Abstract
Each separate religious tradition combines in its own way elements which favour discrimination, and other elements which favour the equality of the sexes. Within a single religion, different currents of thought have taken different paths, and within each religion there are varying interpretations of the same texts. The status which a given religion assigns to women (and to men) depends upon the position which that religion occupies within a given society. In brief, always two poles, always two terms, always a duality, in the image of this sex, divided by definition in two, but constantly seeking unity. This oscillation promotes the notion of an antinomy to the rank of a concept, making of it the most adequate prism possible. Such a prism is in our sense the most apt for taking account of the internal tension which each religious tradition experiences with regard to the male-female duality.
Consequently, this text aims at identifying the principal antinomies which allow us to express the position of Islam with regard to the male-female duality. At the present stage of the development of our thought, we propose distinguishing five antinomies: an antinomy of history, a textual antinomy, a hermeneutic antinomy, a political antinomy, and a contextual antinomy.