Why Muslim Women Are Re-interpreting the Qur'an (event)

How I wish I could attend this talk/book-signing! Anyone in or around San Francisco is encouraged to attend, if convenient or possible for them.

Join us at the ACCC [Arab Cultural and Community Center]  for a thought provoking presentation and discussion with Cornell University's research fellow, Nimat Hafez Barazangi on why Muslim/Arab Women are reinterpreting the Quran.
Summary: Muslim/Arab women have remained a passive force in changing the reality of the approximately 800 million Muslim/Arab women and the prevailing unjust practices in Islamic/Arabic thought. By reflecting on some historical reform movements, Nimat will use examples from contemporary events to argue that passive views and unjust practices concerning Muslim/Arab women remain because the premises and foundations of reform have not changed.
Nimat Hafez Barangi is a research fellow at Cornell University. Her forthcoming book: Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading (The University Press of Florida, December 2004) was labeled by one of the reviewers as "the most radical book in the last 14th centuries of Islam". She edited Islamic Identity and the Struggle for Justice (University Press of Florida 1996, 2000) translated into Arabic, Dar Al Fikr, 1999) in which she also contributed "Vicegerncey and Gender Justice, and has published about thirty articles, essays, and book reviews.

Event Properties

Event date:	March 29, 2012 06:00 pm
Event End Date:	March 29, 2012 08:00 pm
Capacity	Unlimited
Price	Free
Location	Arab Cultural and Community Center

SOURCE: arabculturalcenter.org

Maulvi Begum Sahib: The eunuch who found her calling as a Qur'an teacher

SUKKUR: Seventy-year-old Jameela has come a long way from playing as a child with eunuchs to teaching 450 children the Holy Quran every day.

Born a transgender in March 1941, Jameela never fit in at home or at school, so when an elderly eunuch, Pasham Fakir, offered to take her away she ultimately yielded and followed him.
She continued to live in what she later called ‘sin’ until May 1972, when her brother died in a robbery. “This proved to be a turning point in my life because I started learning the Holy Quran,” Jameela told The Express Tribune.

She was born in Syed Mohammad Yakoob Shah’s household in Pishin, Balochistan. “My father had two wives: my mother was from a Syed family, while my stepmother was from a non-Syed family,” she said. “My mother died when I was four and my aunt looked after me for two years after which my father sent me to live with my stepmother in Ranchore Lines, Karachi.”

Jameela’s stepmother sent her to an all-girl middle school near their house, but the young eunuch left school when she was in class three because she used to get teased for her “attitude and strange style of walking.”
After dropping out of school, she helped her stepmother with domestic chores. “When I was 10 years old, a eunuch named Pasham Fakir came to our house and asked my mother to hand me over to him but my mother refused.”

She said that Pasham kept coming back for her and they used to talk outside the house. “Then one day I just went him without telling my mother,” she said dolefully.

Islamic Law and Women - Part I: Introduction

I'm currently writing a paper on Islamic feminism and Islamic law, and so I'm reading what I find very troubling things in Islamic law, such as early Muslim scholars'/jurists' view of women, particularly in marriage. Understandably, the concept and role of marriage back then were much different than what they are today for at least the western world, and so when we come across views that deem marriage a sort of a kingdom that's headed by the husband (king) and the wife is not the queen but the caretaker of that kingdom (household), we get upset. But this isn't actually what I'm troubled by: it's how the jurists saw me (a woman) as almost completely incapable of making a decision on my own because I lack the intellect to do so. I'll give many examples of this in the upcoming posts, which will be a series of posts on Islamic law and women, but for now, lemme give you a brief intro to what I'm doing and where I'm hoping to get with this.

Some years ago, my sister and a (Muslim) classmate of hers were having a discussion on some aspect of Islamic law. When she expressed a difference of opinion, the classmate asked her, “Have you ever read Islamic law?” – as though Islamic law is a sourcebook that you can turn to, a book at all, or a guide, something that answers all of your questions.

(Un)fortunately, this is not the case: Islamic law is not a sourcebook; it is not published or codified in one text, and it does not have answers to all of our questions. Yes, it may have answers – but if anything, they go like this: “Well, according to Scholar X, this is the case, but according to Scholar Y, this is the case.” In other words, one really can’t argue that there’s one fixed solution or answer to question problem or question. And despite the claim that the doors of ijtihad have been closed since the 10^th century (ijtihad = independent reasoning, or re-interpretations of a certain or all Islamic rules/guidelines, even the Qur’an), Muslim scholars have discussed the same issues – and offered different viewpoints, often contradicting each others’ – from the 7^th century until today. Yes, the doors to ijtihad are believed to have been closed, but that doesn’t mean the debates have been closed, and many scholars see the illogicality in this claim and thus refuse to submit to it, refuse to let it silence their thoughts.