Modern Discussions about Women-led Prayers in Islam
Contemporary Perspectives in the Debate on Imama and the use of Usul ul-Fiqh
Thesis Research Master Religious Studies
Author:
Anne J.F. Dijk, BA
Student number: 6157874 University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Leading Professor: Prof. Dr. Gerard A. Wiegers
Second Reader:
Dr. Richard. van Leeuwen
Date:
22-08-2012
L&R: dr. Amina Wadud, Professor, Theologian (Islam) & Imama, middle: dr. Laury Silvers, Imama, and Professor of Religion
1
Index
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1. Motivation and Problems of Authority ........................................................................................................ 3
1.2. Question and Method .................................................................................................................................. 4
1.3. Sources......................................................................................................................................................... 5
1.4. Historical Background .................................................................................................................................. 5
1.5 Definitions ..................................................................................................................................................... 8
2.
Present-Day Discussions ................................................................................................................................. 9
2.1. Context of the Debate ............................................................................................................................... 10
2.1.1. Debate in the USA and Canada .......................................................................................................... 10
2.1.2. Debate in The Netherlands................................................................................................................. 11
2.1.3. Debate in the Middle East .................................................................................................................. 12
2.1.4. Present-Day examples of Imamas ...................................................................................................... 12
2.2. Academic Contributions ............................................................................................................................ 15
2.3. Normative Religious Contributions ............................................................................................................ 20
2.4.1. Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal ........................................................................................................ 22
2.4.2. Contributions from Islamic Scholars ................................................................................................... 25
2.4.3 Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid ...................................................................................... 31
3.
Examination of the Modern Discussion ....................................................................................................... 34
3.1. Examination of the Arguments based on Usul ul-Fiqh .............................................................................. 34
3.1.1. Quran .................................................................................................................................................. 35
3.1.2. Hadith ................................................................................................................................................. 35
3.1.3. Sunna .................................................................................................................................................. 37
3.1.4. Ijma ..................................................................................................................................................... 38
3.1.5. Scholars and Madhahib ...................................................................................................................... 39
3.1.6. “Maslaha” ........................................................................................................................................... 40
3.2. Exploration of the Arguments based on Religious Statements and Hermeneutics ................................... 42
3.2.1 “Free Ijtihad” ....................................................................................................................................... 42
3.2.2. Exegesis and Hermeneutics ................................................................................................................ 43
3.2.3. Influence of Reformists ...................................................................................................................... 46
3.3. Critical Reflection on Arguments in the Modern Discussion ..................................................................... 46
3.3.1. Women’s Bodies ................................................................................................................................. 47
3.3.2. Rethink Ijma........................................................................................................................................ 47
3.3.3. Bid’a or Sunna? ................................................................................................................................... 48
3.3.4. Reclaiming Authority .......................................................................................................................... 48
3.3.5. Redefining Ulama and Patriarchal Interpretations? ........................................................................... 50
4. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 51
Literature .............................................................................................................................................................. 53
Appendix 1 ; Fatwa by dr. Abou el Fadl: On Women Leading Prayer ................................................................... 57
2
1. Introduction
1.1. Motivation and Problems of Authority
“Women have always been the best friends of religion; religion, however, was not at all generally a
friend of women.”1 Within gender studies in religion, the research on religious authority of women is
much debated these days2. By authority I mean the power to enforce laws, exact obedience,
command, determine, or act as ritual leaders. Or in a broader spectrum: to influence others who
accept the words and deeds of the authoritative person3. A specific topic of interest in Islam today is
the issue of the ritual authority in women-led prayers, especially since the theologian and academic
Amina Wadud acted as imama in a Friday prayer in New York in 2005. This act resulted in many
reactions that said that women cannot lead men in prayer, while other reactions approved the act
and a debate emerged. Is this tumult because Islam doesn’t allow such a position for a woman? What
do Islamic historical and religious sources tell us about this, and what are the reasons behind specific
rulings, their context and range and to what extent is female ritual leadership in Islamic prayer
possible? It would be interesting to see how historical Islamic sources still influence the current
debate and how this debate takes place.
The issue of female religious authority is situated in the broader debate of religious authority in
Islam. Many Muslims argue that only God has absolute authority4. If we look into Islamic history, we
can say that in the beginning the Prophet, as the receiver of the revelation from God, was the
authority to turn to with questions. But after his death, we can say that authority in Islam was at first
not determined and was thus debatable. After the institutionalization and growth of Islamic empires
in history, the different kinds of authority were also institutionalized and started to become
appointed by higher authorities such as caliphs or sultans. However in modern times these
institutions disappeared and there arose a lack of or gap in accepted authority. Besides this, classical
scholars also tried to unify the law by “closing the gate of ijtihad”. We see however that in modern
times, the debate on authority and ijtihad has been revived. There are no central official shari’a
courts anymore, nor central established forms of authority5. There is thus a question of authority,
who is able to have it? We see different institutions with authority such as al-Azhar University in
Cairo, or the different universities of Saudi Arabia. But there is no authority that officially can appoint
central Islamic leaders for all Muslims6, because there is no “church” in Islam. There is nowadays a
lack of traditional infrastructure to regulate the debate in Islamic discourse. There is a certain chaos
since people who find themselves scholarly enough give their opinion, based on fiqh or not. Selfproclaimed religious scholars give legal opinions. But who is really allowed to do this and what are
the implications of these fatawa (legal opinions)? This is hard to define these days and fatawa are
flying all over the place, because of the lack of structure, un-clarity and lacuna of authority. Suha TajiFarouki and Basheer M. Nafi also address this problem of authority in their introduction of the book
Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century7. According to them, it was the ulama who held the
recognized authority to interpret the Quran and who derived rules from their cardinal sources. But in
1
Moritz Winternitz, Indologist via; Margareth Smith; Rabi’a the Mystic and her fellow saints in Islam, London, Cambridge University Press,
1984, p. XXXIII
2
The literature on this subject is huge in amount. See for example the overview in: Tayyibah Taylor, Muslim Women Scholars and Religious
Authority, Azizah The Voice for Muslim Women, Volume 6 issue 2, USA, p. 30
3
Definition is a combination of the way authority is portrayed in Thielicke, H., Autorität, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
Handwörtbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, UTB Grosse, Nördlingen, Germany, 1986, p. 790-794 and my own additions.
4
See introduction of Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s name, Islamic Law, Authority and Women, Oneworld publications, Oxford, 2003
5
In history is never occurred that all Muslims over the world were united under one kind of authority (except in the time when the Prophet
Muhammad was alive), but there was definitely more structure for example in the time of the grand caliphates. In this time different kinds
of authorities were directly appointed by the caliph.
6
Off course these universities do appoint scholars of law and they have authority, but only to a certain extent (regional or within one
school and people are often free to follow it or not). The aim here is that there is no “central” and “one” upper authority for all Muslims in
the world, for example; compared to the pope in Catholicism.
7
Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi, Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, London, I.B. Tauris, 2004
3
the late nineteenth and during the twentieth century there were changes due to modernization
programmes and the experience of European imperialism. This had consequences for the position of
the ulama, which in the end made possible the emergence of “new spokesmen” for Islam. It was no
longer the classical and traditional forms of learning that were common, but secular universities, and
modern education in general, brought new types of professionals and intellectuals. Ulama rapidly
lost their economic and social influence. Another point made by Taji-Farouki and Nafi is that the
ulama themselves caused their decline too: they had become divided; there were traditional
madhhabi ulama, but also those who followed theological lines but became reformists-, sufi-, salafi-,
political- etc. kinds of ulama. In the modern time, political activists and reformists such as Sayyid
Qutb, Hasan al-Banna (and many others) spoke for Islam while using novel idioms and discourses,
which came along with modernity. “This diversity in modern Islamic thought has been a major fact
behind the loss of Islamic intellectual authority,…the Islamic cultural arena became wide open to an
assortment of voices, reflecting new notions of authority”8. These reformists still influence modern
thought today and where possible, I will look into how reformist thinking still influences the quest for
authority is debated in the modern debate within the issue of female imams. But the main focus in
this thesis is centered on the question how contemporary Muslims refer to legal sources and
arguments in general and usul ul-Fiqh statements in specific to give authority to their thought.
1.2. Question and Method
This research is part of a broader interest nowadays in the lack of religious authority in Islam in
general and female religious authority more in particular. This research will focus on how this debate
of authority is “fought”, the cases in this research are specified towards the ritual authority of the
female imam. The central question during this research will therefore be: What Kind of Reasoning is
Used to Argue the Position of a female Imam? And what do the arguments tell us about discourse
notions of religious authority and gender in modern Islam?
In order to give a profound answer to the question in which discourse this debate takes place, it is
necessary to look at the background of this debate too. Therefore I will look at the context behind
the present-day debates, the key players in them, and see if there are in fact any female imams. After
this I will look how the (classical) usul ul-fiqh tradition and the Islamic tradition in general is used to
support the positions in this debate. This question fits in the framework of lack of authority and how,
in this debate which has been brake-open, the classic tradition is used. In chapter 2, I will start by
giving an overview of the discussion in the modern debate; which arguments are invoked and are
given as proof pro or against? And which place do fatawa have in this modern discourse? The basic
teaching of Islam is that all human beings, despite race and status, are all equal in the sight of God.
But when it comes to ritual authority, this seems to be the opposite; is this intrinsic to Islam or can
we blame the diverse range of interpretations? Interesting in this chapter, is the focus of religious
experience or belief in general and the concept of gender equality as an argument for female imams.
It is clear that a lot of the debaters go back to classical sources, which is intrinsic to the usul ul-fiqh
tradition. It is remarkable that others do not use classical sources at all but rely more on general
principles which they derive from their Islamic belief. We will see that the hermeneutic method is of
importance in this type of reasoning. In chapter 3 I will give an examination how the debate of the
specific case of imama is performed and what the main styles of argumentation are. Both usul ul-fiqh
and religious statements, in which hermeneutics are of particular importance, are frequently used
and I will elaborate on them specifically. In this chapter, before I will end with the conclusion, I will
also give a critical reflection on the major themes and critical arguments that can be placed in the
broader discussion of female religious authority in Islam, but which themes became significantly clear
in this thesis on female imams too. In the conclusion I hope to give a clear answer to the question of
what kind of reasoning is used in the debate on female imams and which discourse notions are
traceable. Although there have been a few other researches in the debate on female imams, this
8
Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi, Thought in the Twentieth Century, p. 10
4
thesis is unique because it discusses the wider context of the sources and the debate, highlights
more different opinions, evaluates the styles of the arguments used in this debate and studies the
discourse notions in which the different contributions to this debate can be placed.
1.3. Sources
The sources which I used to examine the modern debate on imamas are divided into two parts: 1.
academic contributions and 2. normative-religious contributions, in order to make clear in which
framework the contributions are given. The choice for the specific texts is based on their popularity
(which statements are most referred to and most used in the debate) and how profound the
contributions are. The most extensive religious source is the book of Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama
al-Mar’a al-Ridjal. Gamal is the progressive brother of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the
conservative Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. This Arabic source handles this topic extensively and is
exclusive, because it has not been used in (western) academic research until today. This work
displays the authors opinion and several fatawa of famous scholars and the authors view on them. It
is the most profound contribution from an Islamic point of view, but only available in Arabic9. This
book gives also an overview of reactions and fatawa given by scholars living in various countries in
the Middle East. Gamal al-Banna´s work will not only function as a work in itself to see what his
opinion on the quest of female imams is (in the normative examples), but also as a source for the
fatawa he used in his discussion. Another primary source, clearly used as source in the contemporary
discussion, is the usul ul-fiqh work of Ibn Rushd Bidayat al-mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid. In this
book, the issue of the conditions of imam is discussed from different point of views and is often
referred to in the modern debate, or obviously used as source in this discussion and therefore
interesting to elaborate on. Many modern contributions refer to historical sources as the Bidaya or to
historical scholarly figures. The partially historical focus in this thesis is therefore necessary to put the
arguments of the contributions in perspective in order to understand them better. An interesting
source for the modern debate after the Wadud Prayer are the works of Juliane Hammer. My thesis
differs from her research in that I take more contributions in the debate into account. She only
focuses on the Wadud prayer and the reactions to that specific event, while my research is centered
around the longer existing debate whether women are allowed to act as imam or not. I do not only
focus on the area of the USA but, where possible, also give examples of female imams in other parts
of the world. The Dutch debate was also not earlier included in research on female imams. In this
way, I give broader background and contextual information about this debate which not has been
done before. In this debate I focus on the argumentation, sources and Islamic tools used in the
debate, and examine the relation and use of the Islamic tradition and usul ul-fiqh, which has also not
been done in other researches before.
1.4. Historical Background
The presence of women in the mosque in general is the topic from which the modern discussions
about women in the mosque started. If a woman is not even allowed in the mosque, one cannot
even begin to think about a woman as imam. Although the discussion about women interacting and
praying with men seems almost a debate described to the modern time, in early history there are
accounts of this too. Farid al-Din Attar was frequently asked why he included a woman in his work,
he said; ,, The root of the matter is not form, but intention, as the Prophet said, “mankind will be
raised up according to their intentions.” Moreover if it is proper to derive two-third of our religion
from Aisha, surely it is permissible to take religious instruction from a handmaid of Aisha. When a
woman becomes a “man” in the path of God, she is a man and one cannot any more call her a
9
I have translated the work myself, together with friend and Arabic scholar Mona Hegazy. I am very grateful for her help which was a great
relief to me. Shukran djiddan/katier!
5
woman.10” Hassan al-Basra, a famous theologian, said about his friendship with Rabi’a (a female
mystic); ,,I passed one whole night and day with Rabi’a speaking of the Way and the Truth, and it
never passed through my mind that I was a man nor did it occur to her that she was a woman, and at
the end when I looked at her, I saw myself as bankrupt (i.e. spiritually worth nothing), and Rabi’a as
truly sincere11”. There are many stories of women in history interacting and praying with men. One of
particular interest is the story of Sayyida Nafisa12. Nafisa knew the Quran and the commentaries well
and was so versed in religious knowledge that even her great contemporary imam Shafi’i, founder of
the Sunni Shafi’i madhhab, used to come and listen to her discourses and enter into discussion with
her. It is said that Nafisa has taught Shafi’i prophetic tradition, prayed for him when he fell ill, and
participated –at his request – in his funeral prayer. The degree of the respect al-Shafi’i had for the
scholarship of this woman may be judged from the fact that he used to pray the tarawih prayers with
her 13. In recent decades, with scholarly attention to retrieve evidence of Muslim women’s agency,
other elements of her biography have been highlighted: her knowledge and scholarly authority. Most
recently, English-language scholarly works have occasionally stated that she not only attended, but
might even have led Shafi’i’s funeral prayer. Kecia Ali, a contemporary scholar on Islam, uses this
information as a point of departure to consider biography, scholarly objectivity, and the construction
of Muslim women’s religious authority by scholars14.
The discussion about women as imams comes after the discussion about the place of women in the
mosque, because the limitation of space is an underlying issue in the debate on female imams, as we
will see later. In the time of the Prophet the mosque was not only an area for prayer, but also a
school for men, women and children on a variety of different topics. In the early time of Islam,
different gatherings, except the prayer, occurred while men and women were intermingling. Besides
this, according to Ahmad Shawqi al-Fanjari, who follows the example of Rifa’ah Rafi al-Tahtawi, the
mosque also functioned as a “Muslim parliament” and a sort of president was elected by the
people15. Early Islam had to advocate for women’s presence in the mosque; in a hadith in Muslim is
said; “a man tried to ban his wife from going to the mosque. The woman went to the Prophet and
told him this, his answer was; ,,if a woman asks permission to go to the mosque , her husband is not
allowed to stop her”. The content of this hadith is seen as mutawatir16 because lots of ahadith, some
narrated slightly differently, tell the Muslim men that they cannot say no to women who want to go
to the mosque; ,,if your wives ask for permission to go to the mosque during the night, you have to
grant her permission”(Bukhari and Muslim), ,,if your wives ask permission to go to the mosque during
the night, you should not stop them when they go to the mosque” (Bukhari en Muslim). After the
death of the Prophet this hadith has been confirmed; “Abdullah Ibn Omar said: I heard the Prophet,
you may not forbid you wives to go to the mosque if they asked permission” (Muslim). And a last
hadith about this subject is that has been narrated that there was a man from (another) village and
10
Farid al-Din Attar,’Muslims Saints and Mystics. Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya' ('Memorial of the Saints')’, Translated by A.J.
Arberry. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1983, p. 40
11
Farid al-Din Attar, ’Muslims Saints and Mystics. Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya', p. 65
12
Nafisa was the great-granddaughter of Hasan (son of the last “right guided” caliph ‘Ali). She married Ishaq, son of imam Ja’far al-Sadiq,
founder of the Shi’a madhhab/school of law. After she bore her husband two children, she went to Cairo with her cousin Sakina alMadfuna. When she died during Ramadan in 208 A.H., her husband wished to convey her body in Medina, but the people of Cairo begged
that she should be buried among them. Her shrine in Cairo has been active for a millennium. In this story two aspects are important. First
we see that there was in that time an exchange of thought between Shi’a (Nafisa) and Sunni’s (imam Shafi’i) and that the respect was so
big that they even prayed together (this is hardly imaginable nowadays). The second point, is that Nafisa was surrounded by some of the
most important men in Islamic Jurisprudential History. She was an equal discussion and prayer fellow-woman for them and might even led
al-Shafi’i’s funeral prayer.
13
See; Javad Nurbakhsh, Sufi Women, Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi Publications, London, 1990, p. 184-189
14
Kecia Ali (Boston University), The Jurist and the Saint: Sayyida Nafisa, Biography, and the Construction of Muslim Women’s Authority,
CURA Conference, January 24th 2012
15
Ahmad Shawqi al-Fanjari, Al-Ikhtilat fi al-Din fi al-Tarikh fi ‘Ilm al-Ijtima’, al-Hayah al-Misriyah al-Ammah lil-Kitab, Cairo, 1987, p. 42; He
promoted non-segregation and women's participation in public life, including in the mosque. He follows the example of Rifa’ah Rafi alTahtawi (pioneer of the cultural werternization in Egypt), and says that every age adopts a different terminology to convey the concepts of
democracy and freedom. What is called freedom in Europe is exactly what in Islam is called justice (‘adl). Background information about
Shawqi al-Fanjari see: Keane, John, Violence and Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 183-184
16
Reliable based on the amount of similar narrations
6
said: ,,I swear by Allah, I will forbid them (to go to the mosque). ‘Umar was with this man and started
the conversation. ‘Umar became angry at this man because he protested what the Prophet said! Then
‘Umar told him: ,,I said the Prophet has allowed this and you protest him!”17.
A contemporary issue is that it has been said by many Muslims that women would not have to go to
the mosque, but if men go, they are rewarded extra. There are many examples showing that there
was no difference between men and women in the time of the Prophet; they prayed separately but
in the same space and if they attended lectures they were mixed. “We know this because this
tradition has been narrated by a woman. She could not hear what had been said and she asked a
man to repeat it. She was thus sitting near a man. The idea that women are not allowed into the
mosques and that men on the contrary will get an extra reward is thus a (cultural) misunderstanding.
Praying in the mosque would be rewarded 27 times more, this is true, but thus also holds for
women18”. Women could not be banned from the mosques. But another question is whether they
were obliged to pray separately in the mosques or not? The four schools of law have reached a
consensus on this issue which is that; ,,a woman has the right to be present during the
congregational prayers in the mosque and has the right to perform her prayer behind the imam, just
like the men19”, and this is exactly the right that Asra Nomani, on who I will elaborate later, claimed
when she walked into the mosque with a group of women into the main area. Some continue this
argument by saying that women can pray next to men and that this doesn’t invalidate the prayer. All
schools of law, except Hanafis, hold this opinion. A fiqh statement is that “if a woman performs her
salat behind an imam and next to a man, her salat is not invalidated”, because the idea is segregation
of gender, not a specification of place. The Hanafi school of law accepts this saying too, but adds that
there has to be a bit of space between the men and women, instead of praying side by side20. The
issue of women in the mosque in general is important because an argument contra the imama is that
a large number of mosques in the world do not even allow women into the mosques (especially
those who belong to the Hanafi madhhab). This “limitation” of space is a frequently heard argument
to ban women from the intervention in the religious authoritative sphere. Above we could see that
women can in theory, based on fiqh, not be banned from the mosques, but how did this occur?
Mernissi says in her book The Veil and the Male Elite21 that there is a side (in Islam) that wants to
hide any rights for women, and that those kinds of rulings often have a lot to do with “space”. The
most powerful way to restrict women is to restrict their space. Mernissi shows the patriarchal
tendency in hadith works with the following example: more than 300 years after the death of the
Prophet Muhammad there is another kind of hadith stated in the collection al-sunan of Nasa’i which
says: ,,never forget to give directions for arrangements between men and women during prayers”.
The idea is definitely to regulate the coexistence of both sexes in the mosque (which occurred in the
early time of Islam in the same space, otherwise directions are not needed), and not to forbid the
women as happened later. The only ones that are excluded from the mosque are the people who ate
raw garlic and onion22. When the hadith science became popular, is was also popular to make up
ahadith and derive a ruling from it that suited the fabricator well. Long after the ahadith that says we
cannot forbid the women to go to the mosque, a hadith arose that says; ,,if she fears disturbing
men’s minds, it is better for her to pray at home23”. But in the book of this hadith, kitab al-Jawzi, the
hadith of Bukhari is mentioned too, only after the hadith which already lays a very big burden and
responsibility on the women (who do not want to disturb the men). And in this book it is concluded
that women are not obliged to pray in the mosque and men are, so in that case, the women should
pray at home. And until nowadays, there are many mosques (and not even strict ones) that do not
17
All ahadith are mentioned in Ahmad Shawqi al-Fanjari, Al-Ikhtilat fi al-Din fi al-Tarikh fi ‘Ilm al-Ijtima’.
