Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Islam and modernity essay plan - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The challanges and contributions that Islamic feminism faces and offers is broader than the scope of any one essay (badran, 2013). When looking at both of these catagories we could look at the challanges and opportunities in the political, social or economic fields, however, this essay will focus its attention on the theological.
        
        The main focus thiss essay will be on two challanges: the poor quality of scholarship and the presences of non-Islamic ideas in Islam and two contributions: improving the scholarship and offering a new, egalitarian Islam.
    - - In her work Secular and Islamic feminist critiques in the work of Fatima Mernissi Raja Rhouni explores this problem, highlighting that one of the first Islamic feminists, Fatima Mernissi, does not call herself an Islamic feminists (2010, p20).
        
        However, she provides three definations of Islamic feminism that can be used to support the idea that Mernissi is an Islamic feminists; this essay will rely on the third of those cited by Rhouni, a defination by Badran which argues that Islamic feminism is a feminist discourse within an Islamic paradigm (2010, p21).
- - - - Asma Barlas argues that key to understanding any text, including religous ones is to understand that we are infleunced by how we read texts, what questions do we ask and who we listen to (2019), however, this process has been dominated by a clique of men (Ahmed, 1992, p47).
        
        In the early stages of Islam the process of reliogus study was not as dominated by men and was made up of scholars of high quality. Figures like al-Bukhari were enaged in rigours study of Islamic texts, primarily the hadiths, in an attempt to ensure that only high quality sources infleunced religous doctrine (Mernissi, Lakeland and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1991, pp43-45).
        
        These scholars relied on a variety of methods to ensure that the works they were collecting and researching were of high quality, one of these methods was to turn to Aisha, and Muhammad's other wives, who was considered to be one of the best transmitters of hadiths (Merniss, 1998 and Ahmed, 1992, p60). This rigourus testing of hadiths meant that only around 7,000 of the 600,000 hadiths that al-Bukhari collected were included in his authentic accounts (Mernissi, Lakeland and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1991, p44).
        
        However, this rigour and high quality scholarship would come under attack begining under the caliphate of Umar who worked to sideline women in public life and reduce their ability to enage in Islam (Ahmed, 1992, pp60-62). This system of excluding women from society would contuine following Aisha's failled rebellion against Ali and this would contuine to grow as the caliphate grew (Ahmed, 1992, pp61-63).
        
        Islamic feminists, and broader scholars on Islam, do not just believe that the scholarship was weakened by the exlcusion of women. Following the Islamic conquests and the entrechement of the heridatary caliphate under the Ummayads and Abbasids Islamic scholarship can under further attack from the state that thought to interfer and bend Islam to support it (Mernissi, Lakeland and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1991, pp46-49 and Shamsy, 2008, pp112-115).
        
        Both Mernissi (an Islamic feminist) and el-Shamsy (a scholar of Islam) find that islamic scholars began to feel increased preasure to conform to the desires of the governemnt. As Mernissi argues, once sources have become an element of business deals there relibality to supporting studies of the Quran are severly undermined (Mernissi, Lakeland and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1991, p48).
        
        Both these processes led to a narrowing of the scholarship around a small group of men who had some ties to the government. When we return to Barlas' idea of our readings of religion being infleunced by hows, whats and whos (2019) we find that all three are compromised. In regard to how the Quran and hadiths are read, they are read in a way that, at least sometimes, aims to support the ruling status quo (Mernissi, Lakeland and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1991, pp46-48), this will inherently prevent new ideas entering into the discourse and limit scholarship. In regards to what questions are asked we find that these questions will be the questions of men, because they are the ones that dominated the scholarship (Ahmen, 1992) and therefore it will be the questiosn they find pressing that will be asked, sideling the questiones women may want answering. Finally when we look at who we listen to, we find that as the scholarship was dominated by men then we are forced to have a predisposition towards male scholarship due to supply.
  - - - Following the death of Muhammad and the success of the Islamic conquests the new Islamic empire contained a vast territory including many non-Muslims (Ahmed, 1992). In these new conquored territies socieities began to intermix and exhcnage ideas and religion (Ahmed, 1992), for Islam this meant the spreading of Islam to new territories, but many scholars highlight that this exchange was not a one way street (Engineer, 2008).
        
