Wadud preaches a more inclusive Qur’an

Amanda Mellilo Co-Editor in Chief

Amina Wadud created waves in March 2005 when she became the first woman to lead a mixed congregation of Muslims in prayer. The Liberal Islam Network likened the controversy that she generated to the outcry over Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. Wadud, a Qur’anic scholar and gender studies specialist, will be giving a lecture sponsored by the Religion Department on Monday, April 16 entitled “Islam and Women Beyond the 20th Century.”

In her May 2002 article “A’ishah’s Legacy” published in the New Internationalist, Wadud wrote that she converted to Islam in the 1970’s during the second wave of feminism, and as a scholar she looks to textual evidence in the Qur’an that she believes address women’s issues. In her books Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective and Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam, she aims to re-interpret the Qur’an that speaks to the role of Islamic women in contemporary times.

Religion Professor Lawrence Mamiya said in an e-mailed statement, “[Wadud] knows that traditionally women have been voiceless in the task of interpreting the Qur’an, leaving that task to men whose interpretations have been highly patriarchal and in some cases blatantly sexist. By calling for an alternative individual interpretation of the Qur’an, called “ijthihad,” Wadud is paving the way for a radical rethinking of the Qur’anic text. She sees Islam as a dynamic process of being constantly created.”

Religion Department Intern Karen Sokolow ’07 stated, “She’s trying to push the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in Islam—this is traditionally not seen as a position of power, but of anonymity, but a lot of Muslim women are resistant to feminist change because they feel it is imposed on them from the Western world.”

Sokolow added that while Wadud tries to influence change within the context of Islam, her ideas are met with resistance from more conservative countries because she is an American. Critics of her mixed prayer in New York ranged from imams calling her an “enemy of God” for violating centuries of Islamic practice, to women who believed she had chosen a frivolous issue of a woman’s right to lead prayer ceremony, rather than addressing how Muslim women are the voctims of physical and political violence.

“She is incredibly progressive, incredibly intelligent, and incredibly controversial,” stated Sokolow.

Wadud’s lecture will be at 6:00 p.m. in the Villard Room.