Mohammed Ghaly in: Visser, (Timke), Baracs (Merel) & Dijk (Anne), Het is Cultuur, Geloof ik, publication of LIVN, Alkmaar (NL), Falstaff
Media, 2009, p. 13
19
Ahmad Shawqi al-Fanjari, Al-Ikhtilat fi al-Din fi al-Tarikh fi ‘Ilm al-Ijtima’, p. 44
20
Personal conversation with dr. Marzouk Aulad Abdellah 2009
21
Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, translated by Mary Jo Lakeland , New
York, Basic, 1991 Original French: Le Harem Politique, NL: De Politieke Harem; Vrouwen en de Profeet, de Geus, Breda, 1991
22
Nasa’i, al Sunan, vol 2, p. 33
23
Ibn Jawzi, Kitab ahkam al-nisa’, al-Maktaba al-‘Asriyya, Beirut, 1980, p. 201
18
7
allow women to enter24. Fatima Mernissi speaks in her academic works (also in her novels) of
segregation as a way to keep women away from politics and the public domain in general. In Saudi
Arabia we see for example that the forbidding of ihktilat (mixing of men and women in public space)
is also a principle behind a lot of rulings that go against the rights of women (for example driving a
car). We only have to imagine what a huge difference it would make, if people become aware of the
background of these anti-female statements. As long as these kind of ahadith are spread and are
seen as authoritative, it will be very hard for Muslim women to become authoritative in the eyes of
(Muslim) men, not to mention female leadership in prayer, including leading the men.
1.5 Definitions
The Arabic word ‘imam’ literally means ‘leader’ and points primarily at the person who leads a group
of Muslims (not only in prayer). It thus also refers to the leader of the Islamic prayer. First and
foremost it is expected of the imam (as a leader in a mosque) that he will lead the prayer and passes
on the religious message to future generations25. This message is mostly given during the Friday
sermon (khutba) in the mosque, and the imam who gives this sermon is also called imam-khatib. In
the book Imam in Nederland by Welmoet Boender, it is said that the imam is a kind of ‘alim
(scholar)26, and more broadly, is part of a religious tradition. The imam often teaches in the mosque
who provides Muslim believers with religious information. Religious authority is often appointed to
someone who can show he or she is educated enough and thus has enough knowledge to act as an
authoritarian figure27. In this way, the function of the imam as a provider of knowledge is important.
“Forms of authority are continued, conveyed and legitimized by Friday sermons and lesson circles” 28
and in this way we see that an imam can function as an authority. The quest for female imams is thus
part of the broader quest of female religious authority in Islam. As we will see in this thesis, many
progressive Muslims plead for change in the name of gender equality. Changes are not easy, because
people are used to “tradition and the social dynamics of class, gender and generation. Change and
reform do not erase authority but redistribute it and might change its nature”.29 If men want change,
it must be authorized by the people; there must be a certain support from people in order for
something or someone to become authoritative. In this research we will see how the possible change
of the imam as a woman is viewed and argued. And more importantly, how the arguments are made
authoritative in order to religiously approve (or not approve) a female imam.
Imam – thus means a leader in general. Throughout history, the term has been developed from
leader as the caliph into the leader of the Islamic prayer. The latter often functions also as a spiritual
counselor and as head of a mosque too. I will use the word imamate if I refer to the function of an
imam in general. And I will use the feminine form “imama” when I mean a female imam30.
Sometimes I will explicitly say “female imam” or “women as imam” to give extra weight on the
position of a woman as imam in that sentence. Because imamas can (or not, that is the question)
lead a group of women only or a whole congregation of men and women, I will use the term
“absolute imama” to refer to the imama who leads both men and women in prayer. If I use the term
24
For example: The ahl al-sunna (Hanafi) mosques in Surinam are not known as very strict mosques, but they indeed do for example not
allow women in their mosques. In the Netherlands, the mosques of this jama’at has changed this, but with the ‘eid prayers, women should
stay at home because there might be not enough space for the men. (while ‘eid prayers are according to classical thought are obliged for
both men and women).
25
Cesari 1999 in Welmoet Boender, Imam in Nederland; Opvattingen Over Zijn Religieuze Rol In De Samenleving, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker,
2007, p. 14
26
See ibid. p. 28 ; if this is really the case is an interesting question, but a too voluminous one to answer in this research. In works of Islamic
authority as “Wael B. Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, Themes in Islamic Law”, “Abou El Fadl, Khaled, Speaking in God’s
name”,” Coulson, N.J. , A History of Islamic Law”, “Vikør, Knut S., Between God and the Sultan” and “Zubaida, Sami, Law and Power in the
Islamic World, works who all handle extensively the quest of authority in Islam; all do not refer to an imam as a significant figure of
authority neither as a kind of scholar.
27
See: H. Thielicke, Autorität, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Handwörtbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, UTB
Grosse Reihe, Nördlingen, Germany, 1986, p. 792
28
See quote of Eickelmann 1999 in Welmoet Boender, Imam in Nederland, p. 29
29
Salvatore 2004 in ibid., p. 29
30
This term is also used in the Bidaya of Ibn Rushd and also in other contributions in this debate.
8
imam or imama in this thesis I explicitly refer to the function of a person who leads the prayer,
although I am aware that an imam can perform many other functions as well. If other functions are
aimed at, I will explicitly mention this31.
Conservative versus Progressive: To clarify positions between orthodox and conservative or more
traditional opinions on the one hand and more progressive views on the other (which labels’ are
many), I will use in this thesis for practical reasons the terms conservative for the former and
progressive for the latter, although I am aware of the various connotations both terms can hold. In
practice, the more progressive views tend more towards an acceptance of female imams (but not
all), and the conservative views tend in general more to an opinion against. In much literature on
gender authority in Islam we often see this clarification to make clear the different standpoints in the
debate.
2. Present-Day Discussions
The present-day discussion on female imams takes place within the broader discussion of female
religious leadership and female authority in Islam. A female imam is, if this would be allowed, a
public role within the Muslim community. The discussion about female (religious) authority in Islam
is very much centered around the question of female representation in the public domain in general.
This debate is often placed in a feminist framework and therefore easily dismissed by conservative
interpreters as a western influence on Islam and therefore as un-Islamic. Zainab ul-Suwaij, a famous
human rights activist in the USA with Iraqi roots, therefore wishes to speak of human rights instead
of feminism or women’s rights in Islam32. This broader movement is thus called different names by
different people (feminism, Islamic feminism, human rights, women’s rights, Muslim women rights),
but at the heart of all these different names is the attempt to reinterpret Islamic religious texts from
a woman-friendly perspective. The key approach is to focus on textual analysis and thus work
methodologically in search of evidence to establish laws and regulations suitable for modern society.
As such, “the movement aims to establish a modern fiqh un-nisa or a jurisprudence of women’s rights
specifically from women’s perspectives.33” It is easily said by conservative Muslim men that Islamic
history does not show any women with power or authority over men, that there are no examples as
such, and that women are “irrational and emotional and thus cannot take up any serious tasks as
interpreting the holy texts34”. Many studies (by women and men, Muslim and non-Muslim) have
shown many examples of historical Muslim women that indicate that there are no barriers for female
participation in authoritative positions35. It is in this framework that the issue of imama is debated
these days.
In this chapter I will give an overview of the discussion in the modern debate; which arguments are
invoked and given as proof, be it for or against? I will start by showing the context of the modern
debate and give some examples of present-day imamas to see what we are actually talking about;
are there many or few? After this I have divided the modern discussion into two parts; 1. academic
contributions and 2. normative-religious contributions. It must be said that most contributions from
the academic Islamic studies are from Muslims themselves, which in my opinion says something
about their commitment (being a Muslim) in this debate. The authors also make clear (some more
and some less) their position in this debate and these contributions are therefore partly normative,
but in an academic method and framework. The normative-religious contributions are the
31
Imama and absolute imama are both terms frequently used in the literature on this topic.
Lecture Zainab al-Suwaij, ‘An Arab Spring for women?’, in: de Nieuwe Liefde Amsterdam 14-06-2012; 16.00-18.00
33
Haifaa Jawad, Islamic Feminism; Leadership Roles and Public Representation, Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic
World, no. 7, 2009, p. 6
34
Ibid.
35
Some examples of this kind of work are; Fatima Mernissi; The Veil and the Male Elite, A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in
Islam and Forgotten Queens of Islam, Khaled Abou el Fadl; Speaking in God’s name, Amina Wadud; The Quran and women
32
9
contributions of Muslims in this debate, who had an extensive and clear view and opinion in the issue
of imama and wrote about it. We can find in this section the fatawa in this modern debate too,
because these are legal statements from a religious normative perspective. A special source in the
modern debate is the work of Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal (“Permission for the
woman to lead men in prayer”). I will introduce him in more detail than other contributions, because
his work is only available in Arabic and not used in the western debate on imama until now.
2.1. Context of the Debate
The debate of imamas and women in the mosque in general is most profoundly discussed in the USA
and Canada. In the part of the contemporary debate we will see that the most famous examples can
be found there. These examples nevertheless have an impact on the rest of the world. To make the
impact of this debate more clear, I will briefly look on how the debate influences the Netherlands
and the Middle East.
2.1.1. Debate in the USA and Canada
My view on why this debate, and particularly the standpoint pro imamas and women in the mosque
in general, is mostly discussed in the USA and Canada, is that the Muslim population in general
differs a lot from the Muslim population in Western-Europe and the Middle Eastern and Asian
Muslim countries. In the West in general there are more freedom and autonomy to speak out. But
the USA and Canada differ from Europe if we look at the background of Muslims. In the USA there
are roughly 30% African American (converted) Muslims, 33% Arabic Muslims (mainly from Palestine,
Lebanon and Syria), 29% South Asian, 5% Turkish and 3% Iranian Muslims36. Except from the first
group, these Muslims are often highly educated refugees from different countries in de Middle East,
Iran or Pakistan. In Europe, the biggest population of Muslims are immigrant workers. In my point of
view this explains why the more progressive voices are from the US. In Western Europe, Muslims in
general tend more towards traditional forms of scholarship, while in the USA people did more study
and research by themselves. Amina Wadud makes another distinction between immigrant Muslims
in the USA and Afro American Muslims; ,,Immigrant Americans and African Americans have a
diversity of interpretations; there are overlaps, crossroads and distinctions. The biggest distinction is
the definition of authority and the second one is the definition of justice37”. By this she means that
African Americans have a broader Quranic hermeneutic definition of justice, because many of them
have a slavery background, and they converted to Islam because they saw the justice in this religion.
With this general idea in mind, it is not hard to understand that this influences the way
interpretations of Quran and tradition are made.
In March 2005 the Progressive Muslim Union announced a women-led jum’a prayer and khutba. The
organizers, Asra Nomani, Ahmed Nassef, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur and Sarah Eltantawi, broadly
publicized the prayer to get their message out; not only “to challenge male-only religious
authority38”, but also to force the larger community and scholars to respond. As we will later see,
they did. The organizers asked Amina Wadud, theologian, professor and imama39, to lead the jum’a
prayer and giving the khutba speech. Wadud at that time was already widely known and appreciated
due to her book Qur’an and Women, which was of particular influence in the debate on women and
Islam. Before I will elaborate more on the prayer, the context of the emergence of this event must be
made clear. The context was an environment of exclusion of women in the mosque. The National
Filmhouse of Canada has made a documentary movie ‘Me and the Mosque40’, about this issue. This
film follows a woman who noticed the change within mosques to seclude the women from the men.
Women had been used to praying in the same space as men, but nowadays there is usually a curtain
36
Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002 (second edition), p. 805
Women Make Movies, The Noble Struggle of Amina Wadud, dir. Elli Safari, 2007
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”; a Survey and Analysis of Legal Arguments on Women-Led Prayers in Islam,
Journal of Law and Religion, Volume 26. No1. 2010/11, p. 142
39
She acts as imam (leader of the salat) frequently in organized settings.
40
National Filmhouse of Canada, Me and the Mosque, 2005 via: http://www.nfb.ca/film/me_and_mosque
37
38
10
or a different room, and “if you are lucky” with a one-way mirror so that women can see the men’s
section including the imam but men cannot look into the women’s section. This notion of reduction
of space is important in the issue of imamas, because if women are not even allowed to pray in the
same room, it is unthinkable at all to have a female imam in front of men. In this documentary,
different scholars give their opinion and Islamic view. Sheikh Abdullah Adhami, legal- and hadith
scholar, says about women in the mosques that; ,,Some were at the minbar (pulpit) themselves and
not behind curtains. Fatimah bin ‘Abbas, a contemporary of Ibn Taymiyyah, taught from the minbar
herself, face uncovered, and she was not old or ugly41”. Dr. Tareq Suwaidan, Islamic author and
Kuwaiti scholar, says about the seclusion of women in mosques; ,,unfortunately in many Muslim
cultures, tradition has taken over and many Muslims cannot make a distinction between (cultural)
tradition and the pure teachings of the Prophet salla llahu alayhi wa sallam (may God grant him
peace and blessing). If we take a deep look into the practice of Muhammad s.a.w.s. we can see very
clearly that there were no walls or curtains separating men and women (except the wives of the
Prophet). Scholars have applied the rules for the wives of the Prophet on all women, but this is not
right, the Quran is very clear in that these laws were only for his wives.” In the end of the
documentary the woman is allowed to pray behind the men in the same room, but her struggle
continues.
Asra Nomani, one of the organizers of the “Wadud prayer” experienced almost the same. After she
went on hajj, she noticed that women and men there were praying together. Back home she became
an activist and organized protest actions of a group of women, walking together into the main hall
(men’s section) of several mosques and praying there, to claim their right. It is in this context and
background that Nomani asked Wadud to lead the Friday prayer42. The prayer was widely announced
and reactions of most Muslim communities were negative. A bomb threat forced the organizers to
cancel the act in the location where it had initially been planned, but the event took place, although
under strict security measures, in an Anglican church in New York. Some Muslims saw this prayer as
“a return to the egalitarian way of Islam, others as an infamous innovation43” (bid’a).
2.1.2. Debate in The Netherlands
The debate around the prayer led by Amina Wadud also reached the Netherlands. The following
quote by an author on women rights in Islam, Asma Lambaret, gives us a good impression on how
this debate went; ”the action of Wadud did result in some very negative and some very positive
reactions, but also some nuanced reactions, but I cannot criticize and give my own opinion, because I
do not know the context and precise reasons of Wadud for this action. But we must not forget that
this has opened the door for discussion and that she brought the question of a female imam into
discussion.44” The discussion of female imams had not been discussed very profoundly by Dutch
Muslims in general; they didn’t know the precise reason why Amina Wadud did what she did, neither
did they feel any need to find out that reason. At website forums such as maroc.nl and
ontdekislam.nl the “Wadud prayer” is mostly commented based on the argument of prayer being
mixed (men and women standing not behind or besides each other, but the whole group of praying
people intermingling), or the fact that a woman did not wear hijab, or that Amina Wadud was a
feminist. Some questioned the female imama or it was roughly put aside by many Muslims as unIslamic. Amina Wadud did come to the Netherlands shortly after the famous prayer and she spoke at
a meeting in ‘de Balie’ in Amsterdam (May 2005), organized in collaboration with the UvA University.
Al Nisa, a Dutch Muslim women organization was involved too. Media such as newspapers NRC and
Trouw wrote articles about the event in New York and a Dutch Muslim broadcasting organization
“NMO” held a round-table discussion in which the former chairwoman of Al Nisa, Ceylan Weber,
41
“face uncovered and being not ugly” are remarkable, because it is often said in Islamic historical scripts that women who speak to men
should cover their face. If a woman was old and ugly this was not necessary according to orthodox scholars.
42
Although Amina Wadud did not organize this event herself, and she was asked to act as imam, this event is nevertheless referred to
throughout this paper as “the Wadud prayer/event”, because she became most visible, and in this thesis the act of imam is central.
43
Addennur Prado (Secretary of Islamic Council Spain), About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, via www.studyingislam.org/articletext.aspx?id=955 / www.webIslam.com , viewed 06-06-2012, p. 1
44
In; Samira Bendadi, Dolle Amina’s. Feminisme in de Arabische wereld, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2008, p. 143
11
participated too. In this debate, most disapproved the female imam. A general opinion is that Amina
Wadud was praised due to her book Qur’an and Women, but some were skeptic of her feminism.
This had changed after the prayer event; the majority refused the mixed prayer and this influenced
the general view on her work too. My own observation of this debate is that the issue of the mixed
prayer was a bigger problem than the issue of a female imam, at least this seems to be the case
based on the arguments in the debate on Dutch forums. But most Muslims in the Netherlands, even
the women, disapproved of the event of Amina Wadud. Al Nisa’s point of view was neutral in this
debate: there was also support for Amina Wadud, but a general view was that the question of imama
should not have priority, other aspects such as the emancipation of women were higher on the list45.
Milli Görüs, a Turkish international organization, did contribute to the debate in the Netherlands by
saying that they already have imamas, not as leaders for the mixed prayer, but as spiritual guidance
and counselors for women46.
2.1.3. Debate in the Middle East
The Middle East as a coherent union is non-existent, therefore I cannot speak for the whole Middle
East in this short section. It is worth noting that several fatawa had come from there (which I will
show later), but particularly from those scholars who are already familiar with the Western context
and other debates. A prominent figure is Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Another is the special source in this
thesis, namely the work of Gamal al-Banna. He also put several Arabic fatawa in his short book on
this topic and discusses them, I will elaborate on the most interesting of them later. Remarkable, but
not proven that the Wadud Prayer was the cause for this tumult, is that some time after the Wadud
prayer, Saudi Arabia wanted to forbid women to pray together with the men in the Masjid al-Haram
(or Grand Mosque of Mecca, in which the Ka’aba is situated). An enormous protest arose from men
and women. This would be bid’a (an innovation) and not in line with the sunna. The protest was so
enormous that the intended law was annulled. However, during some times of the year, the prayers
are nevertheless now separated, and women are only allowed on the balcony, not on the ground
floor where the Ka’aba is situated, but this is not the case during hajj. There is thus no evidence that
the Wadud prayer caused this tumult (after efforts towards more female authority, it is not
uncommon for conservatives to react with an extra measure to exclude women completely), but
there was certainly a correlation.
2.1.4. Present-Day examples of Imamas
In this section I will show whether there exist imamas that are active in leading congregational
prayers. Canadian and American Muslims have been active, more than other Muslims, in women-led
prayer discussions and movements who have put the female imamate into practice. Here I will give
some explicit examples from over the world if possible, and look which functions of the imam they
perform or not. For example; in 2004 a 20-year-old, Maryam Mirza, delivered the second half of the
‘eid al-Fitr khutba in Toronto47. Later that year Yasmin Shadeer led the night salat (isha) over a mixed
congregation48. This was the first record of a female-led salat in a mosque in contemporary times.
Quite a few others gave khutbas or other kinds of lectures, while women-led salat’s are fewer in
number. This has to do with the fact that an imam as a leader in prayer makes several physical
positions which are seen as inappropriate for a woman in front of men. Khutbas or other speeches
are therefore widely more accepted, because no tempting positions are taken. It must be said that
women’s performances in mosques are often not recorded. This is because they are or seen as a
normal habit and therefore not remarkable to make an announcement of, or people are afraid of
threats and negative critique and the women-led prayers remain therefore often an internal
happening.
45
Personal conversation with Ceylan Weber, former chairwoman of Al Nisa. 08-06-2012
See for example; Elma Kronemeijer, Vrouwen in de Moskee: een interview met Fatma Katirci, Al Nisa; Islamitisch Maandblad voor
Vrouwen, 28e jaargang, nr. 2 februari, 2009, p. 14-18
47
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20041116/world.htm#8
48
“One for the Sisterhood”: documentary by Karin Wells, CBC. 2005.
46
12
Asra Nomani wrote about herself extensively in her book Standing Alone in Mecca, on which I will
elaborate later. After her hajj she became an activist in order to re-establish women’s presence in
the mosques in the main prayer hall. She took the initiative for the prayer in 2005 in New York, in
which she proclaimed the adhan. Later in 2005 she led a prayer herself49 and she continues her
struggle and leads a prayer now and again.
Amina Wadud received, compared to Nomani, in her role as the leader of the prayer in 2005, in the
USA only brief media attention, while international and domestic debates among Muslims
continue(d) for quite some time50. But for Wadud it was not the first time she led a prayer, nor that
she gave a khutba. In her book Inside the Gender Jihad, she wrote that she gave a khutba earlier in
1994 in South Africa. She herself belongs to a tariqa (a mystic order) in which it is also common that
women lead in prayers51. Elli Safari made a documentary about Wadud and followed her some time
after 2005. Safari is an Iranian-Dutch filmmaker, what shows the international influence of, and
interest in Amina Wadud. The film was broadcasted worldwide. In the film is mentioned that Wadud
was threatened with death in such a degree that she could not teach at the university anymore and
the security experts advised her that she would not teach from a publicly accessible and definable
place anymore. But she kept teaching from cyber connections and giving lectures all over the world.
She has thus a (large) group of supporters, but also some serious opponents. The opponents only
became active after her prayer in 2005. Wadud gave earlier khutba’s and led prayers and continues
this, but more outside publicity. That is why she gave almost no interviews after the 2005 event.
Muslims for Progressive Values Canada is an affiliate of Muslims for Progressive Values USA, which
was founded in 2010 by Shahla Khan Salter. This organization made it possible that women lead
mixed congregational prayers in Ottawa, Canada. Prayers for MPV Canada have been led by women,
including Farhat Rehman and by Zeinab A.. Toronto seems to have a very progressive atmosphere,
because Laury Silvers, the co-founder of a Jum’a Prayer Circle is also situated in Toronto. This
movement is gender-equal, gay-friendly, and provides a safe place for worship. Silvers is the imama
of this congregation. She is also a Professor of Islam52 and did wide-ranging research on early pious
and Sufi women. By reading against the grain of biographical reports from Islam’s first century, she
shows that transmitters have re-framed, de-emphasized, and even erased depictions of women’s
socially embedded lives in order to construct an ideal woman whose submission to God serves the
patriarchal ideal of seclusion53.
In north America, some communities sought to enact the most equitable possibilities provided by the
law such as having women-led tarawih or eid prayers. Other communities began to organize womenled Friday prayers as well. But many women-led prayer groups keep a low profile, and therefore it is
difficult to give an accurate report of their numbers and locations. In the meantime, women-led
prayers have taken place (such as by Asra Nomani and Amina Wadud), but it is not a sustained or
huge movement.
But what do we know from the rest of the world? The Woman Imam’s Network is facilitated by the
Progressive Muslim Union of North America and is seeking to facilitate a grassroots movement of
Muslims who would like to gather for women-led congregational prayers. Their website
49
Juliane Hammer, Performing Gender Justice; the 2005 women-led prayer in New York, Cont Islam, 2010, 4, p. 100
Ibid., p. 105
51
I gained this information on a personal note and because of some serious threats, this tariqa prefers to remain low profile and not in the
spotlights nor to be found easily.
52
She works on Islam in the Formative Period, in particular Sufism, Sufi Metaphysics, and Gender, and Progressive Islam in North America.