        Following these conquests the Islamic state needed to expand to cover its new territory and in this process many old elements of the Byzantine system were absorbed. Following the estbalishment of the Ummayyad capital in Damascus the beuacracy and elements of the legal system of the Byzantine empire was added into the Calihate (Ahmed, 1992, p89).
        
        This created a dual system of Shari'a and local laws (that weren't necessirly Islamic) that were both to be applied with the former infleuncing the latter (Ahmed, 1992), as Shari'a was then codidifed these relationship between the two systems beld into the creation of shari'a and principles that were at least partly rooted in the Byzantine system entered Sharia (Engineer, 2008).
        
        This process is further observed by Micheal Axworthy in his study of Iranian history Iran: Empire of the Mind; in this book he observes that following the Islamic conquest of Persia and espically following the rise of the Abbasids, Persians gained a greater presences within the Islamic caliphate (2008, pVII). This would lead to a changing of cultural practices within the Abbasid state and leadership (Axworthy, 2008) a leaderhsip that dictated the pathways of Islam.
        
        Leila Ahmed highlights this process when she discusses the work of al-Ghazali's opinions on women. Here she argues that despite being an Arab, Islamic scholar his work is closer to the opinions of Augustine, a Christian, than the Quran (Ahmed, 1992, p68).
- - - - The process of contextualising Islam and its texts requires a recorgination of the enviroment that it emerged into. When we recorginise the culture that Islam is revealed into it helps us understand the principles and values of Islam (Ahmed, 1992). When we view the community into which Islam enters we are faced with a community that was not ready for total gender equality (Enginneer, 2008), instead it was a culture that was becoming increasingly patrichal as cultural and economic impacts from changes before the arival of Islam took effect (Ahmed, 1992).
        
        The Quran presented a reform program that was, therefore, broader then could be accepted by the community at the time, in order for the reforms to be implemented and entrenched Muhamad did not enforce all of the rules (Wadud, p78/79, 1999).
        
        The understnading of the message of the Quran is enhanced by reading it in a holistic fashion that rejects the atomisation of verses (Barlas, 2019). By doing this we are better able to understand the common threads with the text, by doing this we are able to understand the general message of the Quran. This can be done by seeing how the arguments work together to both produce laws for today and aspirational targets.
    - - By adopting new methodologies Islamic scholars may find new answers to old questions and may also devleop new questions that require new answers. That process will create a deeper understanding of the religion and bring these scholars closer to the Quran. This process of testing Islamic knowledge and seeking to improve our understanding is part of Islam (Barlas, p138, 2001).
  - - - This perspective comes from the using of the new methodology of contextualisation and holism to argue that conservtive elements of the Quran have to be understood as improvements on the more conservtive and repressive cultures of pre-islam (Wadud, pp78/79, 1999).
        
        However, the fact that the radical elements that the Quran aspires to were not implemented was not the fualt of Islam, but was instead a pragmatic recorgnition that the reforms could only go so far (Enginneer, 2008).
    - - By accepting this situation, there is an acceptance of stagnation and means that Muslims are living a life that is further away from the true life they should be living.
        
        However, if this new way was chosen and Islamic nations chose to follow the egalitiarianism it will create a better Islam for men and women (Badran, pp249/250, 2013). By adaopting an approach that accepts this radical egalitiariansim women will be able to better puruse societal improvements and push their own potnetial. This will unlock a large portion of the population that will be able to push for a better world and better understanding of Islam, benefit everyone.
- - - - All Islamic studies are also impacted by the presence of non-Islamic ideas within their source material, like the poor quality shcolarship, this weakens the quality of Islamic study, by diluting the message of the Quran with other ideas that are not tied to how Muslims are truly meant to live.
    - - Finally, Islamic feminism also offers a new way of seeing Islam that proposes an idea that is radical in its egalitiarianism. This way of reading Islam could help to offer better lives to both men and women (Badran, p250, 2013). Looking at Islam as a radically egalitiarian text may not just help women, but could help any people that feel that their rights are limited by orthodox readings of Islam, but that fit into this new image of Islam.