Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
Study of the Qur’an and its exegesis: the text represents neither God as male nor men as God’s deputies over women; read as a whole, in its historical context and by the principles of divine unity, justice and incomparability, it treats women and men as equal moral agents.
Introduction
Asma Barlas published “Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an” in 2002 with the University of Texas Press; a revised edition appeared in 2019. The first part examines the sources of patriarchal readings – the exegetical tradition, the hadith, and the formation of Islamic law in the early centuries – and argues that they rest on the interpreters’ social world rather than on the Qur’an. The second part reads the Qur’an itself on the nature of God, on the creation of human beings from a single self, on sex and gender, on marriage, divorce, polygamy and the much-discussed verse 4:34 on the relation of husbands and wives. Barlas’s key move is theological: God’s unity, justice and incomparability exclude reading the text as making men God’s deputies over women. The book became one of the reference works of Qur’anic hermeneutics on gender, alongside Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Woman (1992).
Connections
Builds on
- Islam and Modernity1982 · Fazlur Rahman
- Qur’an and Woman1992 · Amina Wadud
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made