She wrote, A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism, which was released by SUNY Press in 2010. Recent
articles of her hand are “‘God Loves Me’: Early Pious and Sufi Women and the Theological Debate over God’s Love” in the Journal for
Islamic Studies, and “‘I am One of the People’: A Survey and Analysis of Legal Arguments on Woman-led Prayer in Islam” in The Journal of
Law and Religion. She is working on her second book, Simply Good Women: The Lives, Thought, and Practices of Early Pious and Sufi
Women along with a companion volume with Ahmed Elewa of translations from Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifta al-safwa. She presently is serving as the
Co-Chair for the Islamic Mysticism Group at the American Academy of Religion and teaches Islam related courses at the University of
Toronto. http://laurysilvers.com/biocv/ visited at 03-08-2012
53
Laury Silvers, University of Toronto, Disappearing Women: Hafsa bint Sirin and the Textual Seclusion of Early Pious and Sufi Women,
CURA conference, Brookline, February 16th 2012
50
13
demonstrates that these prayers continue to be organized globally54. The latter is their intention, but
besides some incidental occasions, there are at this moment only groups in North America. Examples
of the absolute imamas, as we could see in the USA and Canada, are not to be found55 in the
Netherlands and there are no records of imamas in absolute terms in other places in the world56.
There are women who serve as imama for other women. This mainly occurs in private setting as
women gatherings, friends praying together, or a few women in the same place and at the same time
(in a praying room for example). In the recently published book Women, leadership and Mosques, we
do see that women, around the world are gaining more and more authority. But not as absolute
imamas; they function more as teachers, spiritual leaders (for women), spiritual mothers, varying
from more formal settings such as madrasas to informal ways as highly appreciated women in a
community. Interesting is the Islamic notion of male and female segregation; in this book it becomes
visible that this segregation in a way has a positive effect on the emergence of female authority in
general. If men and women ought to be separated, and it is an Islamic duty for women as well to be
educated, then female teachers are needed. Especially in Iran, Syria, Pakistan, China, Egypt and many
other countries, the rise of female religious leaders increased57.
Special are the women’s mosques in China. These mosques are only accessible for women and
therefore need female imams. These had come into existence due to the isolated position of China,
which made that Chinese Islam (and the female mosques) could develop separately from the global
Muslim community. These imamas lead all the obligatory prayers, including the jum’a and khutba.
“Although these mosques are specifically organized for women to have their own space without male
interference, men have been known to participate, reportedly with the permission of the female
imam58”. Ahong is a title interchangeable with imam (for men and women) and there are quite a few
female ahong among the Hui folk in China. They lead all the prayers, give the khutba and give Islamic
lessons. Although the women’s-mosques have existed for some hundred years, there is, with the
coming of globalization, an awareness that it is a bid’a (innovation), but this is mostly seen as a hao
bidaerti (laudable innovation)59.
In the Netherlands, no records are made of official imamas or women who often lead congregational
prayers in a mosque setting. It is a habit for Muslim women in the Netherlands, except a part of the
Hanafi madhhab, to pray together if they are together at the time of prayer. There is a growing
tendency of charismatic female leaders within and outside the mosques who provide lessons or give
religious advice. Especially in Turkish settings these forms are more organized and even explicitly
called imama, but this role of imama is restricted to spiritual counselor and excluded from leading in
prayer60. Milli Görüs, a Turkish international organization, did contribute to the debate in the
Netherlands by saying that they already have imamas, not as leaders for the mixed prayer, but as
spiritual guides and counselors for women. In the Netherlands are many female spiritual counselors
working to provide religious mental care for both men and women61. There is also a growing number
54
Woman Imam’s Network, Meetup Groups, MeetUp, win.meetup.com; there are at this moment (19-06-2012) 3 Groups in the USA only;
New York, Washington and Atlanta, they have 1773 members and 776 people interested (both members and interested from all over the
world) if anyone is interested, you can contact them and they will help you to organize a group in your neighborhood.
55
Of course they might be there, but there are no official records or reports of frequently organized settings of it.
56
In a personal conversation with Masooda Bano (Rotterdam, 02-06-2012), co-editor of the book Women, leadership and Mosques, she
said that in her research, she never heard about or spoke to any absolute imamas, except the examples in this research.
57
An excellent case study on Damascus, Syria: Hillary Kalmbach, Social and Religious Change in Damascus: One Case of Female Islamic
Religious Authority, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2008 35(1), p. 37-57
58
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 141
59
See Maria Jaschok, Sources of Authority: Female Ahong and Qingzhen Nusi (women’s mosques) in China, in: Women, Leadership and
Mosques; Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill, 2011, p. 37-39
60
See Welmoet Boender, Imam in Nederland, p. 124-168 and 304
61
I have quite a few female friends who work as “geestelijke verzorger”. One even works as “imama” in a male-only penitentiary, but the
Friday prayer is led by a male, though she is the one organizing everything around it.
14
of female students in the imam-studies at Dutch universities62. If we look into mosques, there are no
records of absolute imamas. The clearest female presence in mosques in the Netherlands might be in
the Lahore Ahmadiyya mosques. They have for example many women on their boards (50%) and
during ‘eid women frequently speak in front of the congregation. Quran recitations and special
praise-songs about Allah and the Prophet are also sung by women in front of the whole
congregation63.
2.2. Academic Contributions
Amina Wadud and Laury Silvers are imamas and both academically specialized in Islamic studies.
Most academic contributors in this debate are women, but Khaled Abou el Fadl is a well-known
Islamic scholar on law who contributes too. On this topic he reacted with a legal opinion, and
therefore I will discuss his contribution in the section about normative religious contributions. Juliane
Hammer is an academic who has studied the controversial female-led prayer of Amina Wadud in a
more descriptive way not taking a (personal) standpoint in the debate.
Amina Wadud herself did not give a fully Islamic and fiqh-based argumentation why she thinks it is
acceptable for a woman to lead the salat. In her book Inside the Gender Jihad she mentioned this
event where she led the jum’a prayer and the khutba, but clearly says this was not the first time she
gave a khutba; she did it earlier in South Africa. But a profound Islamic legal argumentation is not
given by her. She instead builds on her academic research to legitimize the absolute equality of men
and women in Islam, and thereby also equality as leaders in prayer. In her book Qur’an and Women;
Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective, she profoundly bases her argument that the
Quranic revelation has a gender-just nature. This book had been acknowledged as one of the most
important sources to cite when discussing gender equity64. In this book, Wadud specifically says to
use the hermeneutic model and she puts the sacred texts in a linguistic and reference framework.
Wadud finds it very odd that women cannot lead men in prayer because of the positions the Islamic
salat includes. She says: “If a man, while connecting with Allah, is distracted by a woman, also
connecting with Allah, than this is a very low level of devotion; this would (also) mean that he is not
Allah’s highest creature (what some conservatives think), but instead of this (he is) an animal who
cannot control his basic animal ego, because another woman is trying to communicate with Allah.
And this reasoning (of the men contra imama) doesn’t exist in the Quran, and not in the sunna and
not even in early fiqh. The men should have their hearts and minds at Allah. The whole earth is a
masjid, this means you can pray anywhere, also behind a women, or next to a woman. This is
something that men have taken from certain patriarchal interpretation that support and keeps men
in authority and also keep limit women from their full potential service of Allah. And I don’t accept
that65”. This is her main argument. She does not elaborate very clearly on the issue, but simply says
that there is nothing mentioned in the Quran, nor in the sunna, nor in early fiqh to prohibit the
female imama in mixed settings. Wadud continues her argumentation that, “as every prayer and
every indication in the Quran, is true that Allah is Akbar (greatest), then there can be no relationship
between one human being and another other than horizontal reciprocity. This means that positions
are interchangeable; one is not above the other. My basic philosophy for the future in the context of
women, hetero’s and non hetero’s, rich and poor, is that there is always a horizontal line; one is never
more human than another; their positions are exchangeable. Only Allah is Akbar, only Allah is on
top.66” Because of the death threats she refused to give interviews nor did she write extensively on
62
In this recent interview, it is said that women can become “fully imams” in the Netherlands. It is not clear at which function of the imam
is pointed. My reading is however that this interview points at the function of spiritual counselor instead of leading a prayer over men.
http://www.nieuwwij.nl/index.php?pageID=13&themeID=597496&messageID=7587
63
My own experience during more than 10 attendances during ‘eid prayers in mosques of the AAIILN.
64
Tayyibah Taylor, Muslim Women Scholars and Religious Authority, Azizah The Voice for Muslim Women, Volume 6 issue 2, USA, p. 30
65
Quote of Amina Wadud in: The Noble Struggle of Amina Wadud, dir. Elli Safari, 2007, Women Make Movies
66
Ibid.
15
the issue of female imams67. Her work about the equal status of men and women, she states, speaks
for itself. Later, in the examination of her arguments, I will elaborate on her academic work more.
Laury Silvers and Ahmed Elewa68 wrote the article “I am one of the People; a survey and analysis of
legal arguments on women-led prayer in Islam”, in which they give an analysis of the immediate
responses to the Wadud Prayer. This was the most elaborate contribution to be found in academic
journals to the debate on imama, which specifically addressed Islamic arguments. My thesis goes
further and focuses not on the claim of truth of who is right, but evaluates the types of
argumentation in this debate and in which tradition or from which perspective these arguments are
made. Silvers and Elewa quote scholars who gave fatwas such as the Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali
Guma’a, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, imam Zaid Shakir, Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Dr. Khaled abou el Fadl, the
former grand Mufti of Marseille Sohaib ben Cheikh and Dr. Omid Safi. By doing this, they show that
the Sunni schools of law69 hold different opinions on the issue of imama. They also give their own
(legal) arguments and say that the unrestricted female prayer leadership is legal by default rather
than an innovation as many critics have charged70. They argue that a few scholars from within the
legal schools have argued for absolute imamate for women. They mention renowned Shafi’i scholar
imam al-Muzani (d.877) and imam Abu-Thawr (d.854). The last’s reasoning reflects the social
stratification of Muslim society prior to abolition of slavery. He argued that the “legal deficiency
inherent in being a male slave is greater than that in being a free woman. Since male slaves are
allowed to lead free men in prayer, then free women should be permitted to do so as well (to lead
free men in prayer)”. For further support Abu Thawr cites the Hadith in which the Prophet is
reported to have said “the one who should be the imam of a people is whoever is the best versed in
reading the Quran”71.
Silvers and Elewa continue that outside the four schools of law, they are aware of some other
renowned scholars supported female-led prayers over men; Dawud bin Ali al-Dhahiri (d.883),
Muhammad Ibn Jareer al-Tabari (d.923) and Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi (d.1240). Unfortunately, only
the legal reasoning of Ibn al-‘Arabi survived; for his primary evidence, Ibn al-‘Arabi turns to the
Quran’s accounts of female prophecy, which he argues is a form of imama. Ibn al-‘Arabi, along with
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari (d.936), Abu Muhammad Ali b. Ahmad b. Sa’id Ibn Hazm (d.1064) and Abu
‘Abd Allah al-Qurtubi (d.1273) considered Mary (and some considered also Sarah, Hawa (Eve), Hagar,
the mother of Moses and the wife of the pharaoh) to be a prophet. On the basis of this interpretation
of the Quran, Ibn al-‘Arabi declares female prayer leadership to be absolutely permissible: There are
those who unconditionally permit women to lead men in prayer, which is my opinion as well….the
reasoning is that the Messenger of God testified that some women attained perfection just as he
testified regarding some men- even though the latter were more than the former. This perfection is in
reference to prophecy, and prophecy is leadership (imama), thus a women’s leadership in prayer is
sound.” Ibn al-‘Arabi continues his discussion by also attacking the people who are against the female
imamate: ,,The default state is that her leadership is permissible, and one should not listen to those
who prohibit it without proof, for there is no text to support their claim, and any evidence they bring
forth is not female specific, and could include them in the prohibition as well, thereby neutralizing the
evidence in this regard, and maintaining the default state of her leadership’s permissibility”.72 Laury
Silvers and Ahmed Elewa also quote the above mentioned modern scholars. Sheikh al-Qaradawi says
67
After the event she was overwhelmed by all the requests and she lives a more “out of the picture” life at the moment. She prefers to
focus on her academic work instead of keeping tied to the image of a female imam.
68
Ahmad Elewa has been trained as a biologist, but his curiosity got him into studying Life from a biological perspective. He has an
increasing interest in philosophy and law and conveyed his ideas through academic and fiction writing. Other articles of him are
“Articulating “Responsibility” as a Prerequisite for the Arab Spring”(in: AJISS Special Issue - Muslims and Political Change, Summer 2012)
and; Review: The ‘Objectives’ of Maqasid al-Shariah, which has been submitted to American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
http://umassmed.academia.edu/AhmedElewa/Papers
69
These men do not all follow one school of law in particular but all situate themselves in the sunni tradition and emphasize on the sunna
of the Prophet Muhammad.
70
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 144
71
Ibid., p. 157
72
Ibn al-‘Arabi in: ibid., p. 158
16
for example “that it is not reprehensible to change a legal opinion (fatwa) due to a change in time
and place”, which opens the debate a little. Muslims in the West face hardship in the practice of their
religion and Silvers and Elewa quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah73 who says that “there may also be a
change in rulings simply to take local custom into account”.
Silvers and Elewa continue the article by giving more and more direction towards their own opinion
in this debate and their purpose in this article becomes more clear and goes beyond giving a survey
of the arguments of others. They want to “argue for the acceptability of unrestricted female prayer
leadership from within the Islamic legal tradition for those communities who choose it… Given our
reading.., we would argue further that the scholars’ concerns over modesty and their claims to
certainty on the grounds of consensus can be answered from within the tradition, .. their concerns are
already answered by Islamic law74” and can be seen therefore as an article with a normative layer
from within Islamic studies. They continue their analysis of historical Islamic sources by pointing out a
few issues. The first is modesty; imam Zaid Shakir, Sheikh Ali Guma’a, Sheikh al-Qaradawi and others
consider the woman’s body as a sexual distraction for the men and that is therefore the primary risk
of a woman-led prayer. They base themselves on a hadith wherein the Prophet had said that “the
women’s best rows in prayer are the last ones and the worst of theirs are the first ones, while the
men’s best rows are the first ones and the worst of theirs are the last ones.75” But the scholars do
agree that the main issue at stake is gender separation; some mosques separate with a balcony,
others with totally separate rooms, yet others maintain the gender separation by standing side by
side. Silvers and Elewa offer two simple solutions to maintain the gender separation: the first is
borrowed from Khaled Abou El Fadl’s fatwa, which is gender separation side by side, and the female
imam stands in front of the women, so not in the sightline of the men. The second solution is their
own and has the total separation of women in another room at its basis; normally the male imam’s
voice can be heard via loudspeakers in the women’s section, just turn that around and “pipe the
female imam’s voice in to the men’s section76”. Another principle in the debate they criticize is the
notion of consensus (ijma). They say that “the consensus on consensus is far from certain”. They also
quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, from the Zaytuna College77, who says that “if a true consensus
existed, distinct rulings definitive to the different schools could not possibly exist”. They say that the
existence of the dissenting opinions of the renowned scholars al-Tabari, al-Dhahiri, Abu Thawr, alMuzani, Ibn al-‘Arabi and others are sufficient to upset any claim that there is absolute certainty on
the prohibition on women-led prayers. They conclude that the lack of an explicit prohibition and the
Prophet’s passive and active approval of a number of forms of female prayer leadership constitutes a
passive approval of unrestricted leadership. Without any explicit evidence to the contrary, we must
assume that the default state of the command to lead the prayer includes men and women78. There
is no innovation when women lead prayer, because nothing is added to the ritual worship
established by God and the Prophet.79”80
73
Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah is a famous scholar who was born 1935 in the East of Mauritania. He studied Law at the faculty of Law in
Tunisia. He held numerous positions, such as Director of the Global Center for Renewal & Guidance, UK, Member of the European Research
& Fatwa Council, Ireland, Deputy President of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, Beirut, Member if the Association of Indian
Jurists, Delhi, Member of the Counsel of Jurists attached to the Organization of Islamic Conference, Jeddah, Member of the Muslim
League’s International High Council. He is thus active in Western countries as well as in the Middle East. http://binbayyah.net/english/bio/
visited at 03-08-2012
74
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 161
75
Ibid., p. 162
76
Ibid., p. 163
77
Shaykh or Ustadh Abdullah bin Hamid Ali began the study of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the age of 17 with his first Arabic teacher,
Imam Aberra of Eritrea, a well-known private teacher in Philadelphia. He later studied Arabic, Qur'anic recitation (tajwid) and
memorization (hifz), and is now a teacher at the Zaytuna Collega in America and is a well-known Islamic speaker. Source
http://www.zaytunacollege.org/about/ visited at 03-08-2012
78
They argued earlier that in Arabic language, the plural male form is used for both men and women. If a command is mentioned in the
male form, it thus applied on both men and women, otherwise if would be mentioned specifically. Conservative scholars do also
acknowledge this in cases where the salat, hajj or study is recommended, but Silvers and Elewa carry through this rule on the command of
imama (just as Ibn al-‘Arabi did with Prophet-hood), but conservatives wont.
79
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 168
80
In the end Elewa and Silvers give their own position in this debate too; Elewa is pro, but does not think it is the time yet and “should not
be a point of emphasis at the moment”, but he does want to raise the “awareness of the acceptability”. Silvers wants to return to the
17
Ingrid Mattson81, Professor of Islamic Studies, who has already been mentioned a few times in other
scholarly contributions, did not have a very clear opinion like the other contributions, but she
stresses the importance of following the sunna of the Prophet and that the particular rules for prayer
are not to be found in the Quran but in the ahadith. For example in the Quran the obligation to pray
is mentioned, but in the ahadith Muslims can read how to perform the prayer. She mentions that
many sunni scholars claim that there is a consensus that women should not lead men in prayer,
although they acknowledge that a few scholars have made exceptions for family congregations and
the optional night prayers in Ramadan (tarawih) if the only qualified person available to lead in those
situations is a woman. There are many indications from the sunna that when men and women
prayed together, the Prophet explicitly ordered that women should pray behind the men. “The
primary purpose of this arrangement seems to be to keep women from having to undergo scrutiny by
men as they are praying82”. She does not explicitly say that it is therefore better for women not to
lead men in prayer, but clearly moves in that direction by saying that it is not sunna and Muslims
must follow the sunna.
Juliane Hammer is assistant Professor at George Mason University in Virginia and is specialized in
Muslims in America, contemporary Muslim thought, women and gender in Islam and Sufism83. She
wrote two academic contributions on the Wadud prayer. She is the only academic who wrote about
the Wadud prayer, without taking a personal position in it. She puts the motives of the organizers of
the Wadud prayer in an hermeneutic framework. This is different from my research, because I take
the arguments and sources of more contributions into account and put them in a broader context
and framework of the background of the underlying thought. She also focusses only on the Wadud
Prayer in 2005, while I focus on the arguments in the already existing debate on female imamas, not
only on one performance in 2005. Her first article Performing gender justice: the 2005 women-led
prayer in New York, describes the prayer as a performance, in which media, participants and
organizers all played a role in the meaning of the prayer. Hammer argues that “the prayer can
meaningfully be described as a performance, and as such, as an embodiment of American Muslim
women’s (and men’s) discourses on Quranic notions of justice as gender justice.84” She starts by giving
some responses of the organizers. Ahmed Nassef said for example that the prayer was supported by
both men and women. He says that there is “evidence from prophetic practice and opinions from
classical Islamic scholars such as al-Tabari who support women-led prayers”. Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur
argued that the prayer was a form of “reclaiming the egalitarian roots of Islam”. Amina Wadud said
that is was an act for Muslim women to “reclaim their full human dignity” and she emphasized its
grounding in the Quran. Hammer also emphasized that the prayer was for Wadud “an act of devotion
to Allah”. Hammer later also involves some academic reactions on the Prayer. Nevin Reda is a recent
PhD graduate of the University of Toronto in the field of Qur'an and member of the Canadian Council
of Muslim Women85. She published a document on the website MuslimWakeUp86 detailing the
historical and textual evidence she had found in support of women-led prayers, based on a hadith in
which the Prophet had ordered a woman to lead a congregation. She cites a variety of Muslim
scholars and normative opinions in response to series of female-led prayers and ends with an
“Sunna of Umm Salama” who said she was “one of the people” (when men were called and she stood up too). She not only wants this, but
she practice it too; she is an imama.
81
Dr. Ingrid Mattson is Professor of Islamic Studies, founder of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program and director of the Macdonald Center for
Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, CT. She earned her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the
University of Chicago in 1999. She has written articles exploring the relationship between Islamic law and society, as well as gender and
leadership issues in contemporary Muslim communities. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ingrid-mattson visited 04-08-2012
82
Ingrid Mattson “Can a woman be Imam”; Debating Form and Function in Muslim Women’s Leadership, via: http://www.onbeing.org/program/new-voice-islam/feature/can-woman-be-imam-debating-form-and-function-muslim-womens visited 29-06-2012
83
http://religious.gmu.edu/people/jhammer1 visited at 03-08-2012
84
Juliane Hammer, Performing Gender Justice; the 2005 women-led prayer in New York, Cont Islam, 2010, 4, p. 92
85
http://www.emmanuel.utoronto.ca/about/news/nevinredaaward.htm visited at 03-08-2012
86
Elewa an Silvers also referred to the work of Reda. The site where Nevin Reda’s article “What would the Prophet do? The Islamic basis for
female-led prayer”, was published, the website muslimwakup.org, unfortunately does not exist anymore.
18
“appeal to the contemporary Muslim community to use their critical thinking skills and follow the
most important Divine command to only follow one God and not take the authority of scholars past
and present more seriously than that command87”. Hammer also noticed a contra reaction on Reda’s
article from Hina Azam, who said that there was no traditional legal support, and that “women-led
prayer” is a contemporary phenomenon (instead of an Islamic historical practice as others had been
arguing). Zaid Shakir88 from the Zaytuna institute in California, also rejected the historical evidence
Reda showed and his standpoint is also against women-led prayers. Shortly after this, Hussein Ibish
gave a critical response to Hina Azam’s article, and accused her of legal dogmatism and impeding the
social and spiritual development of the Muslim community. He claimed she did not believe her own
conclusion as well. The normative religious pro and contra contributions were thus going back and
forth. Hammer mentions also Laury Silvers, who, she says, had a more nuanced contribution.
