North American Islamic feminist interpretation: The case of sūrah 4:34,with a comparison to Christian feminist interpretation

Abstract

Traditionally, Muslim men interpreted the Qur'anic verses describing gender relations and the rights of women. Now Muslim women themselves are arguing for new evaluations of these older interpretations and supporting their arguments with evidence from the sacred text. In this article, the hermeneutic approaches of Islamic feminists to the Qur'an are explored via an investigation of the interpretation of Qur'an 4:34, a verse that is notorious for seeming to legitimate male superiority and wife beating. Discussion focusses on interpretations available in English, thus highlighting the development of various interpretive approaches in the North American Muslim diaspora. Islamic feminist approaches are compared to Christian feminist interpretations of the role of women in the household codes of the New Testament (e.g. Ephesians 5:22-24) in order to understand how the struggle for gender justice is articulated from within various religious identities and in relationship to various sacred texts.