more than ever before and have elicited different and at times symmetrically opposite responses. For the proponents of the Islamic State and their intellectual sympathizers across the world the answer to these questions is a clear ‘yes’.  For many other Muslims it is a clear ‘no’(although many would struggle to justify this view hermeneutically).  How is this possible? Of course, what is or isn’t Islamic depends to a significant extent upon how Muslims have been not only defining but also conceptualizing the concept of Islam itself.

http://www.academia.edu/26350345/Patriarchy_as_a_Reading_Strategy_Understanding_Patriarchal_Interpretations_of_the_Qur_%C4%81n_4_34_in_the_light_of_Stanley_Fish_s_Concept_of_Interpretive_Communities_

https://www.academia.edu/22310630/Progressive_Islam_as_Islamic_Liberation_Theology