According to Hammer Silvers concludes (as we have also seen above) that there is evidence that
historical practice did not permit women-led prayer, but there is room for doubt. Hammer also
mentions Ingrid Mattson’s point of view, which was that there must be more room for female
religious leadership in general, but Muslims must be cautious to “not extend too much authority to
individual scholars and their opinions89”. Hammer concludes this article by stating that the
importance of the “performance” was enormous, in the first place to activate the discussion, which it
certainly did.
In another article by Juliane Hammer, she focuses not so much on the act of the Wadud prayer and
the reactions to it, but more on the wider context in which we can place this event, which is
according to her “an embodiment of gender-just interpretations of the Quran”. She puts this debate
in the larger context that women are sometimes not even allowed to go into the mosques, or are
totally separated from men in a back-room of the mosque. In her article, she argues three things:
1.the activists involved in these events (women-led prayer and equality in mosques) draw on
emerging Quranic interpretation focusing on gender justice, so the prayer is an embodiment of such
a tafsir (Quranic exegesis), 2. the question of space in mosques is in reality a larger debate about
gender equality and 3. the claim to ritual leadership is closely linked to other forms of leadership of
women in Muslim communities.90 She mentions several activists’ initiatives as the “Daughters of
Hajar; American Women Speak” (initiated by Asra Nomani). They organized also a small “preview” of
the Wadud prayer, this time led by Nabeelah Adbul-Ghafur. Also the “Muslim Women’s Freedom
Tour”, again led by Nomani, is mentioned. These women base themselves on gender justice and
equality which they derive from a reinterpretation of the Quran (the book of Amina Wadud played
an important role in this awareness). Hammer calls this the notion of a tafsir of praxis91. Later I will
elaborate how she puts this tafsir in a Western context. Hammer only portrays the debate and does
not take a position in it herself and tries to place the prayer event in the broader context of female
exegesis of the Quran. I could not find out whether she is a Muslim or not.
Interesting to see is that the academic contributors are almost all activists themselves. Except the
work of Hammer, the rest clearly takes a position in the debate. In all, arguments pro and contra are
shown; in Wadud, Silvers and Elewa’s case the position is clearly in favor of the female-led prayer in
absolute terms, Mattson only favors the female-led prayer over women (because that is sunna
according to her). Remarkable is that Wadud, Silvers and Mattson are all converts to Islam, all
academics of Islamic Studies and all prominent figures in the American Ummah. It looks like they put
their knowledge into action in debates about modern issues such as the female imam. That is not to
say that born-Muslims do not participate in the debate. As we could see in the examples of imamas
87
Juliane Hammer, Performing Gender Justice, p. 111
A well-known imam and lecturer in America. In 2009 he was the co-founder of the Zaytuna College what was initiated out of the Zaytuna
Institute, which was founded by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in 1996. The institute as well as the college want to provide Islamic knowledge for
Muslims in the West and educate new Islamic scholars. http://www.zaytunacollege.org/about/ visited at 03-08-2012
89
Juliane Hammer, Performing Gender Justice p. 112
90
Juliane Hammer, Gender Justice in a Prayer: American Muslim Women’s Exegesis, Authority and Leadership, Journal of Women of the
Middle East and the Islamic World, no. 8, 2010, p. 28
91
Ibid., p. 30
88
19
and from the organizers of the Wadud prayer in 2005, many of them were born-Muslims. However, it
is true that the percentage of converted Muslims in Islamic debates in general is high. I would not say
that converts are more prominent than born Muslims in general, but converts are indeed quite often
active in the Ummah because they have chosen consciously for a religion and often made a profound
study of it too.
2.3. Normative Religious Contributions
Asra Nomani is an activist, imama and author of the book Standing alone in Mecca. This book is
about her journey and transformation as a Muslim. When she decided to go for the pilgrimage (hajj)
as an unmarried mother, she noticed that at the most important place on earth for Muslims, that
women and men walked intermingled around the ka’aba in Mecca92. She noticed that ikhtilat (the
mixing of men and women in public) is allowed there. If this would be allowed at the holiest place on
earth for Muslims, why would this not be allowed in mosques in her hometown? The pilgrimage
opened her eyes to the discrepancy between what she thought was Mohammad's mission and the
practices of fundamentalist Islam today. Nomani has arranged tours whereby women claimed their
place in the main area of the mosque and also “banded with other liberal Muslims to create a new
mosque where for the first time a woman led the call to prayer93”. Nomani bases her vision by picking
and choosing among the commentaries in the Koran and the ahadith. She makes no records of the
Sharia or Islamic law in general. Nomani stresses that the “only thing that comes through about the
Prophet Mohammad's mission was summed up in the basic five pillars of Islam: affirmation, that
there is only one god, prayer daily, fasting one month a year, alms to the poor and widowed, and a
pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime. This is the core of a valid religion, and the rest is history and
commentary.” Nomani thinks it is time for the big ideas, not the parsing of some extremely
questionable ancient religious texts94.
Abdennur Prado, secretary of the Islamic Council in Spain, said in an online statement to the Wadud
Prayer that; “1. There is no ayah of Qur’an or hadith that states that a woman cannot lead men and
women in prayer, or that denies their right to deliver the khutba. 2. The Qur'an affirms women's
capacity to direct a community, in the political and spiritual realms, even to the degree of prophecy.
3. The conditions required to deliver the khutba are: knowledge of the Qur'an and of the sunna and
teachings of Islam, and the person's interior condition (their imaan or trust in God). None of these
are gender related”95. Abdennur Prado, specifically “pro”, cites a hadith of Umm Waraqah; “the
Prophet used to visit her and that he ordered her to act as imam for the people of the house (ahlu
dariha), that she had a mu’adhdhin and that she accustomed to act as imam for the people of the
house96”. The discussion arises from the interpretation of the word “dar”, which literally means
house. But dar is often used in a broader spectrum, as “dar al-islam”, which means the whole
“spectrum” of Islam. Dar can thus mean also the city in which they lived. This would also make sense
why this “dar” needed a mu’adhdhin; to call all the people of the town to prayer. Prado cites Dr.
Muhammad Hamidullah, who even goes further in his broad reading of the hadith and says that a
translation of this hadith could be; ,,It is stated that the Prophet (peace be upon him) appointed her
leader or imam of a mosque in her locality and that men prayed behind her. The mu'adhdhin, who
calls the faithful to prayer, was a man. It is obvious that he too prayed behind the imam. This account
occurs in the Sunan of Abu Da'ud and the Musnad of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal.97”
92
See her book: Asra Nomani, Standing Alone in Mecca; a woman’s struggle for the soul of Islam, San Francisco, Harper Collins, 2005. (the
2006 paperback version is called Standing Alone; a woman’s struggle for the soul of Islam.)
93
Laina Farhat-Holzman, Review of “Asra Q. Nomani, Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam.
Harper San Francisco, 2005., in: Comparative Civilizations Review via: https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/CCR/article/viewFile/13058/12919 viewed on 25-06-2012
94
Ibid.
95
Addennur Prado (Secretary of Islamic Council Spain), About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 1
96
Ibid., p. 2
97
Cited in ibid, original: The emergence of Islam. Published by Adam Publishers & Distributors Shandar Market, Delhi, India
20
Prado further cites al-Qaradawi, who said about the Wadud Prayer and women-led prayers in
general, that “there is unanimous consensus for the entire Ummah, in the east and west, that women
cannot lead the Friday Prayer nor can they deliver the sermon. If anyone does takes part in such a
Prayer, then his Prayer is nullified98”. Prado critically comments that about the “scholars unanimous
consensus throughout history”, we have to say that a honest study doesn’t allow for this statement.
Among the outstanding scholars that have defended the woman’s imamate. Prado finds it is
necessary to mention Abu Thawr (d.240AH), of the school of imam Shafi'i. Also Abu Dawud
(d.270AH), founder of the Zahirí school and al-Tabari (d.310AH), Quranic commentator and creator of
a school of jurisprudence. He mentions Ibn Rushd who affirms in his Bidayat al-Mujtahid “that Abu
Thawr and al-Tabari are an exception among the scholars, since “they allow the women to lead men
in prayer without restrictions”. And adds as final statement against the so-called consensus that
“according to an article published for Emmanuel-Yamin Dubuc in www.oumma.com, at least three
schools have defended the possibility that women can lead men in prayer99”. Some of the defenders
of the so-called “consensus of scholars” don't ignore these cases; they simply argue that the
consensus was established with posteriority, and therefore cannot include Abu Thawr neither alTabari. Here Prado says we must ask: “when does this consensus take place, and who does it include?
Our perplexity increases as we discover that there are many opposing definitions of what “consensus
among the scholars” really means: there is no consensus on what a consensus implies100”. Prado is
clearly in favor of women-led prayers. In the end of his statement he writes that “Secretary General
of Islamic Commission of Spain, Mansur Escudero, support the (Wadud) prayer, and the Mufti Sheikh
Ali Gum’a, declared that woman-led prayer during mixed-gender congregations is permissible, so
long as the congregation agrees to it101” and Prado’s final words are: “we agree”.
The Dutch Muslim women magazine Al Nisa quoted Asma Lambaret, who was quoted afore, also;
“research has shown that nothing in Islam forbids a female imam. We asked this question to the
Egyptian theologian and imam al-Qaradawi. We asked him to show us a verse from the Quran or
from the sunna which forbids the Imama of a woman. He says that in this sense, there is no such
verse, but asked us first to focus on other women’s rights and later discuss the Imama of a woman,
and I think he is right.” The view that female imams might be allowed, but that other women’s rights
have the prevailing priority, is a very common shared opinion of many Muslim women in the
Netherlands102. Al Nisa Magazine spent an interview on this issue with Fatma Katirci of the Milli
Görüs organization in the Netherlands in their 2009 February issue about “Women in the
Mosque103”. After the 2005 prayer of Wadud, Al Nisa Magazine did not engage directly in a discussion
about the women-led prayer, probably because the organization did not want to take a position in
that time. Another reason is that Al Nisa, the magazine as well as the whole organization, does not
want to be prescriptive and determine to others what they should think or do. Actually earlier, in
1987, there was a short article called ‘a woman as imam104’, wherein very clearly was said that
women can lead other women (based on ahadith in which Aisha led prayers) but this cannot be
called imam in the way as a spiritual leader (but only in the form of leading the prayer). In 2008 there
was a short article on Amina Wadud as a person where the 2005 prayer was mentioned and was
introduced as “against Islamic laws105”, without any further proofs pro or against, and probably
referring to the prevailing opinion. In 2009 there was an article on “how important is a female
98
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, via www.studying-islam.org/articletext.aspx?id=955 /
www.webIslam.com, viewed 06-06-2012, p. 2
99
Ibid.
100
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 3
101
Ibid., p. 4
102
Derived from the reactions on several websites which I earlier mentioned and also the perception of Ceylan Weber; in a personal
conversation with her. 08-06-2012
103
Al Nisa; Islamitisch Maandblad voor Vrouwen, 28e jaargang, nummer 2, Februari 2009, “Vrouwen in de Moskee”
104
Farida van Bommel, Een vrouw als Imam, Al Nisa Islamitische krantje voor vrouwen en kinderen, 6e jaargang nr1 aug-sept, 1987, p. 8
105
Elma Kronemeijr, Van A tot Z; Amina Wadud, Al Nisa; Islamitisch Maandblad voor Vrouwen, 27e jaargang, nr. 8 augustus, 2008, p. 20-21
21
imam106” which putted the question of women-led prayer in a broader perspective of female
religious authority and not taking any side nor legal support as basis for any side. From this we can
see that Al Nisa, the only national Dutch Muslim women organization, did spend quite a lot of
attention to female imams, but more from an informative perspective, and changing in time it’s clear
opinion of the prevailing majority into a more open view. Al Nisa, the organization as well as the
Magazine, have good relations with several international female Islamic scholars such as Asma Barlas
and Tayyibah Taylor and the Magazine frequently includes articles about their thoughts, or
interviews107. About the issue of imama, Al Nisa did not participate in the international debate. But
Leyla Cakir, current chairwoman of Al Nisa, was recently a speaker at the book presentation of
Women, Leadership and Mosques at the University of Oxford about the challenges of Muslim women
in Europe108. This makes clear that there certainly are international relations.
2.4.1. Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal
Before I will discuss the content of the book Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal (the permission of the
female imam over men) I will elaborate on the writer, Gamal al-Banna (also Jamal al-Banna) first, to
put his thoughts in perspective. He was born in 1920 in Mahmoudiya in Eqypt and is a (non-official)
scholar of Islam (Quran and hadith in particular), who learned most of his knowledge from his father,
Sheikh Ahmad ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Banna al-Sa’ati, who was a local imam and teacher in the mosque
of the hanbali madhhab109. He is the youngest brother of Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), who is the
founder of the Ikhwan al-Muslimun, the Muslim brotherhood. Gamal is also the great-uncle of the
well-known Tariq Ramadan. Contrary to his brother Hassan, Gamal is a liberal and critical thinker of
Islam and is particularly critical of the established order of Sharia scholars, the fuqaha. For their part,
these orthodox thinkers think that Gamal’s thought is against the Quran and sunna. Gamal is wellknown for his criticism of ahadith and he rejects explicitly 635 ahadith of Bukhari and Muslim which
he finds contradictory to Qur'an and its message of justice, freedom, and tolerance110. Gamal alBanna argues that “there is no contradiction between total freedom of thought and religion” and that
“Islam does not pretend to a monopoly of wisdom”. Critical ideas about Islam should be fought “by
words and not by confrontation, terrorism or takfir (pronouncing someone as an infidel)111”. It has
been said that Gamal al-Banna is a Quraniyyun112, someone who only accepts the Quran and no
other Islamic texts as the ahadith. In his work it does not seem that he rejects them completely, but
he is most certainly very critical of them. An example of his hadith criticism is that the saying, often
attributed to the prophet; “whoever changes his religion must be executed” is rejected as inauthentic
by imam Muslim, one of the earliest and most respected compilers of collections of hadith. But alBukhari, another respected compiler, included it in his version. Al-Banna says that the signs of
falsification are very clear in this saying and that it contradicts many verses in the Qur'an that confirm
freedom of faith.113” Gamal shows us in his work Da’wa al-ihya ‘al-Islami that he wants to encourage
Muslims not to blindly trust traditional thought but to check every idea and re-evaluate it, and base
themselves upon the Quran and reason. Gamal holds the opinion that the Quran is the Word of God,
but is critical of many ahadith, which he sees as falsified, therefore Muslims should only trust from
the sunna those aspects that do not contradict the Quran or reason114. Other liberal views of his are
that wearing hijab is not obligatory and he holds a tolerant position towards the Copts in Egypt,
106
Karen Ghonem, Hoe belangrijk is een vrouwelijke imam? Moslimvrouwen en religieus gezag, in: Al Nisa Islamitisch maandblad voor
vrouwen, 28e jaargang, nr. 2, Februari 2009, p. 5-9
107
See for example: Anne Dijk, “We moeten elkaar helpen om het beste te bereiken, een interview met Tayyibah Taylor”, in: Al Nisa,
Islamitisch maandblad voor vrouwen, 30e jaargang nummer 7/8 juli/augustus 2011, p. 18-23 and an interview with Masooda Bano is
forthcoming in November 2012. Asma Barlas recently wrote the jubilee column in the Magazine, 31e jaargang, nr6, juni 2012.
108
09-03-2012
109
Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of the Muslim Brothers, London, Oxford University Press, 1993, introduction
110
‫لزم ال التي األحاديث من ومسلم البخاري تجريد‬
ِ ُ ‫ تـ‬, Aafaq.org
111
Timothy Garton Ash, “We are making a fatal mistake by ignoring the dissidents within Islam; Some critical Muslim intellectuals think
their faith is compatible with a liberal society. It's dumb to prefer Bin Laden”; in The Guardian, Thursday 15 March 2007 via;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/15/religion.comment
112
Personal comment of Professor of Islamic Studies Gerard Wiegers at 17-07-2012, I could not find any clear literature on this.
113
Timothy Garton Ash, “We are making a fatal mistake by ignoring the dissidents within Islam”
114
Gamal al-Banna, Da´wa al-ihya` al-Islami (call to an Islamic Revival). dar al-fikr al-islami, Cairo, 2005
22
which has made him criticized and rejected by more orthodox thinkers of Islam. The liberal views of
Gamal are also very clear in his book on female imams, which he thinks is acceptable.
The Wadud prayer occurred in the USA in the 21st century, so the time and place was not forseen iin
the classical Islamic tradition. This is how Gamal al-Banna starts his book Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a alRidjal. In the USA, women have all freedom and are equal to men. She (the woman) is absolutely free
in all worldly affairs, and that is why she wants to take the next step and become fully equal in
spiritual matters too. Gamal says that we must not forget that Islam’s image became extremely
negative after 9/11 and we must be careful not to make this image even worse. Wadud, through her
efforts and emphasis on equality in Islam, puts Islam in a positive light and this is good da’wa
(invitation to/promotion of Islam). In early Islam, a female imam did not fit in that male society, but
this has changed nowadays and is thus possible according to this area. If a woman is dressed properly
and has the required religious knowledge and has a calm and nice character, she can be an imama.
Gatherings of men and women are also very common in the USA, therefore it is conform Islamic
rulings that for that (American) culture, it is suitable. In Arab countries, the patriarchal and male
share is interwoven in culture, but this is not Islamic, because Islam put men and women on the
same level. There have been classical scholars that approved of the female imama too, such as alTabari, al-Thawr, al-Muzani and Ibn al-‘Arabi115. Gamal continues that the Quran is the most
important source for Muslims. The sunna is important too, but is not everlasting, something that the
Quran is. He argues this by saying that there are ayat (verses) in the Quran which were not
understood in early times, but can now be understood by modern science. The sunna, on the
contrary, is only applicable for that time. He does not go against the sunna, but says that the Prophet
has said to the Muslims around him, one time when he was afraid and his appearance white of fear:
“follow me as long as I am with you, and for you is obliged to follow the Book of God and to follow
(what is made) halal and haram in the Book”116. The “and” in this sentence indicates, according to
Gamal, different periods of time. So the part of the sentence before “and”- follow me as long as I am
with you – points at the time during the life of the Prophet, after the “and” - for you is obliged to
follow the Book of God and to follow (what is made) halal and haram in the Book- points at the time
to come, which is after the death of the Prophet. Gamal says thereby that Muslims nowadays thus
(only) have to follow the Book of God (as Quraniyyun’s do, but he mentions this not explicitly). He
stresses that Muslims have to use their intellect and brains and he explicitly speaks against his
opponents by saying they are not using their intellect. Gamal repeats a lot and sometimes even
contradicts his own arguments. He first says, against the frequently users of ahadith, that the
Prophet himself said that he did not want any hadith to be written down. Later Gamal mentions
some ahadith himself to authorize his own thought. This can come across as a “pick and choose”
method: on the one hand ahadith are rejected, but if there is a suitable hadith for his opinion, he
does use them. Besides this, Gamal has a very romantic and idealized view of the West. He stresses
that women in the West are totally equal to men. He says as a response to his opponents that: “you
leave the Quran aside, because (if we look into the practice of Muslims in history) every time there
was a Prophet, the people said “no, this is wrong, we follow our parents and because of our
forebears, we act like this” and this was a denial of the message of the Prophets and they did not use
their brains”. With this he says that his opponents are doing the same, not using their brains which
Allah gave to human beings and not to animals, and in a way the opponents are denying the message
of Muhammad; which is equality of men and women. His main vision of the female imamate over
men is that it is a “laudable bid’a”, just as the tarawih prayers are a laudable bid’a (the first caliphs
made changes in the law too). The Quran, nor the sunna forbids the female imamate over men.
Gamal continues, after giving his own opinion on the case of imamas, with the opinions of the four
madhahib and this discussion can be divided into four sections: 1. the adhan and iqama (second call
to prayer) by women for men, 2. the adhan and iqama by women for women, 3. the imama of a
woman over men and 4. the imama of women over women. For this thesis I will only elaborate the
115
116
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, dar al-fikr al-islami, Cairo, after 2005, p. 10
Ibid., p. 59
23
positions on the imamate of women over men117. About the imamate of a woman over men, four
reasons are given why this would not be allowed. 1. The Quran has made men qawwamuna (ََ‫َق َّوا ُمون‬
/supervisors) over women, therefore a woman cannot be a supervisor over men. 2. The hadith of
“the people who are being led by a woman will never gain prosperity” is given as proof that a woman
should thus not lead over men. 3. The hadith of Abu Huraira that “the best rows in prayer for men are
the first and the best rows for women are the last” makes clear that women ought to stand behind
men in prayer and an imam must be in front, so a female imam is not possible. And 4. It is never
heard, nor seen that a woman was imam over men. Gamal says about this fourth reason that it is
also never mentioned that it is not allowed. He further continues to fatawa of different scholars
produced after the Wadud prayer. Gamal says that he used the master thesis from Ayman Sami as
source for the fatawa in his book118. He just took the fatawa of several scholars literally from that
thesis. These fatawa are also generally available on the internet and hence publicly accessible. I will
therefore discuss the fatawa below. The book of Gamal al-Banna starts with his own opinion on
women-led prayers as introduction. After this, he gives an overview of the opinions according to
different madhahib on a woman during the iqama and adhan and about the positions of women as
imams. The third chapter is about the fatawa from different contemporary scholars. In the last
chapter he gives his opinion on the matter elaborately. In this last chapter he does not give any direct
dalil against the fatawa, but makes his arguments in a broader Quranic perspective by saying that the
Quran shows that humanity has to progress. For example he introduces slavery; early Arabs were
shocked when they heard that slavery was better to ban. Centuries later this is a widely accepted
custom (to act against slavery). In the present day this shocking issue is the leadership of women,
which does not mean it contradicts Islam, but is shocking for cultures that are not used to it119. In his
last chapter, he discusses the matter out of his own intellect instead of referring to other literature or
opinions and he says that this discussion is actually not about the quest of a female imam, but about
“women” (in general). In Islamic thought, there are always several opinions; look at the performance
of the salat, the adhan and tashahhud120 etc. He says that the Sahaba (companions of Muhammad)
prayed behind all sorts of people who were “the best” (versed in Quran). The Prophet never said that
the imam must be a man, he only mentioned that it has to be the “afdal” (best). For example, the
Sahaba have been praying behind someone who was punished earlier for the drinking of alcohol. He
relies his argument at the fiqh as-sunna, written by sheikh Sayyid Sabiq121, wherein is said: “the one
who’s prayer is valid, it’s prayer in front of others (as imam) is also valid.”122 The “best” means the
best in taqwa and not the best gender, color, the richest etc.
