Despite broad agreement on some essential points, the interpretations of these verses present a striking range and variety through time. The nature of the variation found in these exegeses means that they defy simple categorization of ‘dogmatic’ … A more precise way of describing the exegeses of these verses is that certain interpretations remain constant through time, while others vary between times, places, and individual authors. This gives the impression of constancy while incorporating change and variety.
(2008, p. 2)2
In contrast to this representation of diversity, Ayesha Chaudhry depicts the pre-modern exegetical tradition on gender as ‘consistently and monolithically patriarchal’ (2013, p. 40). While she notes a variety in interpretation, she argues that a constant feature of all pre-modern exegetes in their exegesis on Q. 4:34 is that they predicate their interpretations on ‘a patriarchal idealized cosmology’ (2013, pp. 54–55).
Rather than force this tradition into a false dichotomy of being either ‘misogynistic’ or ‘egalitarian’, scholars who work on gender in the Qurʾan should consider more nuanced ways of engaging and capturing the complexity of the tafsīr tradition. On women’s issues in particular, medieval exegetes were clearly influenced by their historically bound, social-cultural realities. As Karen Bauer writes,
There is no doubt that the patriarchal context of pre-modern Muslim societies shaped their interpretations, but that does not mean that interpreters had no notion of fairness or justice. At times, they too struggled to explain a system that might lead to abuses of power.
(2015, p. 275)
A historical survey of the genre of exegesis suggests that patriarchal interpretations become entrenched by the 6th/12th century.3 Many, although not all, classical commentaries reflect a persistent adherence to patriarchal norms about women’s place in society. To attempt to prove otherwise would be disingenuous. Yet this patriarchy should not be mistaken as misogyny. Rather, it is a reflection of historically particular notions of justice. As Aysha Hidayatullah writes, ‘we often forget that our notions of equality are guided by historical values of our own that we bring to the text’ (2014, pp. 150–151). The same is also true regarding gender justice.
It was natural, to some extent, for the Qurʾan’s medieval readers to read the Qurʾan in light of their present realities. Their conceptions of women’s roles in societies, capabilities, and weaknesses were in many ways informed by existing social hierarchies, which they projected upon the text. The social hierarchies of the medieval period were a given. As scholars such as Kecia Ali (2010) and Patricia Clark (2001) have illustrated, medieval societies in both the Middle East and Greco-Rome were structured on a complex web of social hierarchies. Men and women could occupy diverse positions on the strata of social privilege based on a multitude of factors, including one’s status as free or slave, married or unmarried, and even ‘honour’. In Qurʾanic exegesis, like in other modes of interpretation, there is a life-relation between the exegete and the subject matter of the text (Rahman, 1997, p. 3), which becomes most evident upon comparing a number a diverse number of exegeses on a specific text.
Is it possible that gender hierarchies, however, were not by-products of the medieval period but embedded within the Qurʾanic text itself? This question has been at the centre of intense scholarly debate in the last two decades. The answers generated by scholarship on gender and the Qurʾan are far from conclusive. On one end of the spectrum are scholars, such as Asma Barlas, Azizah al-Hibri, Maysam al-Faruqi, Riffat Hassan, and amina wadud, who absolve the Qurʾanic text itself of patriarchy and instead blame the exegetical tradition for entrenching patriarchal readings in classical Muslim thought.4 On the other end of the spectrum are scholars, such as Kecia Ali, Aysha Hidayatullah, and Raja Rhouni,5 who critique feminist scholars for imposing their own contemporary sensibilities upon the Qurʾan, even when the literal meanings of the text appear to contradict their egalitarian aspirations for it. For example, in Feminist Edges of the Qurʾan, Hidayatullah argues that there may be no inherent contradiction between Qurʾanic verses that express egalitarianism with those that express gender hierarchies. She writes, ‘It could be that in the context of the Qurʾan “patriarchy is not bigotry, hatred or oppression, but rather the natural social order”’ (Hidayatullah, 2014, p. 166, quoting Linda Luitje, 2001, p. 152).
Hidayatullah is correct to note that social hierarchies did not necessarily preclude mutual love and affection; in fact, the gendered nurture women were expected to receive, based on exegetical articulations, may have been a function of their social status as ‘individuals in need of protection’. As Patricia Clark (2001, pp. 54–75) also notes in regard to Greco-Roman societies, ‘More than a simple hierarchy of authority and obedience was involved, however, for at the core of the ideal family was the conjugal pair, bound by mutual ties of marital affection’. However, it is important not to reduce the Qurʾan’s intended meanings to its historical context or the context of its exegetes. While the Qurʾan’s historical context is critical to an accurate understanding of its development over 23 lunar years, it would be a mistake to collapse this historical context with the Qurʾan’s transcendent meanings, which are being continuously negotiated and renegotiated by its communities of readers. The textual polysemy of Islam’s longstanding interpretive tradition of tafsīr underscores the fact that meanings are often derived by their authors. There is no hegemony of meaning, as Jonathan Brown (2014, p. 84) argues, but a ‘hegemonic power’ of communal understanding. The community reading the text establishes the boundaries of interpretive possibility.
Medieval exegesis on women
As the Qurʾan has become the focal point of the modern debate on whether Islam is irreparably patriarchal or even misogynist, this chapter takes these three verses as the centre of its focus: 4:3, 4:34, and 4:128. These verses have been at the centre of a contentious debate within the last two decades on the Qurʾan’s potential to be a site for gender justice. Verse 4:3 has elicited attention in the debate on gender for granting men the right to marry up to four women, under certain conditions. Verse 4:34, the target of even greater controversy, grants husbands the function of qiwāma over women due to ‘what God has preferred over others’ and men’s financial maintenance of women. Among other themes, it also prescribes three measures for dealing with a wife who is guilty of nushūz. Based on a literal reading of the verse, these three measures are first, giving advice, second, hajr in beds (primarily interpreted as sexual abandonment or separation of beds), and third, hitting. It impossible to untangle the translation of qiwāma or nushūz from their interpretation; for the sake of clarity, however, men’s qiwāma over women has been traditionally interpreted as guardianship, protection, ‘being in charge of’, and financial responsibility. The meanings attributed to nushūz range from recalcitrance, defiance, and disobedience to hatred and sexual deviance. However, I leave the terms qiwāma and nushūz in their Arabic form throughout the chapter because any translation requires an interpretative choice.
Whereas Q. 4:34 has been the subject of countless articles and books, another verse in the same chapter, Q. 4:128, which describes the process of resolution when the husband is guilty of nushūz, has been almost entirely overlooked.6 The lack of scholarly attention to a Qurʾanic verse that speaks of men’s nushūz is a perfect illustration of the disproportionate emphasis given to verses on male privilege or female passivity as opposed to verses that focus on the duties that men owe to women. In contrast to Q. 4:34, which identifies women as the source of marital turbulence, based on a literal reading, Q. 4:128 identifies men as the source of marital conflict. As I have argued elsewhere (Mubarak, 2014, p. 298), my findings strongly suggest that scholars should consider new ways of approaching pre-modern exegesis on gender. To arrive at a more holistic understanding of exegetes’ approaches to the foundational text of the Qurʾan, I consider exegetical discussions on the nushūz of both genders in tandem.
Pre-modern Qurʾanic commentaries on polygyny
And if you have reason to fear that you might not act equitably towards orphans, then marry from among women whom are lawful to you – [even] two, or three, or four: but if you have reason to fear that you might not be able to treat them with justice, then marry one – or those whom you rightfully possess. Thus, it will be more likely that you will not do injustice.7
(...
