Though men and women may have appropriated Fatima in different ways, men as usual authored nearly all of the preserved literature regarding her biography, so that censored writings of history function as a paradigm. This symbol of Fatima has consequently and predictably been molded throughout the centuries to fit political needs or inspirations: Fatima is …
Category: interpretation
Sectarianism and Privilege
In studying Islam and researching religious tradition, I naturally encounter sectorial differences in the perception of religious figures and in the practice of religious rituals; —while I’ve described my renouncing approach to Islamic sects, in dismissing sectarianism and contemplating its contraints from the position of a religious woman, without disclosing with which sectorial teachings I …
Interpretation: the Qur’an as a Holistic Text
A methodological approach that has been mentioned on this site numerous times in passing is the consideration of the Qur’an holistically; that is, each verse contains the message of the entire Qur’an within it. One verse cannot be isolated from the rest of the religious text. The Qur’an is continuous, self-clarifying, and self-defining. This is …
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On the Compatibility of Islam and Feminism: A Response to the Goatmilk Debate
I received two emails yesterday inquiring as to what I thought about the Goatmilk debate on the compatibility of Islam and feminism. Seeing as the argument of the opposition was a collection of the usual pedestrian perspectives that conclude the two are irreconcilable, I hadn’t planned on writing about what I’ve already addressed over a …
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Islamic Interpretations–Learning Rugged Individualism from Fatimah bint Qays and A’isha
Over the centuries the greatest loss to the Islamic community has not only been the lack of vigilant participation of strong, opinionated, and unrepentant women but the increasing intolerance of differences in jurisdictions without breaking Islam into sects. The differences that today divide the faith into militant segments had once in fact unified it, because …
the fatal feminist 