For Gamal, the key issue when it comes to imama is the masculinity complex and women (in history
until now) suffer under this masculinity complex. The Prophet himself was instead a real protector of
women, something most Arab men are not today. They easily divorce, and leave women with
nothing. If a man is cheating on his wife, he will not be punished, but if a woman does the same, she
will be killed and the man will be punished mildly. According to Gamal al-Banna, all cultures were
117
Short comment; issue one is not accepted and prohibited, issue 2 is accepted, but not necessary for women to do. Issue four is divided
into two: Hanbali’s and Shafi’i’s permits female imams over women in all cases, but she must stand in the same row, there are many
ahadith that can be given as dalil (proof) for this. Hanafi says it is almost haram, but if she stands in the same row it can be, but there is
“space for haram” because an imam has to be in front, which women cannot do, so then is would not be a just form of ibadat. Maliki also
said that women cannot lead women, because there is a hadith of Ibn Mas’ud that it is said that women must stand behind, like God put
them behind. This was an ‘amr (order), which a women will not submit to if they will lead.
118
He says he did this because “this was such a nice overview and saved him lots of time” the thesis of Ayman Sami is called: Hukm Tawalli
al-Mar’ah al-Wadza’if, see Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 12
119
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 50-53
120
The tashahhud is the final position in the salat, wherein Muslims, while seated on the ground, move their finger during the pronouncing
of the final sayings of a salat. There is ikhtilaf (disagreement) about how fast the finger should move, if it should move circular or up and
down, and if the finger should move only during the shahada (testimony of the faith) or also during the additional dua or even during the
words in advance of the shahada.
121
Shaykh Sayyid Sabiq was a great Egyptian Muslim scholar who left a profound legacy to the world in the field of fiqh studies, having
written one of the most popular and widely used Islamic books in the world today; fiqh as-Sunna. He was born in 1915 in Egypt and studied
at al-Azhar University. He graduated from the Faculty of Shari‘ah of al-Azhar in 1947 and continued higher studies thereafter. He moved to
Saudi Arabia to teach at Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah and Umm al-Qura University in Makkah. He died in 2000.
http://messageinternational.org/sh-sayyid-sabiq-a-living-encyclopedia-of-fiqh/ viewed at 04-08-2012
122
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 72
24
women-unfriendly, the Romans, Christians, Jews, but this changed because the economic and whole
society progressed, which made that the woman has become free in this cultures. (We can see that
he is not very precise in his argumentation by mixing religious groups and cultures all into one
category of cultures.) He shows this has to do with the Arab culture and not with Islam, by
mentioning the Coptic leader of Egypt, who has the same ideas as many Muslims. “If priesthood was
something for women, then Maryam would have been a priest because she was the best woman on
earth123”. So the cause is not Islam, but the masculinity complex in culture and tradition. A lot must
be changed in order to give the Muslim woman the rights Islam has given to her. Again he makes the
comparison with slavery; this was not just abolished when the Prophet mentioned this, or later in the
USA or UK, no, it was only deprecated when the people, the economy, politics and the industrial
revolution all changed the mindset of the people. The West already underwent these changes and
that is why women have been freed from all these (bad) traditions. When we (Egyptians and Arabs in
general) also undergo these changes, women will be free in our culture too and will maybe even gain
a better position than in the West.
A reader who starts this book and reads the title, really thinks that there will come a profound
research about the female imams over men. It looked and sounded promising, but was an anti-climax
instead. By giving all the fatawa (which will be cited beneath) showing dalil from the Quran and
sunna, you would have expected a profound commentary, showing other dalil, that proved the
contras wrong. But this does not happen. He only attacks the contras by saying they must use their
brains and points at culture as the cause of the misinterpretation of Islam. In the end his language
even becomes almost polemic; he attacks those who might comment on him that he did not put
“salla llahu alayhi wa sallam”(peace and blessing upon him) behind every mentioning of the Prophets
name. He says that he might remember him even more than the ones who do mention s.a.w.s.
Therefore I think that his research cannot be called academic because it lacks profundity and real
argumentations based on references.
2.4.2. Contributions from Islamic Scholars
In this section I will show the most famous contemporary fatawa, legal personal opinions and bayan
(statement without a question) about the issue of women leading men in prayer. My choice for these
statements are based on how well-known the scholars are, and which statements are mostly cited in
this debate and which are therefore most important. For a few fatawa I have used Gamal al-Banna’s
work Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal. These and the others are widely available at internet.
Ali Gum’a, the grand Mufti of the Republic, said in his fatwa after the Wadud prayer that a woman
leading a men in prayer invalidates the salat, both for the woman and the men, because it is against
al-haya (shame). About the men and women praying in the same row, side by side and fully
intermingled, he says this is haram. He mentions the hadith of Umm Waraqah and honestly says
there is discussion about the interpretation of the word dar (house/environment). He says therefore
some hold the opinion that during an incidental gathering of men and women, and if a woman is the
most versed in the Quran, a woman can lead, but from the row of the women behind the men. This
thus holds for salat, but he says that a woman cannot give the khutba. He authorizes this statement
by referring to Quran surat an-nur 30 in which he reads that Muslims ought not to look to the other
sex. He says that jum’a and khutba performed by women is not something we find in the sunna and
that everyone holds the opinion that this practice is not valid. So jum’a is not allowed, but leading in
salat is allowed, some specifying that this female leadership has to be “from behind”. Gum’a
mentions al-Tabari, Abu-Thawr, al-Muzani (saying very generalizing these are all scholars of the
Shafi’i madhhab)and Muhyi al-din Ibn al-‘Arabi (saying he is from the Zahiri madhhab)124 who all
123
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 86
This describing to madhahib in all cases is very sloppy said by Gum’a. The latter is often seen as a “sympathizer” of the zahiri madhhab
instead of a real adherent. The former had their own madhhab and were later adopted in the Shafi’i madhhab; in the way it is said now, is
seems that the Shafi’i madhhab would almost allow female imams in absolute terms. It would be nice to what extent these traces are to be
found in the countries who apply the Shafi’i ruling system.
124
25
supported the absolute imama of a woman. But he says the majority only thinks this is acceptable in
nafl prayers or salat in family spheres. He also mentions that there are some who say that the hadith
was only applicable to umm Waraqah and to no other women at all, but he adds that no one of the
East nor the West holds this “strange opinion”. Gum’a notices that there is confusion nowadays
between salat and jum’a; (pointing at Wadud) according to him women can lead salat (in
circumstances and familiar setting), but cannot lead jum’a nor give a khutba125. In an earlier
statement on television, Gum’a declared that woman-led prayer during mixed-gender congregations
is permissible, as long as the congregation agrees to it126” With this saying of Ali Gum’a, he therefore
also says that this practice is not to be implemented in Egypt; he clearly says it is only permissible if it
is appropriate to the local customs, which is not the case in Egypt. He later withdrew this statement
in the form of a fatwa, which I have shown above.
Sheikh Abdul ‘Aziz Ibn ‘Abdallah, a Saudi scholar, also holds the opinion that women leading men in
jum’a invalidates the jum’a. It never happened and is against al-haya. The media portray these
occasions, but everyone is responsible for what he or she says or does. If we look into the practice of
Muslims in history until now, it was never allowed. Muslims must not break the boundaries of the
hayaa and the ones who are doing this, go against the Law of God. Adversaries of Islam have used
the Muslim woman to make Islam look evil, this is how fitna within the Ummah is created127.
Dr. Salah al-Sawy wrote the fatwa (being the secretary) of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America.
They gave a more profound and argued fatwa, starting to say that we must look to the Quran and
ahadith. The Prophet s.a.w.s. said: “I left for you behind, that what you will follow, then you will after
me, not lose the right way”. After this sura an-nisa 115 of the Quran is cited: ,,And whoever opposes
the Messenger after guidance has become clear to him and follows other than the way of the
believers - We will give him what he has taken and drive him into Hell, and evil it is as a destination”.
In this way, the fuqaha of America make clear that Muslims must follow the example of Muhammad.
They say that all imams agree that a woman cannot be imam for men, this invalidates the prayer for
the woman as well as for the men (and women) following her. It is sunna that men pray in front and
women behind. It never happened in early Muslim history and if it would be allowed, one of the
Ummahat al mu’minin (literary; mothers of the believers, which are the wives of the Prophet) would
have done this, because they were more educated and verses in ‘ilm (knowledge/science) than any
men in their time. They participated in a lot, ‘ilm, as fuqaha, collective ibadat (worship other than
salat) and rescue operations, but there are no records of khatib imamas. The Umm Waraqah hadith
has nothing to do with the public space because this was an private setting of her house. In the end
they easily generalize that all sunni and shi’a agree on this. We must avoid the creation of fitna128.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi gave an extensive fatwa contribution with some new information. His main
opinion is that “there is unanimous consensus for the entire Ummah, in the east and west, that
women cannot lead the Friday Prayer nor can they deliver the sermon. If anyone does takes part in
such a Prayer, then his Prayer is nullified. It has never been found in any jurisprudential text of
Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi`is or Hanbalis, nor even from Shiite scholars, that a woman can lead the Friday
Prayer or deliver the sermon. This opinion [that a woman can lead the Friday Prayer] is an innovation
and a heresy on any account, nullified by all scholars... and anyone who calls for it or helps implement
it, is a heretic. The arguments for this prohibition are the following: 1. a woman's body is provocative,
and it could distract the men during their prayer. 2. the prophet allowed women to direct the salat
only before other women or relatives, and only in a private environment. 3. it’s an innovation,
something unknown in the history of the Islam. 4. consensus exists among scholars that denies
125
also mentioned in Silvers & Elewa, but here was given the complete fatwa: Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 23-25
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 4
127
In: Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 25-26
128
Ibid., p. 27-29
126
26
women's imamate before men129” He said that all 8 (not mentioning which these are) madhahib say
that women cannot be imama over men. He says that some older women and female Quran scholars
can lead prayers, but adding this should happen “from behind” (the rows of men). Women leading
other women is allowed, but then the imama must stand in the same row. To be a khatib imam is not
allowed for any woman. She can lecture to people (nas=men and women), but an absolute imama
was never seen in history, not even in the time there was a female ruler; Shajarat al-Durr130. He
continues his argument that the body of a woman differs from the body of a man and is attractive for
men and can thus, if she stands in certain positions, cause fitna. The ahkam (laws/determinations) of
the salat are clear and this is not a bad tradition (and therefore does not need to be changed). Some
say a woman can lead men if she is most versed in Quran and if the men are maharim (pl. of
mahram) of her. He admits that in all texts, there is no explicit prohibition on a woman as khatib
imam. There is just one hadith, which is very weak (d’aif jiddan131): “a woman cannot be imam over a
man, a Bedouin cannot lead an immigrant132 and a sinner cannot be imam over a believer”. It is
interesting that Qaradawi mentions this hadith, because he is the only one of all people in this
debate who mentioned it, probably because he wants to give the full picture of this issue. He
continues with the opinion of different scholars in regard to the hadith of Umm Waraqah. He
specially mentions that women in the Hanbali madhhab can lead tarawih prayers and in the insaf (he
quotes the source Zarkashi) is said that women can be imam, but from the row behind the men.
Qaradawi comments on this that it is against the conditions of an imam and he portrays this with his
style of preacher poetry: “al-imam amam al-mamumin” which literally means “the leader (the one in
front) is in front of the ones who are followers (they who are led by the leader)”. So according to alQaradawi’s “poetry theory” it is a contradictio in terminis that a woman can lead men from behind
them, because it is intrinsic to the word imam that he stands in front of the followers. But then he
nuances this theory by quoting the many ahadith in which women (Aisha and umm Salama) did lead
other women from within the same row and this is acceptable. He ends his fatwa with a “good advice
towards his sisters who are enthusiastically fighting for the rights of women…, please, bring the sunna
that had died out to life again (pointing at: imama over women) and not create bid’a” (pointing at:
imama over men) and he quotes Quran and hadith verses that forbid any bid’a. His advice to Amina
Wadud is that she returns to God and the religion and extinguishes this fitna, because according to
him this is not necessary.133
The sixth fatwa mentioned by Gamal al-Banna is from “al-lajna al-da’ima lil-buhuth al-‘ilmiyya wa alifta’ ”134. They say about the umm Waraqah hadith that it “is not possible for men to be led by her,
because all the men were praying in the mosque”(because the Islamic rule is that all men are obliged
to pray every salat in the masjid). So their simple conclusion is that the leadership of a woman over
129
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 2
Sultana Shajarat al-Durr was originally a slave who was married to the Sultan. She took power over the throne of her husband, Malik alSalih, and last Ayyubid sovereign. Her reign alone was just for a few months, but her title with which the people of Egypt called her was
huge; ,,May Allah Protect the Beneficent One, Queen of the Muslims, The Blessed of the Earthly World and of the Faith, The Mother of Khalil
al-Musta’simiyya, The Companion of Sultan al-Malik al-Salih”. That she introduced the name of al-Musta’simiyya was more than a gesture
of allegiance to Caliph al-Musta’sim, the 37st Caliph, who refused to acknowledge her. It turned out to be a desperate attempt to gain his
goodwill. He set up the Mamluk slave armies, who first helped her to gain the throne in the first place, against her and he succeeded.
Despite the admiration of the Mamluk slave army for Shajarat al-Durr due to their similar background, they deposed her after a few
months. But she did not rest. She found out who the next Sultan would be and she seduced him successfully and gained power again, as
the wife of the next Sultan ‘Izz al-Din Aybak. She arranged that the khutba was said in her name in all the mosques of Cairo, besides the
Sultans name, and that coins were also minted in her and her husband’s names. At last, she made sure that no official document left the
palace without their two signatures. (see Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, p. 89-93) interesting that Qaradawi only
mentions this one specific woman who had absolute power, while there were many, many others.
131
This means that the content (matn) of the hadith, as well as the chain of narrators (isnad), are both absolutely not reliable.
132
This probably points at the people of Medina who could not lead the people who immigrated from Mecca to Medina. This makes the
content of the hadith really weak, because the prophet severely praised the people of Medina, thus this would be very strange if these
highly praised people could not lead others. This hadith, if it was true, would also mean there are “better people and lesser people” which
is against the egalitarian principles of Islam.
133
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 30-36
134
A group of scholars: ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz (head), ‘Abd al-Razaq al-‘Afifi, ‘AbdAllah ibn Ghadiaan and ‘AbdAllah ibn Q’awd, who are from
the Saudi Kingdom.
130
27
men is not possible. But women can lead other women in prayer135. Gamal al-Banna gives two other
fatawa from Khalid Ibn Muhammad al-Majid and Sami Ibn ‘Abd’aziz al-Majid, saying that imama over
men and khutba from women are not allowed. A last fatwa given by Gamal is not in an explicit fatwa
format, but is an interview in the newspaper Nahdat Misr (Egypt) on 24 march 2005 with sheikh
Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. He says that women leading men in prayer are not accepted, and
women leading women are accepted, if they are together at the same time. The men praying behind
a woman are ignorant and their prayers are batil (void). “In the West this is not different, there is one
Islam and one set of rulings and Muslims must not accept any argument pro because this does not
make any sense”136.
An interesting and very polemic bayan (statement without a question) on the Wadud prayer was
from Gibril Fouad Haddad137. He was very much against the act of Amina Wadud and against femaleled prayers. In his article he says that “the progressives, for example, have invented a hijabless prayer
for themselves.., one day their female leader might actually make this state of underdress the law
and frown upon its lingerie .. later, American “illuminists” will insist that the Fatiha be recited in
English inside prayer, perhaps allowing Swahili during Kwanzaa, free from Arabocentric strictures. In
the end, a Muslim might pray in his shorts behind his sing-songy female imam with the non-Arab
accent, after she has graced the congregants with a khutba about “God, praise Her”, she is hijabless,
because “le ikraha fil-din” and shakes hands indifferently with men, none of whom minds that she
wears “opium” to the prayer. Another congregants prays with malt liquor on her breath, the man
right next to her prays in junub state but he is not junub according to the zahiri position if there was
no ejaculation. He married his granddaughter, which is licit according to khariji position, temporarily
and without witness, of course.. they are fond of name-throwing - Ibn ‘Arabi -, whom they might rank
slightly above René Guénon, to reject whatever ruling of the Quran and Sunna that does not fit their
idea of the Dın, although they cannot begin to quote the words of Ibn ‘Arabi, even less the Quran and
the Sunna.138” He is clearly saying that women-led prayer (according to him) is a bad innovation that
will lead to the absolute worst-case scenario, which he showed us elaborately.
Another interesting response in an email correspondence from the National Association of Muslim
Lawyers was the response from Dr. Mohammad H. Fadel, Professor of Law at the University of
Toronto. In general, he is a quite progressive thinker of Islam and has written several times about
gender and law. He said for example that jurisprudence has a broader interpretative perspective,
while exegesis was often dominated by verse-by-verse interpretations, which allowed the
misogynistic assumptions of the reader to dominate the text139. Interesting is that he does allow
women to be judges, but not to be imama over men. In his response to the imama matter, he says
this is different from the matter of judge or head of state, because the latter are not matters of
worship140. He agrees that historical practice of Muslim in the matter of judgeship and leadership in
general is irrelevant141, but in matters of worship it is relevant. Fadel says: ,, The Prophet said "Pray in
135
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 36-37
Ibid., p. 42-46
137
Sheikh Gibril Fouad Haddad is a Lebanese-American scholar and religious leader and has emerged as one of the clearest voices of
traditional Islam in the West. He was born in 1960 into a middle-class Lebanese Catholic family in Beirut, Lebanon, schooled in England, and
declared his shahadah in 1991 as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York where he obtained his PhD degree in French
literature. The same year, he met his teacher, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani of Cyprus, from whom he took the Naqshbandi tariqa. He
taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for 2 years and in 1997 moved to Damascus where he studied the Islamic
disciplines for 9 years. A few of his teachers are Shaykh Dr. Nur al-Din `Itr, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ya`qubi, Shaykh Mu`tazz al-Subayni,
Shaykh Dr. Samir al-Nass, and Shaykh Muhammad Muti` al-Hafiz. He holds ijazas from Shaykh Dr. Muhammad ibn `Alawi al-Maliki and
ShaykhHusayn `Usayran. http://englishbayan.webs.com/apps/videos/channels/show/3227659-sheikh-g-f-haddad visited at 04-08-2012
138
GF Haddad, An Innovation of Misguidance: Amına Wadud’s Unenlightened Feminism, Ramadan 1426, October 2005, via
http://mac.abc.se/~onesr/d/ufaw_e.pdf
139
Mohammed Fadel, Two Women, One Man: Knowledge, Power, and Gender in Medieval Sunni Legal Thought, International Journal of
Middle East Studies (1997) 29, p. 186
140
Mohammad H. Fadel, March 21, 2005 In: A Collection of Fatwas and Legal Opinion on the issue of: Women Leading Prayers, April 5,
2005/ Safar 25, 1426, p. 26
141
See also his article: Fadel, Mohammad, Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Legal Reform? The case of “never shall a folk prosper
who have appointed a woman to rule them”, forthcoming in: Islamic Law & Society, available via: ssrn.com/abstract=1712968
136
28
the manner you see me praying." A basic assumption of Muslim jurisprudence is that the Prophet (S)
had an obligation to communicate the rules of God to humanity…Given the fact that at the time of
Prophet's life there existed women who had the skills to lead men in prayer, combined with the
Prophet's obligation to communicate the rules of Islam, it's hard to imagine that he would have been
silent in the face of simply social pressures not to allow women to lead men in prayer, if indeed that
was a misapprehension of the community. The Prophet (S) corrected many misapprehensions of the
community, and he could have easily done so in this case.142” So the ruling idea in the time of the
Prophet was that men led prayers, and the Prophet did not go against this idea. His main argument is
thus implicit that is was a silent approval in favor of male leadership and thereby contra female
leadership in prayer. He adds that “it does not appear to me that there is any special merit in serving
as an imam. … (further) is this really the burning issue facing gender relations in our community? It's
conceivable to me that one day, this could be a genuine issue in which something meaningful is at
stake, if it developed organically within the community. My particular feeling, however, is that it is
not "ripe" yet for mature consideration143”.
Gamal al-Banna only displayed fatawa against the female imama, and the other fatawa I showed
were also against. These fatawa are the majority, but there are also a lot of other statements that
affirm that women can lead men in prayer. The fatwa of Khaled Abou el Fadl affirms for example that
women can lead men in prayer. The “Shaykh” (Abou el Fadl) was asked the question if in a small
group of students it would be possible to have a female imam (during jum’a) over men because the
woman is most versed in Quran. If this would not be possible, they might not have a jum’a. Abou el
Fadl’s response is that in general, there have been two main orientations regarding the qualifications
of an imam for prayer, especially for Friday services. The first orientation practically demands nothing
of an imam other than the ability to pray. As long as a man can perform the requisite set of acts and
oral recitations required in prayer, this would be enough to qualify. The second view sees an imam
also as a teacher to the community, someone who can perform an educational or instructional role
during the Friday services. The second orientation gives preference to the person who can
pronounce and vocalize the words of the Qur'an the best. Importantly, it also gives preference to the
person who is the most learned in religion and also the most learned about the affairs of the
community. During the khutba this person would be able to educate the community about the
meaning of the Qur'an and sunna and apply the teachings of Islam to the specific issues that are
relevant to the community of worshippers. “Between the two orientations, I believe, and God knows
best, that the second is by far the more correct and the most true to the spirit of jum’a”. Abou el Fadl
continues that when it comes to gender “there is no question that the vast majority of jurists
excluded women from ever leading men in prayer. Many jurists, however, permitted women to lead
women in prayer, if no male is available to lead the prayer”. Abou el Fadl says that the Quran itself
does not mandate that only men be allowed to lead prayer and that the sunna is indecisive on the
issue. He mentions that there is evidence that the Prophet on more than one occasion allowed a
woman to lead her household in prayer, although the household included men, when the woman
was clearly the most learned in the faith, but he does not give the dalil for it (as the umm Waraqah
hadith). He continues that up to the fourth Islamic century, there were at least two schools of
thought that allowed women to lead men in prayer, if the woman in question was the most learned.
