Secular and Islamic Feminist Critiques in the Work of Fatima Mernissi

"Raja Rhouni, also a Moroccan, first learned about Fatima Mernissi around the time Islam and Democracy came out while she was a PhD student at Mohammed V University in Rabat – the same university where Fatima Mernissi did her undergraduate work. So Rhouni first came to know Mernissi during the moment of her Islamic feminist production. A cultural studies theorist, Rhouni undertakes the first study of the full corpus of Mernissi, who holds a special place as an articulator of both secular and Islamic feminism. Rhouni’s examination and deft analyses allows us to see in Mernissi – that is, in one individual – the movement from one register to the other and the palimpsest of feminisms. Rhouni’s book comes out at the moment we are trying to make sense of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ in their changing meanings, porosity, and imbrications and, more specifically, in the context of Islam and gender. We are trying to understand more about how secularism and Islam reinforce each other, and how they are not necessarily in contestation, but also the tensions, complexities, and even apparent or real contradictions. In the process of providing her critique of Mernissi’s Islamic feminist production, and in visiting the work of other scholars, Rhouni advances what she calls ‘post-foundationalist islamic feminism’ (she uses the lower case in speaking of Islam to underscore that there is not one understanding of Islam but multiple constructions). In undertaking her analysis of Mernissi, Rhouni introduces us to what I argue is the second stage of Islamic feminism. Rhouni lays it out very nicely, moving from the first stage, which she characterises as foundationalism, to what she calls post-foundational islamic feminism. Foundationalism, she explains, is working within the classical Islamic tradition, using its tools – say, for example, in approaching the hadith to demonstrate that certain misogynist hadith are in fact spurious. Rhouni asks what if, using those traditional tools, you find out that some of the misogynist hadith are in fact accurate? Where do you go from there? So Rhouni argues we have to get beyond the foundational approach and adopt a post-foundational approach. We have to develop new methodologies. We have to place the Qur’an in its historical context, and interpretations also in their historical context, as we ask our questions, make our observations and conduct our own readings of the scripture – which of course are done in our own contexts. Now Mernissi does look at the specific conditions in which various ayas or Qur’anic verses were revealed, and in so doing she is following a classical methodology. But we need to take it further and look at the entire Qur’an and hadith corpus, and the body of Islamic jurisprudence or fiqh and figure out the broader historical circumstances – the cultural, economic, and political conditions in which meanings were extracted and elaborated. We need to remember that the society into which the revelation was introduced and the later societies in which Islamic jurisprudence was elaborated were patriarchal societies. Some of what is said in the Qur’an is spoken in a patriarchal language, to a patriarchal audience, and we must recognise this for what it is. At the time the Qur’an was introduced there was no concept of an egalitarian order, of gender, and in fact jins, the word for sex, is not found in the Qur’an or in classical fiqh. When we approach the Qur’an we need to distinguish between description – of historical conditions – and prescription. This was understood by creators of first-stage Islamic feminist theory, but with the move to the second stage it is more fully explicit and distinct. There are principles that can be extracted from the Qur’an, such as gender equality, social justice, human dignity, but these are not norms embedded in the scripture, as foundationalists are prone to argue, but rather these principles or maqasid or objectives of the Qur’an, as they are called, serve as goals and inspiration along the path – the sharia that the faithful are enjoined to follow – what we can also call the trajectory toward higher levels of living. Quite simply, it is important to recognise that by now there are certain things that are permissible in the Qur’an that are no longer acceptable today. We need to just face this straightforwardly. The big example is slavery. No one is going to go back to that, even though it is permissible according to the Qur’an. At the time of revelation, slavery was a widespread institution and the scripture provided a description of what was going on. The Qur’an recommends how to control it and ameliorate the practice of slavery. But in the latter part of the 19th century the idea of human bondage was not acceptable and laws were put in place to eradicate it. Post-foundationalism encourages dialogic relations with the Qur’an. Revelation was oral. The Prophet Muhammad was commanded to recite. People listened and they asked questions of the Prophet Muhammad. Then there was discussion and there were other revelations and more discussion. It was an ongoing conversation; people were trying to figure out: What does it mean? What does it mean for our lives? In short, how was it relevant? If it wasn’t relevant why would people opt to follow what they heard? If you adhere to underlying notion of foundationalism you buy into the idea that it has been understood what the Qur’an means for all times, the discussion is basically closed and you try to manoeuvre within this constricted space and heed its gate-keepers. In post-foundationalism, and more specifically post-foundationalist islamic feminism, the dialogue with the Qur’an is resumed. Of course it’s already all written down, it’s no longer in the process of being transmitted and there’s no Muhammed to interpret it. But this notion of reading and engaging and asking questions and bringing your own experiences to bear is part of engaging with the religion."