A Feminist Interpretation of the Koran
H/t reader and commenter ‘Interested’.
When debating about the ’soul’ or ‘essence’ of Islam, one can often hear someone say that ‘it’s all about interpretation’: the Koran is not inherently ‘violent’, it’s what people who read it and want to live by it do with it what’s important.
A Muslima took that message to (her) heart and interpretes the Koran in a more ‘feminist’ way, according to Reuters that is.
A new English-language interpretation of the Muslim Holy book the Koran challenges the use of words that feminists say have been used to justify the abuse of Islamic women.
The new version, translated by an Iranian-American, will be published in April and comes after Muslim feminists from around the world gathered in New York last November and vowed to create the first women’s council to interpret the Koran and make the religion more friendly toward women.
In the new book, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, a former lecturer on Islam at the University of Chicago, challenges the translation of the Arab word “idrib,” traditionally translated as “beat,” which feminists say has been used to justify abuse of women.
“Why choose to interpret the word as ‘to beat’ when it can also mean ‘to go away’,” she writes in the introduction to the new book.
Less progressive Muslims (noteworthy is that they’re all, of course, men) don’t necessarily agree with her interpretation of this verse.
Some Muslims said the new interpretation strayed from the original. Omar Abu-Namous, imam at the New York Islamic Cultural Center Mosque, questioned Bakhtiar’s interpretation…
The New York imam also said the passage she is challenging speaks of when a woman wants a divorce, and only allows a man to “hit his wife, according to the Prophet, with a ‘miswak,’” or a twig of a pencil’s length, on her hand.
To which Bakhtiar replies:
“How can you hurt someone by hitting her with a very small, short and weak thing? But sometimes the interpretation of the Koran is according to men, and sometimes they try to humiliate the woman.”
A known phenomenon in most religions of course.
I cannot but find it a bit cynical that interpreting the Koran in a way that one is not (any longer) allowed to beat up one’s wife is called a ‘feminist interpretation, but one has to start somewhere I suppose.
Very, very interesting. It fits in well with the assertion (which I believe) that all sacred texts are interpreted in the context of the culture (or even the individual) doing the interpreting.
Women scholars in Islam have been active in the past.
Their rise in the present is great to see.