His new information compared to previous fatawa is that in such a case, the men stood to the side so
that they were not praying behind the female imam. However, these schools (al-Thawri and Ibn Jarir,
of al-Tabari) became extinct. So he finds it fair to say that since the fourth century all schools of
thought did not allow women to lead men in prayer. “In my view, I look at the evidence and ask the
following question: if a female could better teach and instruct the community about the Islamic faith
should she be precluded from doing so because she is a female?” He answers his own thought by
142
143
Mohammad H. Fadel, March 21, 2005 In: A Collection of Fatwas and Legal Opinion on the issue of: Women Leading Prayers, p. 26
Ibid., p. 27
29
saying that “there is no dispute that a female could hold a class (halaqa) and instruct women and
men about Islam. I think everyone agrees on that point. But the question is: Is there a specific
exclusion against women when it comes to prayer? It seems to me that if there is such an exclusion
the evidence in favor of this exclusion ought to be strong, if not unequivocally so. But the legal
evidence in favor of such an exclusion is not very strong; it is more an issue of customary practice and
male-consensus than direct textual evidence. Consequently, in my opinion, priority ought to be given
to what is in the best interest of the community, and knowledge is the ultimate good. It seems to me
that if a female possesses greater knowledge than a male; if a female is more capable of setting a
good example in terms of how she recites the Quran and also in terms of teaching the community
more about the Islamic faith, a female ought not be precluded from leading jum’a simply on the
grounds of being female.144” He gives a lot of conditions, but in the end approves the female imama
in absolute terms. He does add that the males should not stand directly behind her; she could stand
ahead of the lines with the men standing to her side. He ends his fatwa with the acknowledgment
that this is a controversial issue and not offers his advice lightly and adds that “Ultimately, God knows
best, and I might be wrong. So please read what I have written, reflect on the matter, pray on it, and
then do what your conscience selflessly dictates. It is the conscience that is the ultimate protector
from liability before God. I pray that God guides us both to what pleases Him, and leads us to His
straight and just path145”.
At the TV show “Let The Quran Speak”, brother Shabir Ally146 was asked about women-led prayers.
The interviewer asked about the issue that it is commonly known that men have traditionally led the
ritual prayer (salah) in a mosque (or in a public prayer), but that there are nowadays more and more
women who lead salat. He gave his analysis of the Quran and hadith related to this ruling. There are
many arguments (in the sunna) that women can lead other women. The issue arises when women
lead public prayers over non-related (non-mahram) men. There is nothing in the Quran that says that
a women cannot lead prayer. The sunna only speaks about a hadith that says that the leadership of a
women will not be beneficial to prosperity. But the authenticity of that hadith is doubtful. Besides
this, most scholars say that this hadith is only applicable to the function of caliph. About the question
of prayer “I don’t know of any hadith that specifically says women cannot lead men in prayer”. He
continues that we then come to the logical arguments. Normally the women are situated behind the
men in prayer. So traditionally, the scholars who do say that she can lead say that she has to lead
from the place where she is, what means from the back row, but that seems unusual because imam
means literally the one ahead (as Qaradawi argued too). For this reasons it seems prudent, and
women have thus traditionally not led men in prayer. And with regard to new things; normally
Muslims were tend to leave things the way they are. The arguments of Muslims who plead for the
female leadership in congregational prayer are for example from Silvers of the university of Toronto
who uses the hadith of umm Waraqa in which has been said she led her household in prayer. “But I
don’t think she (Silvers) has actually proven her case, it lies on a lot of expectation that the “dar”
included male adults. But I think we should step aside and look at the basic principles of Islam”. The
first major aspect is that the woman’s prayer is clearly just as acceptable as a man’s prayer. After this
we should look at the qualifications needed for an imam. The imam must know the Quran well and if
we look at the positive qualifications they differ; sometimes it must be an older person, or the person
who knows more about the Quran, but not any of the classical specifications says that the imam
must be a man. And they (previous generations) might have taken it for granted that the imam must
be a man, but that doesn’t mean we should take it for granted too. “I don’t believe that anyone has a
144
Khaled Abou El Fadl, On Women Leading Prayer, Scholar of the House, 2005, www.scholarofthehouse.org/onwolepr.html, complete
fatwa is added in the appendix.
145
Ibid.
146
president of the Islamic Information and Dawah Centre in Toronto, and a speaker and debator of rising prominence. He is the primary
student of Dr. Badawi (who is a great scholar with Egyptian roots and now lives in Canada, he fulfilled many positions such as being a
scholar at the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR). Issue was aired on October 25, 2008 on CTS viewed via:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgPiSFXTZ4I at 03-08-2012
30
right to insist on that (that the imam has to be male) , because that would mean that they are adding
a new rule in Islam on their own, rather than just simply submit to the Devine Guidance that had
come down”. He said that it seems thus that this idea is more a kind of social tradition. The body of a
woman in front of men might also be a distraction for men. But there are, also in the tradition,
different ways to organize the prayer. For example; women are mostly situated behind men during
prayer, but sometimes they are besides and sometimes they are behind a barrier or sometimes even
above on a different floor. In this way, if a woman leads the prayer, men can also pray behind a
barrier behind the women, and the female imam can be situated in front of the women. She can be
leading the prayer and not seen by the male followers. And hearing the voice is not a problem
because most scholars believe that the female voice is not part of the awra, because In the time of
the Prophet women openly discussed and talked with the Prophet s.a.w.s. and other men in the
mosque. We can close this issue by noting that the community is at a certain stage where we can
only discuss this issue. I don’t think it would be good that people (women) now immediately are
going to lead the prayer and insisting that this is right and acceptable. But we need to have a
discussion about this and scholars have to go back to the sources and look what has been said about
this.
If we look at fatawa that are explicitly given as fatawa, the majority follows the majority standpoint
of classical scholars in prohibiting the female imamate mostly on grounds that it is not heard of and
therefore not sunna and it is not good for al-haya and can lead into fitna. The two opinions “pro
imama in absolute terms” are more nuanced and prescribes conditions. About el Fadl is aware of the
controversy of the issue, as well as Shabir Ally. Both say that it is in principle allowed. Abou el Fadl
allows in in the specific matter, Shabir Ally says that there first has to be more discussion between
the scholars about the issue of the female imam. Later I will examine the arguments more
profoundly.
2.4.3 Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid
In the discussion above, Ibn Rushd’s Bidayat al Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid was a particular
source of importance. Although it was not mentioned specifically as a source in most fatawa, the
information clearly was the information as we can find it in the Bidaya. Silvers and Elewa referred to
this source in a footnote, and the only one who explicitly mentioned the Bidaya in his text was Prado.
Before I will turn to the content of the book I will first introduce the author, Abu al-Walid
Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198). He was famous in the Medieval West under the
name of Averroes. He came from an important Spanish family; his grandfather, with the same name,
was a well-known Maliki jurist, a qadi and the imam of the great Mosque of Cordova. The father of
Ibn Rushd was a qadi too, and although Ibn Rushd is better known in the West as a philosopher, he
was a qadi most of his life too147. The purpose of the book is according to Ibn Rushd himself; ,,to lay
down in it (this book) for myself, by way of remembrance, the issues (masa’il) of the ahkam148 that
are agreed upon and those that are disputed, along with their evidences (dalil, pl. adilla) and to
indicate those bases of the disputes that resemble general rules and principles, for the jurist may be
presented with problems on which the law (Shari’a) is silent”. He thus wrote it in principle for himself,
being a qadi, as an overview of ikhtilaf (disagreement) under the ruling scholars. Another purpose of
this book is “the imparting of skills that make a student of law a competent jurist” (mujtahid). He is
also clear in his view on what a just mujtahid must be; for him it is not about the number of quotes a
person can remember, more important are the tools with which he can derive new solutions; ,,we
find the (so-called) jurists of our times believing that the one who has memorized the most opinions
has the greater legal acumen. Their view is like the view on who thought that a cobbler is he who
possesses a larger number of shoes and not one who has the ability to make them. It is obvious that
147
Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee & Muhammad Abdul Rauf, Introduction, in: Bidayat al mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid (the Distinguished
Jurist’s Primer) Volume 1, Garnet Publishing, Lebanon, 1994, p. XXViii
148
Hukm (pl. ahkam) is not easy to translate because in every translation, the broader meaning is lost. Therefore the term is often not
translated. Different translations are; rule, prescription, injunction, command or Shari’a value; in: footnote in Ibn Rushd’s preface p. Xliii
31
the person who has the larger number of shoes will (some day) be visited by one whose feet the shoes
do not fit. He will then go back to the cobbler who will make shoes that are suitable for his feet. This is
the position of most faqihs (scholars of law) of these times149”. Still in these days we see that the
ulama generally hold the opinion that a scholar should remember a certain number of Quran and
hadith texts, and in this way these words of Ibn Rushd are still (and back then) revolutionary. This
book is a book in the category of usul ul-Fiqh; the issues handled are discussed according to the
Quran, ahadith, sunna, and the opinion of scholars (consensus or not) and give tools for ijma, for Ibn
Rushd himself but also for the student of law and the one who is already a scholar of law. This is also
the meaning of the title: “the beginning for those who strive toward a personal judgment and the end
for those who content themselves with received knowledge”. The Bidaya brings together the different
doctrines of all orthodox legal schools, not only the views of the Malikite school which was dominant
in that region in that time. He not only includes the four leading schools of thought, but also
individual scholars and schools that nowadays do not exist anymore, such as the Zahiri’s. Some
scholars mentioned did have their own school of law, but sometimes the school itself disappeared,
but the scholar remained a widely accepted scholar, for example in the case of al-Tabari and his Jariri
madhhab. Muslims of the first generation are also mentioned, but references to the Kharijis and the
Shi’as are almost nonexistent. Ibn Rushd himself does not show a particular preference for one
school, sometimes he is in favour of a Maliki solution, sometimes of a Shafi’i or Hanafi one. Fierro
says that “the Bidaya” is striking “not only for the absence of clear-cut inclinations towards one school
of law or another, but also for its clarity of exposition, its freedom of thought, and its concern with
logic and rationality150”. I think this is not particularly true in all cases. Some cases are more
elaborated on than others. Some adilla are widely discussed, others hardly at all. Another remarkable
commentary can be that if we look into the text of the Bidaya, you mostly see references to the
Hanafi school in general, but not to its particular scholars, while references to other schools are
made in name of the school as well as in name of different scholars. Indeed, founders of other
schools as al-Tabari (part on imama) are mentioned. But as far as I know only Abu Yusuf's Kitab alKharaj (part on Jizyah and Kharaj) is mentioned as a direct student of imam Abu Hanifa (for example
he could have quoted later scholars of the Hanafi madhhab such as al-Jassas, al-Nasafi etc.). This
could be a sign of lack of deeper knowledge on the Hanafi school (which was in Ibn Rushd’s region a
minority), but more study still has to be done on the content of the Bidaya151. For example, another
point of critique is that Ibn Zarqun accused Ibn Rushd of having plagiarized the Bidaya152.
The purpose, which Ibn Rushd described so beautifully, comes to stand in another light if we look at
the context of time in which Ibn Rushd lived and wrote this book. It was in Andalusia, during the
Almohad reign. This is an interesting period which is unfortunately too extensive to elaborate on
here, but important is that the Almohad caliphate was a theocratic government founded by the
followers of Ibn Tumart, who was according to him and his followers a Mahdi153. This is important
because it has consequences for the notion of absolute or “certain knowledge”. Within the general
Sunni schools of law, knowledge could be reached by profound research on the usul ul-fiqh, of which
the interpretation was entrusted to the ulama and in this way different opinions could be the result.
But a Mahdi has a direct line with God and receives in this way impeccable or infallible knowledge
(their doctrine of imamate shows influence of Shi’ite models154). Ibn Tumart did not leave behind a
profound work of rulings and therefore a typical Almohad law system did not exist. The Almohad
caliphs wanted to create a ruling law system that was based on the Quran and sunna and wanted to
eliminate the divergence of legal opinions to establish the truth in matters of religion and in the field
of law. According to Fierro it is in this light that Ibn Rushd was given the order to write “the Bidaya”.
He was to make an overview of all the different rulings and with ijtihad derive the most reliable
149
Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid, Volume 1, third paragraph in the book of “Sarf”
Maribel Fierro, the Legal Policies of the Almohad Caliphs and Ibn Rushd’s Bidayat al-Mujtahid, Journal of Isl. Studies 10;3,1999, p. 241
My own findings and it is generally widely accepted that there has to be more research done on this work.
152
See footnote 34 in Maribel Fierro, the Legal Policies of the Almohad Caliphs and Ibn Rushd’s Bidayat al-Mujtahid, p. 234
153
See Maribel Fierro, Alfonso X “The Wise”: The Last Almohad Caliph?, Medieval Encounters via brill.nl, no. 15, 2009, p.177
154
Maribel Fierro, Alfonso X “The Wise”: The Last Almohad Caliph?, P. 179
150
151
32
rulings. This practice of ijtihad led to the Almohad later being referred to as “Madhhab Fikr”, school
of (rational) thought155. Important is that the Almohad caliph’s probable intention in giving Ibn Rushd
this assignment was to make clear the different opinions and the ijtihad towards the most preferable
rulings, so that a new codified set of laws as ruling system for the Almohad Caliphate could be made.
This is a totally different view as in which the Bidaya is often seen nowadays; as a nice exploration of
different views and acceptance of different opinions. Instead of this it was created in order to make
an unified and codified new set of laws; one in line with Ibn Tumart’s mission or maybe more
“according to the political necessities of the Almohad caliphs156”, because they were against the
existence of ikhtilaf. This book became even more popular and widely studied after it was translated
into English in 1996.
In Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa Nihayat al-Muqtasid the issue of imam in general and even imama in
specific is discussed. In section 2 “the conditions for imama and issues of precedence” we can look
for his findings. In his “issue 1” we can find the different meanings about the general rulings of who
should be the leader of the prayer: ,,They disagree about the person who has precedence for imama.
Malik said that he is the one most learned (about the rules of prayer), and not the one who is the best
reciter (of the Quran). This was also Shafi’is opinion. Abu Hanifa, al-Thawri and Ahmad said that the
best reciter is to lead them. The reason for their disagreement comes from the dispute over the
meanings of the words of the Prophet p.b.u.h. “the person who recites the Book of Allah best is to
lead his people, and if two are equal in recitation then the one who has greater knowledge of the
sunna.157” Remarkable is that in this Prophetic saying, no gender qualifications are mentioned. This
information about the division in two sections of conditions of imams can be seen clearly in the fatwa
of Khaled Abou el Fadl. “Issue 4” of the Bidaya is the issue of the imama of a woman. Ibn Rushd says
about this; ,,they disagreed about the Imama of a woman. The majority maintained that she cannot
lead men, but they (also) disagreed about her leading women (in prayer). Al-Shafi’i permitted this
while Malik prohibited it. Abu Thawr and al-Tabari deviated (from the majority opinion) and
permitted her imama in absolute terms (i.e. also her leading over men)158”. Interesting here is that
according to this information, the Hanafis would allow the leading of women over women and that
Malik would have prohibited it. But in contemporary practice this has been altered; many Hanafis do
not allow a woman leading over other women and the practice of many Malikis show they are
allowed. And yet in Gamal al-Banna’s work we could see that the Malikis (still) prohibit it. In another
research this would be nice for further investigation how these changes or alterations in time came
into existence, but important for us in this research is that there was no ijma (consensus) of the
Islamic scholars of that time about a woman leading men in prayer. And two great scholars of that
time, Abu Thawr (764–854CE), and al-Tabari (838–923CE), even permitted it clearly. Especially the
latter is until today a widely accepted scholar and his tafsir (exegetical) works are famous. He had his
own school of law (the Jaririte school) but this disappeared and al-Tabari was adopted as a scholar
within the Shafi’i school of law159.
Ibn Rushd continues in his issue on imama how the arguments are made; ,,the majority agreed to
prohibit her from leading men, because had this been permitted such permission would have been
transmitted form the first generation (of Islam). Further, a known practice in prayer is that women
should stand behind men; therefore it is obvious that their being at the front is not permitted. The
Prophet p.b.u.h. said, “keep them behind insofar Allah has kept them behind”. It is for this reason that
some jurists permitted them to lead women, as they have equal precedence for purpose of prayer.
This has also been narrated of some members of the first generation. Those who permitted her
(absolute) imama argued on the basis of the tradition of Umm Waraqah recorded by Abu Dawud
“that the Messenger of Allah p.b.u.h. used to visit her at her house and appointed a mu’adhdhin for
155
See also Maribel Fierro, the Legal Policies of the Almohad Caliphs and Ibn Rushd’s Bidayat al-Mujtahid, p. 228
Ibid, p. 243
Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid, p. 159
158
Ibid, p. 161
159
For more disappeared schools of law and absorption of scholars see; Wael B. Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, Themes in
Islamic Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2005, his chapter 7 on: the formation of legal schools.
156
157
33
her to recite the adhan for her. He ordered her to lead the members of her household (including men)
in prayer”. Ibn Rushd gives no further elaboration on this hadith. But in the modern discussion we
could see that the interpretation of this hadith is widely discussed and varies a lot. Ibn Rushd further
talks about narrations from the first generation; it is not clear whether he means the previous
mentioned ahadith in the part of hadith, or that he only points at the “Umm Waraqah hadith”. The
opinion that women should not lead men in prayer is only founded on the argument that there is no
clear evidence in the sunna in favor of it; so no practice of women-led prayers is known. But he does
not mention arguments against it and a general fiqh concept is that nothing can be made haram
which Allah has not specifically mentioned to be haram. It is interesting that Ibn Rushd does not go
deeper into this issue (other issues about salat are very profound), but this might be a sign that he
himself saw the prohibition as a general custom that women should not lead men in prayer, except
the opinions of al-Tabari and Abu Thawr. Al-Tabari is up till today quite a famous scholar, while the
latter has become more into oblivion. There is not much information available about Ibrahim ibn
Khalid Abu Thawr, but he was in his time (764–854CE/d.240AH) a great scholar and famous for his
acceptance of female imams. Of him is reported that he was trained in the ra’y school of the Iraqians,
and that he became a traditionalist and a “school founder” in the latter part of his career160.
Interesting to note at the end is that the only one who explicitly mentioned the Bidaya in his text was
Prado, the Secretary of Islamic Council Spain. Both Prado and Ibn Rushd are from within the Spanish
Islamic tradition, which might reveals why Prado was the only one who explicitly mentioned Ibn
Rushd.
3. Examination of the Modern Discussion
Arguments pro and contra that are mentioned in this thesis can be put into two different categories.
First we have the “usul ul-fiqh” based arguments which cite Islamic sources as the Quran, hadith and
examples of the early life of the Prophet (sunna), and some also cite early scholars. Classical sources
are also cited and specifically early ijma among classical scholars, which can close further discussion
(close ijtihad) on that topic. The usul ul-fiqh discussion is thus about the Islamic sources in the
classical way. Ijtihad, the intense strive toward a good interpretation, is in fact a kind of
hermeneutics in an Islamic framework, but I have kept this within the usul ul-fiqh section because
here the arguments tend more towards citing the sources precisely than the next category does.
Hermeneutics does not only cite sources and has broader styles of interpretation, while usul ul-fiqh
bases it selves on the aforementioned sources. Hermeneutic is, like modern philosophical thinking, a
broader movement of traditional scholarship. Secondly we have the “religious assumptions” that
lead to arguments pro or against. These can derive from general points of view, or opinions based on
Islamic ideas or even someone’s own thought. In this category we see fewer citations of fiqh sources,
but more general views, which are considered Islamic or just preferable, that lead into another
opinion that emerged from the general view. I have putted hermeneutics in this section because it
plays a specific and important role in this category. Especially in this category, orthodox and
conservative interpretations are viewed as incorrect due to patriarchal interpretations.
3.1. Examination of the Arguments based on Usul ul-Fiqh
In this part I will elaborate on arguments based on the fiqh sources as elaborated in the introduction.
I separated ahadith and sunna, because in early Islamic practice these were different sources too.
The ahadith are literal quotes, and the sunna was mostly referred to something that was practice or
not. Ijma and scholars and fatawa are separated too, to make a distinction between what is referred
160
Taqi al-Din Ibn Qadi Shubha in: Hallaq, Wael B., The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, Themes in Islamic Law, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge UK, 2005 , p. 123) Abu Thawr’s followers included Mansur ibn Isma’il (d.306/918) and Abu ‘Ubayd ibn Harbawayh
(d.319/931), the latter has been later claimed in the Shafi’i madhhab (ibid. p. 168)
34
to as ijma between several scholars, and which are the more “individual opinions” as fatawa. There
are several arguments that are based on opinion, but clearly refer to the “best interest” for the
Muslim community in fiqh methodology. These statements are therefore put under maslaha, instead
of under belief statements.
3.1.1. Quran
From the contributions to the discussion about female imams it became clear that the Quran does
not mention who can lead the prayer and who cannot. Abdennur Prado, said in his reaction to the
Wadud Prayer that there was no aya in the Quran (nor ahadith) that states that a woman cannot lead
men and women in prayer and that the Qur'an even affirms women's capacity to direct a community,
also in spiritual realms even to the degree of prophecy. The last notion, he clearly borrowed from Ibn
al-‘Arabi who said that the Quran mentioned female Prophets and prophecy is a kind of leadership,
thus a kind of imama. Ibn al-‘Arabi and Prado find, based on the Quran, that women can be absolute
imamas. Gamal al-Banna emphasized the Quran too, because for him only the Quran is eternal161 and
it left open the view on imamas, thus it is permissible according to Gamal. Further the Quran cannot
be cited on female imamas specifically, because there are no records of this topic in it. The Quran is
quoted several times in fatawa and in the work of Mattson to make clear that Muslims must follow
the sunna of the Prophet. Most contra arguments which cite the Quran are built on the argument
that absolute female imamate is not sunna and thus not allowed. This is thus an indirect way of citing
the Quran.
3.1.2. Hadith
In the hadith collection of Abu Dawud we can read ,,let the best among you call the adhan (call to
prayer) for you, and the Quran-readers act as your imams.162” This hadith is a widely known hadith
and is also present, in a slightly different form, in other hadith collections as the ones of Bukhari and
Muslim. None of these ahadith are gender related nor are they only addressed to men. There are
numbers of ahadith concerning women-led prayers. We could read in the contribution of Silvers and
Elewa that none of the following ahadith were deemed entirely reliable by classical scholars due to a
weakness in the chain of transmitters; “A woman reported that Aisha led us and she stood between
us during obligatory prayer.”, it is reported that “Aisha used to say the adhan, the iqama (second call
for prayer), and lead women in prayer while standing among them in the same row.”, it is reported
that “Aisha used to lead women in prayer during the month of Ramadan while standing among them
in the same row.”, and “Umm Salama led us (women) in the afternoon prayer and stood among
us”163. These ahadith, although they might be weak as said earlier, can, because of their number,
become a foundation for female imamate over other women. But it is clear that these ahadith are
about female imams for women only. The hadith which was clearly at the center in the
contemporary debate about female imams over men, is the Umm Waraqah hadith. There are two
versions of it, what is only mentioned by Silvers and Elewa. The first is: ,,When the Prophet (p.b.u.h.)
proceeded for the battle of Badr, I (umm Waraqah) said to him; Apostle of Allah, allow me to
accompany you in the battle. I shall act as a nurse for patients. It is possible that Allah might bestow
martyrdom upon me. He said: stay in your home. Allah, the Almighty, will bestow martyrdom on you.
