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The interpretation of sacred texts regarding the rights, role, and status of women is a challenge. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the patriarchal nature of its religious texts poses a number of hurdles for feminist scholars. For Muslim feminist interpreters of the Qur'an, the problem is particularly acute. The Qur'an is seen by almost all Muslims as the literal word of God and, thus, unlike many Christian and Jewish feminist scholars, the majority of Muslim feminist scholars cannot reject or question the text itself: they have to "take the Qur'an in its entirety."1 As a result, the position is taken by Muslim feminists that "no verse of the Qur'an can really have an oppressive androcentric intent; such an intent comes only from the male dominated interpretive tradition."2 Thus, the androcentric interpretations of the verses and not the verses themselves are challenged.
One such response advocates a contextual or historical reading of the Qur'an, which involves reading a verse with regard to the historical, social, and political context in which it was revealed in order to disclose an underlying liberal intent, thereby liberating Muslims from a literal reading. Such a method forms part of a broader approach within modernist Islam that Charles Kurzman identifies as the liberal shart'a approach. This approach argues that shari'a sanctions liberal positions and that democracy, human rights, and equality between men and women are an expression of the values of a 'true' Islam.3 Such an approach is particularly compelling because it can eschew the accusation that Western values are being imposed upon Islam.
Like modernist Islam in general, feminist scholarship has faced resistance from conservative exegetes. This resistance has included the accusation that feminist scholarship is disloyal to Islam and denies its heritage. Such heritage (turath) is the product of a male interpretive elite, the 'ulama' (religious scholars) who in classical Islam "spoke authoritatively for Islam."4 The modernist version of ijtihad (the process of employing individual reasoning to interpret the law from its sources) has opened up interpretation to individuals from outside the religious establishment, including women.
Feminist interpreters of the Qur'an face a particular challenge, since unlike other issues such as democracy, on which the Qur'an is relatively silent, there are a number of verses that are potentially problematic from...