Asma Barlas is a Professor Emerita of Politics at Ithaca College, New York. She has written about Qur’anic hermeneutics, Muslim women’s rights, and Western representations of Islam and Muslims; her best-known book is Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Texas University, 2002; second edition, 2019). In 2008, she became the first Muslim and non-philosopher to hold the Spinoza Chair in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She was born and raised in Pakistan and has lived in the U.S. since 1983, where she received political asylum. She has a Ph.D. in International Studies, an M.A. in Journalism, and a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy.
The concept of God, which the Qur’an itself speaks about, and emphasizes Unity in Surah Ikhlas, differs from the human concept of God, which is conditioned by the time and space in which this concept was derived. How do you explain the Qur’anic descriptions of God in the correlation of gender and language?
Well, languages are a human creation, and they reflect human notions of gender and here I want to say that I understand gender to be the cultural and symbolic meaning human beings ascribe to biological sex. But, not all people everywhere had, or have, a notion of gender, nor do all languages differentiate between the gender of, say, spouses.
There is no correlation between the Qur’an’s allusions to God as “He” in the Arabic language and God’s “gender.” In fact, the Qur’an very clearly states that God is unlike everything in creation, and we shouldn’t even use comparisons (similitude) for God. However, as I’ve pointed out in some of my work, Muslims confuse the signifier (the word “God”) with the signified (God). But this confusion has to do with collapsing language with reality, and not with a specific conception of gender per se.
If the creation of the meaning of a text, even a literary one, is obtained by a combination of the experience of reading and the thoughts and ideas of the reader herself/himself that she/he brings to the text, how do you see the communication and the relationship between the reader and the sacred text? How much does it matter who reads and how it is read?
The relationship between readers and texts is central to how a text is interpreted since we can only construct meaning based on what we know, what we value, what interpretive methods we prefer, our understanding of social norms, our biases, and so on. In other words, there is no absolute or utterly “objective” reading of a text. Unfortunately, though, there is a tendency, especially among religious folks, to think that a sacred text’s meanings are transparent and eternally fixed. This is why it’s important not to confuse, for instance, the Qur’an with our interpretations of it.
In sources of religious law and moral guidance, the hadith follows the Qur’an with other sources to which Islamic jurists turned in search of answers. You argue that the Qur’an is explicitly clear about the equality of women and men. Do you think that the interpretation of the hadith, considering its diverse content and types, reflects this equality?
No, the hadith does not reflect the Qur’an’s position on the ontic equality of human beings, which, according to the Qur’an, is a function of the fact that God created both from the same self, made them both God’s vice-regents on earth, and also each other’s mutual guides, or awliya. I feel Muslim methodology has inverted the relationship between God’s word and human words by using the hadith to interpret the Qur’an instead of using the Qur’an to decide on the authenticity of some hadith.
I found the topics in the paper that was compiled as a result of a dialogue with Margot Badran very contemporary, in which you both approach the theme under the same title Engaging Islamic Feminism, albeit quite differently. In your work, you stated that you are concerned about the extent to which feminism as a discourse has excluded the possibility of theorizing gender equality within alternative paradigms. Now, 15 years after its publication, referring to your thought, do you still think that to aim to build solidarity with Muslim women, who represent a pluralistic and above all diverse group together with all the specificities of their movements, requires more than a shared discourse of feminism?
Women’s movements, as you’ve noted, are diverse and multifaceted as are feminisms though some people talk of feminism. As for solidarity, in a deep sense, it means recognizing people’s rights to their beliefs and yet trying to find commonalities that can be pursued in the overall general interest. However, that’s easier said than done since solidarity requires some unity of vision and the very plurality of interests makes that challenging. Even so, effective social activists don’t let differences deter them from trying to build broad-based coalitions.
Respecting the plurality of the Abrahamic tradition and the specificity of each of the religions within it, where do you see the intersection of interreligious theology and the reading of sacred texts? What is to gain from cooperation and dialogue with other believing women in the context of patriarchal exegesis of sacred texts?
I haven’t done interreligious work, so I can’t comment on the intersections of theology and sacred texts knowledgeably. But, I have done a brief comparative reading of the prophet Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son in the Qur’an and the Bible as a way to make the case that the Qur’anic account can be read as an antipatriarchal parable, unlike that of the Bible. This is so because, in the Qur’an, Abraham tells his son of the vision he has had to sacrifice the son and it is only after the son consents to be sacrificed if that is God’s will, that both father and son proceed further. To me, this suggests that God’s rule overrides patriarchal rights and authority. In the Bible, of course, Isaac doesn’t know of his father’s intention to sacrifice him. However, both stories have much to teach those who believe in their sacred texts.