The Narrator said; Hence she was called a martyr. She read the Quran. She sought permission from
the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) to have a mu’adhdhin (someone who makes the call to prayer, adhan) in her
house. He, therefore, permitted her to do so.164” The interpretations of this hadith vary and it is
sometimes even used as an argument that women should stay in the house. Umm Waraqah was,
after she led her household in prayer for some time, killed by two of her servants and became a
martyr just as the Prophet had said. Important for this thesis is that this hadith is used both as a pro
and contra argument for women as imams. The second version of the hadith is more a benefit for the
161
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 59
Abu Dawud, Sunan, book 2 “Prayer”, hadith nr. 590
163
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”; a Survey and Analysis of Legal Arguments on Women-Led Prayers in Islam,
Journal of Law and Religion, Volume 26. No1. 2010/11, p. 154
164
Abu Dawud, Sunan, book 2 “Prayer”, hadith nr. 591 and Musnad imam Ahmed 6/405 and certified hasan (good) by Ibn Hajr
162
35
pro female imama side; Abu Dawud said on the authority of Umm Waraqah that: “The Prophet
(p.b.u.h.) used to visit her in her own home; he appointed a mu’adhdhin for her, and ordered her to
lead the member of her household (in the obligatory ritual prayers)165”. In the second version the
Prophet himself appointed Umm Waraqah as imam and he himself appointed a mu’adhdhin for her.
Asma Afsaruddin elaborated this hadith in her book The First Muslims; History and Memory. She says
too that interpretations vary. She says this variety is not only caused by the interpretations of the
word “dar”, but also on the words “remain in your homes166”. She says this could also be translated
as “and behave with dignity”. The first translation can therefore be used as an argument for the
conservative view that women should remain in their houses, the second reading is about good
behavior, in and outside the house. She also says that the second version of the hadith does not rule
out the possibility that umm Waraqah did accompany the Prophet to the battlefield. She says, the
“devil is in the details; it is these relatively minor deviations in detail that are highly revealing of how
societal conceptions of women’s agency and proper conduct in the public realm came to be
progressively defined and restricted in the late pre-modern Muslim world167”. She continues that
most jurists and theologians by then had decided that leadership over mixed congregations was not
an appropriate role for a woman (based on al-haya). These views were later projected at the lives of
the women of the earliest centuries of Islam and now the conservatives wish that such views
accurately reflect the gender norms of the earliest period, while in fact we can at least doubt this.
She further shows examples of women as leaders in the early period, functions that were not gender
specific, but became so later nevertheless168.
In interpreting the ahadith on women-led prayer, the Sunni schools of law hold a range of opinions
on its permissibility. The only hadith that explicitly handles the female imamate is quoted by alQaradawi, who admits that in all texts (Quran and ahadith), there is no explicit prohibition on a
woman as khatib imam. The very weak hadith (d’aif jiddan) said: “a woman cannot be imam over a
man, a Bedouin cannot lead an immigrant169 and a sinner cannot be imam over a believer”. It is
interesting that the middle statement and the last are explicitly fought against from an Islamic point
of view, due to the egalitarian notion of Islam, but that the first statement about a female imam is
widely accepted. If this hadith is so clearly categorized as weak based on the isnad and the matn, and
if the other two messages in this hadith are clearly falsified, then the statement about the woman as
an imam must also be false. This would in fact be an argument pro female imama.
Ahadith more in general are the ones who determine the conditions for an imam. These were
mentioned several times, in pro and contra arguments and in the Bidaya. The imam should be “the
one most learned ..or the best reciter.170” Pros refer to this hadith by saying that gender is not
mentioned as a condition. Contras say that this was said to “men” only, at which some pros answer
that if men in general are referred to, the Arabic language refers to both men and women, if not
clearly mentioned otherwise171. Other contras allow only women with greater knowledge to be
imam, but then additions are made; this only holds in private settings or even only over mahrammen, or from the rows behind the men. Abou el Fadl clearly follows these conditions too and argued
that if the “best” is a woman, then she can lead because “a female ought not be precluded from
leading jum’a simply on the grounds of being female.172” But he does mention that there must be
separation in the salat and gives a solution that the group of men stands on the one side of the room,
and the women on the other side, with the female imam in front / or in the same row as the women.
165
Abu Dawud, Sunan, book 2 “Prayer” 300-301, via: Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 155
Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims; History and Memory, Oxford, Oneworld, 2008, p. 164 and 224
167
Ibid. p. 165
168
See Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims, p. 190-192
169
This probably points at the people of Medina who could not lead the people who immigrated from Mecca to Medina. This makes the
content really weak, because the prophet severely praised the people of Medina, thus this would be very strange if these highly praised
people could not lead others. This hadith, if it was true, would also mean there are “better people and lesser people” which is against the
egalitarian principles of Islam.
170
Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid, p. 159
171
See Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”
172
See Khaled Abou El Fadl, On Women Leading Prayer.
166
36
We saw the other ahadith of women-led prayers over women. Most scholars agree on women
leading other women in prayer. But the only hadith on women leading over men is the “umm
Waraqah hadith” and therefore this hadith is central in the discussion about women-led prayers in
Islam. Interpretations vary and are used both pro and against women-led prayers. Abdennur Prado,
specifically “pro”, is one of the few who reported the full second version of the hadith, and most
commentators only refer to this second version, not even saying there are more versions. Pros say
that dar is often used in a broader spectrum, as “dar al-islam”, which means the whole “spectrum” of
Islam. Dar can thus mean also the city in which they lived. Prado follows his intellect by saying that
this would make sense why this dar needed a mu’adhdhin; to call all the people of the town to prayer
(within a house, you would not need a “caller”). Silvers and Elewa are also due to this opinion.
Uttermost contras say that it was not possible for men to be led because the men must have prayed
in the mosque (without giving dalil). Al-Qaradawi gave a restrictive reading: according to him this
hadith does exactly limit the feminine imamate to her own house, and only in the case that she is
most versed in the Quran (and is thus clearly aware of the first version of the hadith, although he
does not mention this). Interesting is that in the Bidaya, this hadith is only mentioned as “proof” for
the pro-absolute-imama scholars. Discussion about the interpretation of dar or about this hadith are
not mentioned in the Bidaya. The only “proof” against absolute imamas in the Bidaya is that it would
not be sunna, and that most scholars are against it, but he does not mention ijma.
Most contras use the hadith: “the best rows in prayer for men are the first and the best rows for
women are the last” to say that the basis of this practical position makes it impossible for a woman
to lead men in prayer. Interesting is that all these contras do allow women leading other women
from the same row, thus while she is not standing “amam” (in front) of the women, which implicitly
nullifies their reasoning that an imam must stand in front of the congregation. This reasoning is even
more nullified because some allow women to lead nafl prayers or tarawih prayers over men, in which
some do not clearly position the female imam, others saying that she must lead from behind.
Suddenly she doesn’t have to stand “amam” and the prayer is valid anyway. But the contras do
continue to base their view on their fact that it is not logical for women to lead men, as it is practice
that they are positioned behind men in prayer. Most ahadith on prayer situations mention the
positioning of women standing behind the men, but there are also ahadith wherein we can see that
women were positioned next to the men. The Hanbalis did not find this an obstacle, because they let
the women lead from within the rows of the women. Information that came to us, only by Gamal alBanna, was that sheikh Sayed Sabeq has said: “the one who’s prayer is valid, it’s prayer in front of
others (as imam) is also valid.”173 I think a hadith is mentioned here, but this is not mentioned in the
book of Gamal clearly. This would also say something about the conditions of an imam and nullifies
the weak hadith mentioned by al-Qaradawi.
3.1.3. Sunna
Technically (even the contras admit this), the women-led prayers are not haram; in the worst contra
case a prayer of a man is not valid (batil) if it was led by a woman (and the woman’s prayer is also
invalidated). An often heard argument in the normative discussion contra is that it would not be
“sunna” for a woman to lead men in prayer and that therefore it should not occur. Shabir Ally was
the only one who specifically argued against this argument and said that a new rule cannot be
derived out of something that “just was not practice in that time” and was not prohibited explicitly
because a new rule cannot just be created. On the other hand Ibn Rushd said the exact opposite in
saying that if it would be permissible, then it would have been reported in the sunna. Salah al-Sawy
said in his fatwa that if it would have been permissible, then the ummahat would have performed
this too as they were the most versed in Quran. The more progressive Mohammad Fadel uses this
exact same argument, without explicitly mentioning that Muslims must follow the sunna. He said
that there existed women who had the skills to lead men in prayer (probably referring to women
such as the ummahat) and the Prophet did not correct the ruling idea that men led prayers, so
173
Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 72
37
female imams over men are not allowed. Interesting is that Ibn al-‘Arabi and Silvers and Elewa use
exactly the same method by saying that the default state is that female imams are allowed. Gamal alBanna goes against the contras too, because one can easily say the reverse; if it would not be
permissible, Allah would have made that clear (something cannot be made haram, if Allah has not
explicitly made it haram). The argument Fadel uses, that the Prophet ought to make clear the rules of
Allah, can be used in the same way, but resulting in the opposite. A term in fiqh methodology is that
one cannot make something haram, if it is not clearly mentioned to be haram by either God or
Muhammad. Fadel seems to turn this around and implicitly says that the leading of men in prayer
was a “silent approval”, otherwise he would have spoken against it. This is indeed a method within
the sunna, but in this case it can be problematic because the Prophet only silently approved that
indeed men may lead the salat. It is not clear if that implies that women cannot. Silvers and Elewa
went a step further in their commentary by not only saying that it is not forbidden in the sunna, but
by pointing at the umm Waraqa hadith and the examples of the wives of the Prophet, they say it was
in fact sunna. Elewa and Silvers saw the hadith of umm Waraqah as a source for sunna, and the
Prophet himself appointed her. It might be that Nafisa led the funeral prayer (not to speak about
other prayers) of al-Shafi’i, so we can ask ourselves when something is an established sunna. Within
the case of female imamas, a good quote can help us here; “a charismatic person or leader should
have a kind of manager after his death174”, in order to stay a leader. If the women in the ahadith, due
to patriarchal tendencies, did not have their male colleagues on their side, as Asfaruddin showed,
and thus not advocated or managed their sunna after their death, it will never become sunna. In
Islamic history we can see that in certain times, writings or views that were seen in a specific period
and place, on women in particular, as unacceptable often vanished. Sometimes pages were literally
ripped out of the books175, at other times writings were burned176.The writings which advocate for
women’s agency, and that remained within the books, are much discussed and interpretations vary
enormously. Interesting is that the same dalil (mostly ahadith) are held as an argument pro as well as
an argument against the women-led prayer issue, but are interpreted differently. It was probably due
to this patriarchal tendency that the weak hadith (shown by al-Qaradawi) wanted to forbid the
female imamate explicitly, because there were no explicit rulings on it, and that in early Islamic
history and law, we saw that there were at least four scholars, whom we know of, that allowed the
absolute imama of women.
3.1.4. Ijma
Qaradawi said about the Wadud Prayer and women-led prayers in general, that “there is unanimous
consensus for the entire Ummah, in the east and west, that women cannot lead the Friday Prayer nor
can they deliver the sermon…and even includes the Shiites to give extra weight on his statement177”.
Prado commented on this to the contrary: “About the “scholars unanimous consensus throughout
history”, we have to say that a honest study doesn't allow for this statement. ..it is necessary to
mention Abu Thawr, ..Abu Dawud.. and al-Tabari. Ibn Rushd affirms in his Bidaya that Abu Thawr and
al-Tabari are an exception among the scholars, since “they allow the women to lead men in prayer
without restrictions” and, probably based on this scholars, Ibn Rushd does not talk about ijma. AlMuzani and Ibn al-’Arabi are added to this list by Elewa & Silver and by ‘Ali Gum’a. Prado mentioned
that some of the defenders of the so-called “consensus of scholars” don't ignore these cases; they
simply argue that the consensus was established with posteriority, and therefore cannot include Abu
Thawr neither al-Tabari (and probably thus also the others). Prado says we thus must ask: when does
this consensus take place, and who does it include? Prado’s perplexity increases as he discovered
174
During a lecture of Almut-Barbara Renger (Free University Berlin), Apollonius of Tyana – Rival Authority toward Jesus Christ. Explorations
into an Internet Fad, Saturday 23 October 2011, NGG International Autumn Conference: Religious Authority – Past and Present
175
Introduction of Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, translated by Mary Jo Lakeland, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis, 1993
176
For example, during the reign of caliph al-Mansur (580/1184-595/1198), Maliki writings were burnt, because his opinion was that
Malikism derived too far away from the Quran and the sunna. See Maribel Fierro, the Legal Policies of the Almohad Caliphs and Ibn Rushd’s
Bidayat al-Mujtahid, p. 236
177
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 2
38
that there are many opposing definitions of what “consensus among the scholars” really means
because there is no consensus on what a consensus implies178”. Elewa and Silvers follow this same
line and they also quote Shaykh Abdullah bin Hamid Ali who says that “if a true consensus existed,
distinct rulings definitive to the different schools could not possibly exist”. Abou el Fadl commented
on this and takes the consensus a step further; “the legal evidence in favor of such an exclusion is not
very strong; it is more an issue of customary practice and male-consensus than direct textual
evidence”. A kind of male-sunna without textual evidence. To comment in short, the contras say
there is ijma, of which the pros say that does not exist. The pros are mentioning the scholars of
history, proving (in their way) there was no such thing as ijma (at all, or on this matter in specific).
3.1.5. Scholars and Madhahib
If we look at the discussion and look for the majority opinions within the schools of law, we have
according to Ahmed Elewa and Laury Silvers on the one end of the spectrum the Malikites who say
that women-led prayers are strictly prohibited, even women leading other women (they quote Ibn
Rushd here). In the middle we have the Shafi’is and the Hanafis who permit a woman to lead other
women, preferring she would be in the first line of the women instead of standing ahead of them. On
the other end of the spectrum we have the Hanbalis who take a broader position that a woman can
lead other women and that she can function as absolute imama for men in the family in their homes
or in special public prayers as the tarawih. And several scholars affirmed the women’s right to lead in
all circumstances. Here they clearly follow the information of Bidayat al Mujtahid. We saw in Gamal
al-Banna’s work that Hanafis as well as Malikis prohibited a female imama over women. Nowadays
we can see a change in practice; the Malikis mostly accept women to lead other women, and instead
of that, now a great majority within the Hanafi madhhab does not allow women to lead other
women. Additionally, the Hanbali madhhab holds the broader view on the female imamate in
classical thought, but nowadays its view has become more strict and narrow. More research has to
be done on the views on the issue of imama within the madhahib nowadays. It might seem odd that
(in classical thought) a respectively more liberal madhhab as the Malikis would forbid women to lead
prayers at all, and a respectively strict school as the Hanbalis would even allow women to lead
(voluntary) prayers over men. This is not weird at all if we look at the history of the madhahib. As we
saw in Ibn Rushd, it was not a well-known practice for women to lead prayer. The Maliki madhhab
relied on Medinan practice more than on ahadith (at least in the early period), because the Maliki
madhhab arose in Medina so they had easy access to people who were contemporaries of the
Prophet who was the example for Muslims and thus had easy access to sunna. The Hanbalis were
known as “ahl al-hadith”, people of the hadith, and in their fiqh, even a weak hadith can serve as
proof for a law. So the ahadith we saw earlier of women leading in prayer, are for the Hanbalis proof,
although they are (slightly) weak, while they cannot be proof for a Maliki. The latter follow instead
that what is common to do, according to the practice of Medina. In this way there can be huge
differences in practice among different schools of law.
Nowadays we see that contemporary scholars (also in the fatwa statements) clearly take the
opinions of madhahib as a source of law to authorize their ideas or as a source to find out what was
practice for early Muslim in certain matters. Nomani totally abandons all scholars. She bases her
vision on picking and choosing among the commentaries in the Koran and the ahadith. She makes no
records of Islamic law or fiqh terms (let alone any fatwa declared about this issue). She brings Islam
back to its basic tenets which is for het the core of a valid religion, and the rest is history and
commentary. Nomani thinks it is time for the big ideal to come truth, not the parsing of some
extremely questionable ancient religious texts or male interpreters. Although this total abandoning
of previous scholars might seem rigorous, Nomani is not the only one. Reda called for an “appeal to
the contemporary Muslim community to use their critical thinking skills and follow the most
important Divine command to only follow one God and not take the authority of scholars past and
178
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 3
39
present more seriously than that command179”. Gamal al-Banna wanted to encourage Muslims not to
blindly trust traditional thought and traditional male interpreters but to check every idea and reevaluate it, and base themselves upon the Quran and reason. With this we can find a critical attitude
toward the so-called authority of other scholars, and be always aware of the fact that that is an
opinion in itself too, and that Muslims must use their own intellect and not follow blindly anything
that has been said. This is clearly a reformist way of thinking on which I will elaborate later. Many
conservatives on the other hand emphasize that if Muslims will interpret too much for themselves,
there will be chaos. Then there will be too much fitna and that is why Muslims should put their trust
in scholars. Fatwas, in response to questions put by television viewers, or asked on the internet, are
seen as “important sources for securing knowledge180”, especially with regard to modern topics.
Scholars are emphasizing that the amount of study, necessary to interpret the sources, is huge. It is
interesting that, although this might seem a modern issue, Ibn Rushd already talked about this in his
time: “we find the (so-called) jurists of our times believing that the one who has memorized the most
opinions has the greater legal acumen. Their view is like the view on who thought that a cobbler is he
who possesses a larger number of shoes and not one who has the ability to make them. It is obvious
that the person who has the larger number of shoes will (some day) be visited by one whose feet the
shoes do not fit. He will then go back to the cobbler who will make shoes that are suitable for his feet.
This is the position of most faqihs (scholars of law) of these times181”. Still in these days we see that
the ulama generally hold the opinion that a scholar should know a certain number of Quran and
hadith texts in their minds, instead of a more “western” view where the tools for research are more
important. In this way these words of Ibn Rushd are still revolutionary.
3.1.6. “Maslaha”
Maslaha or ‘public interest’ is a term within, and one of the maqashid (objectives) of the Shari’a.
Maslaha always seeks for the best intentions and the greatest good for the Muslim community. The
Quran and sunna seek, according to Islamic thought, to establish justice, eliminate prejudice, and
alleviate hardship. The laws of the Qur’an and the sunna also seek to promote cooperation and
mutual support within the family and the society at large. Maslaha is thus a broad type of thinking for
the benefit of the people. Under this name I have put the scale of arguments that not really refer
directly to an Islamic sources, but are more based on belief statements. These statements depend on
contexts (cultures) and situations and are subordinated to the values of the community.
We saw that Al Nisa wrote informative contributions after the Wadud prayer and where in 1987 and
2008 an absolute imama was seen as generally unacceptable, the article in 2009 shows more room
for discussion. In this article the opinions of Qaradawi and Abou el Fadl are mentioned and it seems
now that the opinion of ‘female imams are allowed if it is accepted by the community” has been
given more room. But Al Nisa’s opinion as an organization is not clear on this issue (everyone can
make up her own mind) but is in general that other issues such as religious authority in general are
more important these days and we should focus on them instead of female leadership in prayer. We
should take it step by step and not wanting too much in the wrong time and place (to not provoke
the community). Prado elaborated this “acceptance of the community” too, by saying: “the Secretary
General of Islamic Commission of Spain, Mansur Escudero, support the (Wadud) prayer, and the Mufti
Sheikh Ali Gum'a, Egypt's main Islamic authority, declared that woman-led prayer during mixedgender congregations is permissible, so long as the congregation agrees to it, We Agree182”. But with
this last saying of Ali Gum’a, he therefore also says that this practice is not to be implemented in
Egypt; he clearly says it is only permissible if it is appropriate to the local customs, which is not the
case in Egypt. But this is absolutely not what Gum’a says in his fatwa in Gamal al-Banna’s book; he
explicitly forbids it there. How could Addennur Prado have read this? Are there several fatawa of this
179
Juliane Hammer, Performing Gender Justice, p. 111
Nathal M. Dessing, Thinking for oneself? Forms and elements or religious authority in Dutch Muslim women’s groups, in: Women,
Leadership and Mosques; Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill, 2011, p. 225
181
Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al mujtahid wa nihayat al-Muqtasid, Volume 1, third paragraph in the book of “Sarf”
182
Addennur Prado, About the Friday Prayer led by Amina Wadud, p. 4
180
40
sheikh or has Prado been misreading? I found out183 that Ali Gum’a also has given a fatwa live on
television. Here he said that the prayer is ga’iz (allowed) based on that imam al-Tabari and Ibn al‘Arabi allowed this, the only difference between them is where the woman has to be placed (behind
or in front). This live fatwa was proclaimed before his written fatwa, but the latter became more
well-known. Because Prado was one of the first to react, it is thus possible that when he wrote it,
Gum’a had only delivered his live fatwa. But Prado changed the end of his statement on another
place on the internet in “the The Secretary General of Islamic Commission of Spain, Mansur Escudero,
supports the prayer, and gives his congratulations to Amina Wadud and the organizers. Woman-led
prayer during mixed-gender congregations is permissible, so long as the congregation agrees to it.
We agree.184” Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah and al-Qaradawi open the debate a little by saying that
attitudes can change in different cultures. This acceptance of the community in different cultures
was swept from the table completely by al-Tantawi, who said there is just “one Islam” in the East and
the West, so no differences are possible in other communities.
