Hughes' Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate

Hughes' Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate

In the Hughes’ text, Women in World History: Volume 1, the chapter on Middle Eastern women focuses on how Islam affected their lives. Almost immediately, the authors wisely observe that “Muslim women’s rights have varied significantly with time, by region, and by class” (152). They continue with the warning that “there is far too much diversity to be adequately described in a few pages.” However, I argue that there is essential information and insight on said topic that the authors have failed to include, as well as areas of discussion with incomplete analyses. I will use Leila Ahmed’s book, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, as well as her essay entitled “Early Islam and the Position of Women: The Problem of Interpretation,” to cite the shortcomings of the text.

After the first part of the Hughes chapter on Middle Eastern Muslim women, the emphasis shifts, from Quranic doctrine regarding women to how Muslim law and scholarship have interpreted the Quran’s direct admonitions to women. However, this shift is unfortunately subtle. The authors fail to make a clear distinction between the Quran, a sacred text believed to be the verbatim word of God; and Muslim law, which was formulated by (male) Muslim jurists who consulted the Quran and whose consensus was later declared infallible (Ahmed 58). Such a distinction is necessary because the Quran itself is vastly different from a legal document; Ahmed observes in “Early Islam and the Position of Women” that “Quranic precepts consist mainly of broad, general propositions chiefly of an ethical nature, rather than specific legalistic formulations” (59). Indeed, the Qura...

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...areas of emphasis. In contrast, Leila Ahmed analyzes representations and mores of Muslim women in different social and religious contexts in order to draw conclusions about their effect on women’s--and men’s in relation to women’s--status, in earlier periods of Islam, as well as the further-reaching implications they have had for modern Muslim societies.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.

Ahmed, Leila. “Early Islam and the Position of Women: The Problem of Interpretation.” In Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991.

Hughes, Sarah Shaver, and Brady Hughes. Women in World History. Vol. 1. Armonk, N.Y., and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995.