Last year, I blogged on the issue of the Quran’s “audience,” which
I argued was males only, women are never directly addressed in there, women are
only talked “about” never “to,” and when a guideline/message is being given to
women, men are asked to convey it to them.
So for the past several months, I’ve been trying to find some Muslim scholars who address this issue, and someone recommended Farid Esack in a discussion on a different topic, and so I decided to read him. I was so, SO delighted and relieved to see that he brings up this problem of audience (he argues that the Qur’an’s “essential audience is male”), although he only mentions it and doesn’t discuss what all it actually means, or what it could mean for Muslim female readers of the Qur’an.
As Esack notes, this problem of the essential audience of the Qur’an should pose significant problems for scholars committed to gender justice; yet, this topic has received little to no attention from Muslim feminists/scholars [(“Islam and Gender Justice: Beyond Simplistic Apologia." In What Men Owe to Women: Men's Voices from World Religions
, eds. John Raines and
Daniel C. Maguire, p. 195).
It is therefore important to engage this issue a little further and discuss its
spiritual implications for the female reader of the Qur’an, as well as its
significance for Muslim women activists.
I, too, believe that the issue of
the gender of the Qur’an’s audience has been marginalized, despite its
relevance to Muslim women readers of the Qur’an and Muslim women practitioners
of Islam. I want to first explain what this claim entails.
In the Qur’an, women are
always addressed by the hunna (they (feminine)) pronoun while the
men are addressed by the kum (you (general but often masculine, based on
the textual context) pronoun. Islamic feminism has not only not attempted to
answer this question, but it seems to have neglected to bring it up in any
discussions of gender and the Qur’an, other than in Farid Esack’s works
(discussed below). Wadud and Barlas discuss God’s gender and point out that
because the Qur’an avows that ‘there is none like unto [God],’ the Qur'an
establishes that God is Unique, hence beyond representation, and also beyond
gender since gender is nothing but a representation of sex”(Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an
, p.100). They, like other scholars, address the issue of God’s gender as being
neutral, and many Islamic feminist scholars argue that even when the Qur’an
seems to be addressing only men—that is,
using male pronouns—it is in fact addressing all genders, because the Arabic kum
can mean “you all (masculine)” or “you all (general”) while kunna means
“you all (feminine).” As Mohammad Ashrof writes,
, p.100). They, like other scholars, address the issue of God’s gender as being
neutral, and many Islamic feminist scholars argue that even when the Qur’an
seems to be addressing only men—that is,
using male pronouns—it is in fact addressing all genders, because the Arabic kum
can mean “you all (masculine)” or “you all (general”) while kunna means
“you all (feminine).” As Mohammad Ashrof writes, all the injunctions of the Qur'an are equally applicable, whenever human or people etc. are mentioned, to both men and women. Many Qur'anic verses subsume women and men in the broad terms of 'human being' or 'people' ('insan', 'nas'). Though these words take masculine pronouns in Arabic, and are often translated into English as "mankind" or "men," in Arabic they are gender-neutral and apply to/include women as well, as with the term "humankind" in English (Islam and Gender Justicep.87).
Thus, unless the Qur’an
otherwise implies that it is speaking directly to men only, it can be assumed
that it is addressing all Muslims. Yet, verses such as 4:19 pose a dilemma, for
it reads: “O you who have
believe, it is not lawful for you [kum] to inherit women [al-nisaa]
by compulsion. And do not make difficulties for them [hunna] in order to
take [back] part of what you [kum] gave them unless they [feminine]
commit a clear immorality. And live with them [hunna] in kindness. For
if you [tum] dislike them [hunna] - perhaps you [antum]
dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good.” Although this is not the
only verse in which such a conversation between God and the (male) reader takes
place, this can be seen as representative of the Qur’an’s approach at
presenting guidelines: it uses men as a medium through which it conveys
messages to women, never directly speaking to women but speaking to men about
women.
Now, I will discuss two main possible reasons
why the Qur’an never directly addresses women and, at the same time, explain
why these reasons are problematic and are in fact not convincing.
The first reason of the Qur’an’s non-address to women may be due to the social views that the pre-Islamic Arab society held of women. However, this explanation humanizes (read: masculinizes) God: the speaker of the Qur’an is not just any male, certainly not a ghair mahram (unrelated) male [[A mahram male is anyone whom a Muslim woman is prohibited from marrying, such as her brother, father, son, grandfather; the opposite of mahram is a ghair-mahram, someone whom a woman would be able to marry, such as a cousin, a far relative, or a stranger]], but it is God, the genderless Creator. Thus, to suggest that the Qur’an does not address women directly because it may have raised problems for Arab males, as they heard their wives, daughters, sisters being addressed directly with the pronoun “you” by a “stranger” also implies that God is a male who is not to refer to women directly. Is it really possible that the Arabs would have found this—the act of their God referring to women directly—unacceptable?
Second, the Qur'an/Islam brought many radical social changes in the Arab society not just regarding its views of women, such as the burial of daughters, but also regarding the religious ideals of the society, such as forbidding the worship of idols. It therefore begs the question of why the Qur’an did not attempt to change the idea that women can never be directly addressed by speakers. [In other words, it seems to have been selective in which views/ideals to change, and this selection was likely not arbitrary.] Additionally, such a claim destabilizes the popular Muslim claim that the Qur'an is for all times, all societies, as not all societies and certainly not in all times have societies found women to be private entities who are never to be addressed by un-related male members of the community.
This problem of
the essentially male audience leads to a more profound theological, ethical,
and spiritual question: what does God's non-address of women suggest about the spiritual and ethical
relationship with God that the Qur’an expects of its readers in general but its
female readers in particular? Can women truly attain closeness with God the way
men can? This is not to insinuate that the relationship that men are
theoretically able to form with God is necessarily better and should be the
standard against which women’s relationship with God is measured, but it is to
point to the lack of an immediate link between God and His female readers of
the Qur’an. Women are not the direct audience of the Qur’an the way men are,
and a message has to be conveyed to women through a medium. The Qur’an’s non-address
of women may be understood as grounds for the belief that women are inherently
spiritually lacking, thus explaining why the Qur’an never directly addresses
them. Yet, this cannot be assumed because the Qur’an does not present women as
spiritually lacking or spiritually inferior to men; it in fact insists that the
only measure of superiority among people is their piety (49:13). As for Muslim
women activists, the Qur’an’s non-address to women raises another issue: if a
woman is not the direct recipient, the direct audience of her Creator’s Word
and needs a medium (a male) through which God can communicate with her, would
the Qur’an support her direct involvement in society? That is, does she need a
medium for her activism as well? If they clearly need an intermediary between
themselves and God, must they not have one also when making demands on society
or when calling for social changes in their society per their current status?
