Amina Wadud

Agora

Amina Wadud

b. 1952

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Read as a whole and from a woman’s viewpoint, the Qur’an gives no basis for male superiority – all people stand equal before the one God.

Placement

Philosophy in the Islamic World · North America · Religion, Society & History, Ethics, Gender & Feminism

African-American scholar of Islam: “Qur’an and Woman” reads the text as a whole from a woman’s perspective and finds no basis for male superiority – the “tawhidic paradigm” places all humans equally before God.

Key ideas

Reading the Qur’an from a woman’s perspective
Tawhidic paradigm
Gender jihad

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Influence

Influenced by 1

Fazlur Rahman

influenced by
In Qur’an and Woman (1992) Wadud adopted Fazlur Rahman’s hermeneutics: each verse is read in its historical context and in the light of the Quran’s overall principles. A. Wadud, Qur’an and Woman (1992); F. Rahman, Islam and Modernity (1982)
Evidence: AI draft
Fazlur Rahman › 1919–1988

Influenced 1

Asma Barlas

influenced
Barlas wrote a study of Amina Wadud’s hermeneutics (2004) and, like Wadud in Qur’an and Woman (1992), reads the Qur’an intratextually against patriarchal exegesis. A. Barlas, “Amina Wadud’s Hermeneutics of the Qur’an: Women Rereading Sacred Texts”, in S. Taji-Farouki (ed.), Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an (2004); Believing Women in Islam (2002)
Evidence: AI draft
Asma Barlas › b. 1950

Works

1992Qur’an and Woman
Rereading the Qur’an from a woman’s perspective: its principles of justice and equality outweigh verses read as licensing male rule.

Position

“Qur’an and Woman” reads the Qur’an as a whole, using the hermeneutic method of Fazlur Rahman: each verse is to be understood in its historical context and in the light of the text’s overall principles, which then guide application to new situations. Read this way, Wadud argues, the Qur’an creates no hierarchy between the sexes: verses used to justify male authority, such as 4:34, describe a seventh-century context rather than prescribing for all time. Her later “tawhidic paradigm” holds that, because God alone is supreme, no human being may stand between another and God, and any claim to authority over another’s humanity violates divine unity.

Life & context

Amina Wadud (born 1952 in Maryland) converted to Islam in 1972, studied Arabic and Qur’anic studies in Cairo and took her doctorate at the University of Michigan. She taught at the International Islamic University in Malaysia and at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2005 she led a mixed-gender Friday prayer in New York, which provoked international controversy. She was a founding member of the Malaysian group Sisters in Islam.