An argument, often used on the contra side, is that the body of the female imam would distract the
men praying behind her. Men are concerned that they would be sexually distracted by “a female
imam bending over in front of them, no matter how voluminous her robes185”. Dr. Soad Saleh, who
heads the Islamic department of the woman's college at al-Azhar University, considered the act an
apostasy, which is punishable by death in Islam, she continues that “the origin of the prohibition is
that women’s body, even veiled, stirs desire186”. Abdul-Moti Bayoumi, of the Islamic Research Center
at Al-Azhar, says that “not allowing women to lead mixed gender prayers is not discrimination
between women and men but is to safeguard men from being conflicted and torn by human desire
while they are standing behind a woman while she's bowing and kneeling187”. This kind or reasoning
is more based on modesty as a central tenet of Islamic morality. It is thus a kind of looking for the
best interest for the community which is not to cause any fitna, and keeping the boundaries of alhaya. In all fatawa contra we could see that al-haya was indeed the key issue why female leadership
in prayer would not be allowed. Many acknowledge that women therefore can lead mahram-men in
her private sphere. The Hanbali solution for nafl prayers and tarawih prayers is that women can lead
men, but from the row behind the men (so they cannot see her, so her haya is not at stake). It must
be noticed, which was not noticed in the discussion, that nowadays, by far, not all Hanbali scholars
agree with this classic opinion, further research on this would be interesting. Dr. Amina Wadud
reacted on this “haya” argument that, if men feel distracted by women’s bodies during prayer, they
have a very low level of self-control and low level of devotion. During Prayer, the mind must be fully
set on Allah only, and the eyes have to be pointed to the ground anyway, so how can men then look
and be distracted by a women, who is even fully covered?
On the side of permission, a number of well-respected religious scholars, community leaders and
interested Muslim academics approved the prayer and are calling for women to lead mixed-gender
prayers in those communities that desire it. Some even approved it from within the boundaries of
Islamic jurisprudence, and out of support for greater gender justice in the Muslim community. One of
these scholars is Khaled Abou El Fadl who showed in his fatwa limited support, but supported
anyway the absolute women-led prayers: “in my opinion, priority ought to be given to what is in the
best interest of the community, and knowledge is the ultimate good. It seems to me that if a female
possesses greater knowledge than a male..(she) ought not be precluded from leading jum’a simply on
the grounds of being female. ..if a female leads prayer, the males should not stand directly behind
her-she could stand ahead of the lines with the men standing to her side188”. He mentions both the
best interest for the community, which is getting the best information and knowledge, regardless
which gender it is given by. He also gives the solution for the fitna issue.
183
In a very small footnote in: Gamal al-Banna, Djawaz Imama al-Mar’a al-Ridjal, p. 24
http://abdennurprado.wordpress.com/2005/03/10/about-the-friday-prayer-led-by-amina-wadud/
185
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 148
186
Saleh quoted in Abou el-Magd, Mideast Muslims outraged, see ‘conspiracy’ after woman leads prayer in U.S., The Free Republic (March
19, 2005), http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1366312/posts
187
Bayoumi quoted in Abou el-Magd, Mideast Muslims outraged, see ‘conspiracy’ after woman leads prayer in U.S.
188
Khaled Abou El Fadl, On Women Leading Prayer, Scholar of the House, 2005, www.scholarofthehouse.org/onwolepr.html
184
41
Another often heard argument is the question whether the female imamate is really important in the
struggle for women’s rights and if the time is really ripe for this issue now. Mohammed Fadel did not
think the time is ripe, as well as Dutch Muslim women shown in this thesis, and so thinks Shabir Ally.
Abou el Fadl was aware of this and was thus very careful in his fatwa. But on the other hand, a
community is not out of the blue ready for such a debate, it has to begin some day and then evolve
further. If we look at the Wadud prayer in 2005, from then on the discussion has been triggered and
is still debated. Most fatawa came short after the event, but the Elli Safari movie was issued in 2007
and the video of Shabir Ally was aired in 2008. Juliane Hammer is even currently working on a book
manuscript examining the discourses surrounding the woman-led Friday prayer in New York in 2005
(University of Texas Press)189. This shows us that the debate still goes on and that Muslims are more
and more becoming aware of the possibilities of different opinions about women-led prayers.
3.2. Exploration of the Arguments based on Religious Statements and Hermeneutics
Secondly we have the “faith-based assumptions” that lead to arguments pro or against. These can
derive from general points of view, based on Islamic ideas. In this category we see less citations of
fiqh terminology, but more general views, which are considered Islamic, that lead to an opinion.
Hermeneutics plays a specific and important role in this category. Many Orthodox and conservative
interpretations are viewed as incorrect due to patriarchal interpretations (although patriarchal
authority is also a point of discussion in the former category) and modern scholars strive for new
kinds of interpretations. There is also a trend of “free ijtihad” within a religious framework; the minds
of some produce complete argumentations according to (their opinions) general Islamic principles or
just their own opinion solely. Although someone could put aside this kind of thinking as “islamically
unfounded”, these contributors themselves base themselves very much on what they think Islam
should be. Therefore I have putted this kind of thinking aside from hermeneutics because it is less
well argued, but is in a way certainly a type of religious thinking.
3.2.1 “Free Ijtihad”
Gamal al-Banna is a good example of this kind of “free ijtihad”. He explicitly promotes that Muslims
should use their intellect, which makes them different from animals. He makes a comparison
between slavery and female imamate, which Abu Thawr did too. The latter said: “legal deficiency
inherent in being a male slave is greater than that in being a free woman. Since male slaves are
allowed to lead free men in prayer, then free women should be permitted to do so as well”. This is a
deductive interpretation according to another (general) principle from the Quran190. Gamal doesn’t
make any profound hermeneutical analogies, he is more a fan of “free ijtihad”. It is now a different
time than 1400 years ago, and he emphasizes that Wadud only wanted to put Islam in a positive light
(in the West), which Muslims should appreciate and not fight against in the name of Islam. He
continues his argument that slavery was only abolished when the people, the economy, politics and
the industrial revolution all changed; this already happened in the West, but this kind of change has
still to come in the East and is thus culturally related. Nomani takes the free thinking even further;
she has a very essentialist reading of the Quran and almost reduces Islam to the five pillars, the rest
is interpretation. By doing this, she becomes free to believe and act as a Muslim the way she wants.
Free thinking is not only tracable on the side of pros in this discussion, the contras are good at it too.
The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America said “and if it would be allowed, one of the Ummahat al
mu’minin (literary; mothers of the believers, which are the wives of the Prophet) would have done
this, because they were more educated and verses in ‘ilm (knowledge/science) than any men in their
time.” This is, just like the previous comparison, not fully groundless on sources, but is too farfetched to base a new law on. Another and maybe the most astonishing, special type of “free ijtihad”
I found in the discussion about female-led prayers, is the reaction on the Wadud prayer of Gibril
189
http://religious.gmu.edu/people/jhammer1
This can be a form of Qiyaas, but is not explicitly mentions here as such. I found this deduction too far-fetched to really speak of a qiyaas
matter in this.
190
42
Fouad Haddad. He does not go into arguments or sources about the female imamate (except the
ijma argument we heard many times before) but comments on the whole situation of the Wadud
prayer and takes this to the extremes of his imagination. This is the most imaginative answer I found
in this debate. There was one women without hijab, but as you can see at the photos on the front
page, the imama was covered well. I don’t think Haddad is even aware of the fact that this imama
(Wadud) wore the niqab for some time in her life and he accuses her of being untrained in the
Quran. Everything else in this quote comes from his imagination; clearly saying that this (according to
him) will lead to the absolute worst-case scenario. Qaradawi has also some traces of individual ijtihad
which we can see in the example he gave that there was never seen an imama in history, not even in
the time there was a female ruler; Shajarat al-Durr; as if all women would want a female imam?
Above we could see that even women are skeptical or even prohibit a female imam. Qaradawi makes
us think here that if a female imam must have existed, it must have occurred during the reign of a
woman, which is quite a patriarchal way of thinking. Interesting was also his “poetry theory” by
which he said that it is a contradictio in terminis that a woman can lead men from behind them,
because it is intrinsic to the word imam that he stands in front of the followers. But unfortunately he
only believes his own “preacher’s poetry” when women are imam over men, but if women are imam
over other women, they have to do this from within the same row and this is acceptable. But then
the female imam is also not in front, so his “preacher poetry” is actually a pick and choose method; it
does hold over men, but not over women and is therefore inconsistent. We can also see his preacher
style clearly when he is addressing his “sisters” and just wants to give them some “good advice”, and
only wants to help them; he speaks directly to his audience.
3.2.2. Exegesis and Hermeneutics
Hammer said that the activists involved in these events (women-led prayer and equality in mosques)
draw on emerging Quranic interpretation focusing on gender justice. With this she says that the
prayer is an embodiment of such a tafsir (Quran exegesis). She also says there is a close connection
between the issue of female imams and the question of space in mosques; both are in reality part of
a larger debate about gender equality. In epistemological terms, Hammer says that much of the work
of the participants in this debate exhibits clear tensions to the utilization of “western” hermeneutical
methods and theories on the one hand, and traditional Islamic terminology and concepts on the
other. Many use a thematic approach to the Quran. Many of these (female) scholars follow in the
footsteps of Fazlur Rahman, a neo reformist and one of the first Muslim scholars active in the
American Secular academy. He was one of the first to put Islamic theology in a hermeneutic
framework. To make clear his influence on others who also participated in the debate on female
authority and the authority of the female imam in particular, I will elaborate on his work first.
Rahman said that the Quran was an ethical book in the first place, and referred to women, but that
was not his primary concern. In his hermeneutics, he pleaded for a new approach of the Quran. He
admired the mu’tazili theories of prophecy and the nature of revelation, which formed the most
important component of his own general theory of rational ethics191. This implied that good and bad
are knowledgeable by reason without the help of revelation. He said that Muslims will only
understand the specific verses of the Quran if they understand the general message of the Quran. A
coherent revision of the moral, social and juridical message of the Quran can only be understood if
the metaphysical parts of the Quran are understood well first192. For a good understanding of the
Quran it is thus necessary to develop a correct method of interpretation. He said that the biggest
mistake classical scholars have made, is the denial of the deeper unity of the Quran193 and the closing
of the gate of ijtihad caused the decline in Islamic thought. He says people must perform ijtihad,
which he defines as: “the effort to understand the meaning of a relevant text or precedent in the
past, containing a rule, and to alter that rule by extending or restricting or otherwise modifying it in
191
Abdullah Saeed, Fazlur Rahman: a framework for interpreting the ethico-legal content of the Qur’an, uit: Modern Muslim Intellectuals
and the Qur’an, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 42
192
Abdullah Saeed, Fazlur Rahman: a framework for interpreting the ethico-legal content of the Qur’an, p. 43
193
Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an, Chicago, University Press, 2009, p. 6-8
43
such a manner that a new situation can be subsumed under it by a new solution194”. Without ijtihad
the Quran cannot be seen as a whole, and passages would be interpreted separately and in this way
contradictions could come into being. In his ijtihad, the historical critical method was important; we
must investigate why and in which context an aya was revealed, in order to understand it properly.
When it comes to ahadith, he formulated his critical academic approach meaning that he always was
cautious of ahadith195. They always had to be compared to the Quran in order to see if they did not
contradict the Quranic message. Centuries after the death of the Prophet, Muslims were interpreting
single ahadith on their own, without “testing” them on the Quran. For Rahman this was the
“traumatic departure of the Quran”, which was according to him at his peak during the formation of
sunni Islam, and in particularly under the Umayyad reign. The raise of such enormous dynasties had a
negative influence on the development of Islam196. In the introduction I said that in these periods
authority was more rigid and with the breakdown of these dynasties the debate about authority has
been awoken. But because of the long period of stagnation in Islamic thought, critical thinking had
been lost. According to Rahman there must arise a new intellectual tradition which should revive the
ancient philosophical tradition which has been lost during the dark ages. Ghazali was one of the
scholars who had caused this decline, because he thought the intellect could lead into philosophical
excesses and was not a good foundation for certain knowledge (contrary to revelation). Rahman said
that after this influence of Ghazali, later scholars examined the opinions of previous scholars instead
of examining the sources themselves; he calls this passive recipient of information. This we can see
very clear in the contra arguments in this debate on female imams. Rahman says instead that we
must look (again) for the unknown because this will lead to new knowledge197. This is exactly what
his students or followers are doing. They are actively in search for new knowledge about Islam, with
the social historical knowledge available in mind. This is what Rahman called the hermeneutic
contextualization. His method did not leave behind a new system of law, but he created new tools
for interpretation of the law. His emphasis lies at the ethical message of the Quran and it is according
to Rahman in that perspective that Islamic law must be viewed. Essential is that the social-historical
context and moral values prevail over the futilities in the law.
Well-known students of Rahman are Asma Barlas and Amina Wadud. They use his hermeneutic
theories more specifically in their works. Abou el Fadl’s influence cannot be neglected either. His
“conscientious pause” became prominent in the work of Wadud too. It is a “pause” when there is a
conflict between “principles of one’s faith” and “textual evidence”. A responsible and reflective
person must then take a pause, and put all the effort towards resolving the conflict, since Islamic
theology dictates that one must always use his or her own conscience198. It is further argued by
Hammer that the rise of these “new female tafsirs” is related to the status quo that classical ulama
no longer have absolute authority and that they have to “compete with new religious intellectuals”,
here Hammer follows Muhammad Qasim Zaman. This development has in his view “created a shift of
‘democratization’ of Islamic knowledge and interpretations, but has not led to a vacuum of
authority”. Hammer noticed that the women active in the tafsir of gender equality, have all been
trained at Western universities and only Wadud holds a degree in Islamic studies. This is not quite
true, since others such as Nevin Reda and Laury Silvers hold a degree in Islamic Studies too. Hammer
might point here at a traditional Islamic training; only Amina Wadud has been trained at a classical
Islamic ijaza institute: al-Azhar University. She has been teaching at an Islamic university in Malaysia
too. The lack of traditional Islamic training is, according to Hammer, directly linked to the challenges
194
Fazlur Rahman, Islam & Modernity; Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition, Chicago, the University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 8
Fazlur Rahman was very critical of ahadith and was very much against the almost “untouchable status” of the so-called sahih works of
Bukhari and Muslim (this admiration for these works fell into his category of hidden polytheism). But he did not went as far as Sayyid
Ahmad Khan, who made such a strict and critical evaluation that only 3 ahadith were seen as authentic. The historical critical approach and
critical academic approach (also by non-Muslim academics) were instead more important to him.
196
Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History, Karachi, Central Institute of Islamic Research, 1965, p. 24-26
197
Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity, p. 38
198
See Khaled Abou el Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name; Islamic Law, Authority and Women, Oxford, Oneworld, 2001, p. 94
195
44
to their authority as Muslim scholars199. Ironically, Hammer says also that this crisis of authority is
exactly what provides an opening for women’s exegetical participation in the first place200. Last but
not least, Hammer says that Muslim women scholars are often themselves activists and thus
translate their own exegesis into activist projects and agendas. Hammer not handled the question
why they do this.
One of the organizers of the 2005 prayer, Abdul-Ghafur, said that is was an act of “reclaiming the
egalitarian roots of Islam” whereby she uses her interpretation of Islam (egalitarian) on the issue of
imama. Wadud, the imama of the prayer, saw it as a way to “reclaim their full human dignity”. She
built her khutba on the gender-just nature of the Quran. But she also refers to equality for all human
beings: horizontal reciprocity. No human being is better or stands above another human being,
because only Allah is Akbar (the greatest) and therefore all human beings are equal. If someone puts
another above this equal line, it is thus a form of shirk, because the absolute tawhid of Allah does not
allow such a position. In this we clearly see her coherent reading of the Quran (influence of Rahman)
and hermeneutic influence by interpretations about other issues. The tawhid of Allah is central in the
message of the Quran, and if this is so central, this has (according to Wadud) huge influence for all
interpretation of other issues in the Quran as well. This is the basis in the rest of her work. Wadud
focusses her attention in her book Quran and Woman to different matters and re-interprets these
matters based on a linguistic interpretation. in doing this, she specifies the general principles which
Rahman also made. In this work she elaborates on keywords from the Quran and transliterates the
original Arabic words and gives her own interpretation, based on the (various) meaning(s) and the
grammatical root (male or female) of the word201. For example, she singlet out aya 4:1 from the
Quran and transliterates it as follows; ,,Wa min ayatihi an khalaqa-kum min nafsin wahidatin wa
khalaqa min-ha zawjaha wa baththa minhuma rijalan kathiran wa nisa’an’’. After this, she gives the
translation and leaves the keywords in Arabic; ,,And min his Signs (is this) that He created you
(mankind) min one single Nafs, and created min (the Nafs) the Zawj thereby, and from these two He
spread (over the earth) men and women without number.” Then she starts to review and elaborate
on the untranslated words202 and if we read the same verse again with the inclusion of this (new)
information, the result is surprisingly women-friendly; And “from the same kind” his Signs (is this)
that He created you (mankind) “from the same kind” one single “Feminine Soul”, and created “from
the same kind” the “Masculine Spouse” thereby, and from these two He spread (over the earth) men
and women without number.” Using this linguistic method she deals with several apparently womenunfriendly Quranic texts and reinterprets them from a female perspective. In this way she shows that
Adam was not created before Eve and that Eve is not just an abstraction of Adam and thereby
inferior. Men and women are treated equally and men thus have no authority over women, certainly
not in spiritual matters. In her second book,
Inside the Gender Jihad, I found less of an academic contribution then in her first book. In this book
she mainly relates her own findings and activist acts. But a “must mention” about this book is her
“Tawhidic paradigm of horizontal reciprocity”. This has a close link with the idea of Asma Barlas of
the denial of God as a father figure (or a “he”) because of the risk of shirk or the association of
anything with God on the Divine level203. A nice quote by Wadud can be found in her theory on hijab
(covering of a woman), because this style of argumentation can be prolonged in the rest of her work:
“about hijab: the best dress is the dress of taqwa, the dress of consciousness… Allah’s decision is
based on the nafs (soul). All religions have symbols, but the symbols do only have meaning if the
people have imbedded this meaning and the symbols are not the real thing. The real thing can only be
199
This is exactly the problem nowadays in female Islamic authority. Conservatives easily neglect those women’s voices because they are
not “trained enough”. An interesting movement is that project WISE, (led by Tayyibah Taylor) now provides PHD seminars for female
muftiyyah’s, which combines “western academic training” and training in Islamic instituted abroad in order to achieve also ijaza (islamic
certificates) from those institutes, in order to make their authority sound within the Muslim community.
200
Juliane Hammer, Gender Justice in a Prayer, p. 38; we could see this also in my introduction
201
Amina Wadud, De Koran en de Vrouw, herlezing van een heilige tekst vanuit een vrouwelijk perspectief, Bulaaq, Amsterdam, 2004, p. 72
202
Amina Wadud, De Koran en de Vrouw, p. 80-91
203
Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam; Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of The Qur’an, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2010, p.
36-37
45
between the heart, the actions and obedience to Allah and Allah accepts only the full picture. There is
no problem with Allah’s vision; She can see… (smiling)204”.
The influence of the hermeneutical work of Wadud in particular is enormous. There are too many
examples possible, but a clear influence can be seen in the next one: “The obligatory nature of any
action including political ones, is based on the concept of vice-regency (khalifa) or human
representation of God on earth, and this is incumbent on both men and woman205”. In this example
we can clearly see a hermeneutic model on the interpretation of “khalifa”, which Wadud also did in
her book. If women and men are both vice-regencies on earth and thus both responsible, then in
leadership roles they are also both responsible.
3.2.3. Influence of Reformists
Rahman praised modern reformists such as Muhammad ‘Abduh and Ahmad Khan for recognizing the
need for reform and change, and also key-figures such as Hasan al-Banna and Abu A’la al-Mawdudi
for countering the excesses of Islamic modernism and defending Islam against secularism. But he also
criticized them for not having a specific method and for the ‘ad hoc’ nature of their solutions. In the
case of Hasan al-Banna and Mawdudi, he thought they only spoke about cliché talks instead of
serious intellectual endeavor206. The trend under the reformists was that they criticized tradition and
wanted to go back to the Quran. Particularly many of those who argued in favour of the female imam
in this thesis follow the line of reformist thinking in going back to the Quran directly. The early
reformists, such as ‘Abduh, influenced not only Rahman, but many key figures in the debate on
female imams. But for the outcome of this debate, we cannot say that for example all followers of
Hasan al-Banna are against female imams and that all the followers of Ahmad Khan are pro. We saw
for example the contribution of Shabir Ally who is a direct student of dr. Badawi207. The latter sais to
be mostly influenced and inspired by Hasan Al-Banna, saying that he preached Islam in a
comprehensive yet moderate way208. Shabir Ally is in principle pro the female imamate which he
authorized by his view on the sources. Shabir Ally has through his master Badawi a line with Hasan alBanna. But if we look at al-Qaradawi who was against the female-led prayer over men, he also said
being influenced by Hasan al-Banna; “I joined the Muslim Brotherhood Group and worked with Imam
al-Banna. I was influenced by al-Banna’s moderate thoughts and principles …. Later the Muslim
brothers asked me to be a chairman, but I preferred to be a spiritual guide for the entire nation.”209
Both are thus inspired by the moderate thoughts of Hasan al-Banna, but the outcomes of their view
on the Islamic sources are different. It is remarkable that in the debate on female imams many
scholars living in north America, but also quite a few scholars affiliated with the European Council for
Fatwa and Research contributed. Several of the members of this council (headed by al-Qaradawi) say
to be influenced by reformists or have clear lines (as students of students) with the Islamic reformist
thinkers. Another interesting point is that a few of the contras in this debate themselves say they are
influenced by reformist thinkers, but they all talk about ijma and previous scholars (instead of going
back to the Quran directly). The pros on the other hand do not mention the reformists but they put
the reformist way of thinking more into action.
3.3. Critical Reflection on Arguments in the Modern Discussion
In this part I will enlighten typical arguments that were used frequently in the debate on women as
imams. In this chapter we can see that many arguments are not only related to the female-led
prayers, but can be put in the broader debate on female religious authority in Islam. Where possible,
I will elaborate on the broader spectrum.
204
Quote of Amina Wadud in: The Noble Struggle of Amina Wadud, dir. Elli Safari, 2007, Women Make Movies
Haifaa Jawad quotes Ezzat 1995 here, in: Islamic Feminism; Leadership Roles and Public Representation, p. 14
206
Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity, Chicago, the University of Chicago Press ,1982, p. 137
207
a great scholar with Egyptian roots who now lives in Canada, he fulfilled many positions such as being a scholar at the European Council
for Fatwa and Research (ECFR).
208
http://www.emel.com/article?id=5&a_id=1516 viewed at 04-08-2012
209
Ikhwanweb.com retrieved 11 April 2010. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=3537 viewed at 05-08-2012
205
46
3.3.1. Women’s Bodies
It is very interesting to notice that the main argument against women’s participation in general
leadership roles, and in particular in the debate on imama, the body of a woman is used as a tool to
marginalize the physical presence of women. All the arguments contra made ikhtilat and the borders
of al-haya the cause for fitna, and thus not desirable, and therefore woman should not act in certain
positions, especially not a physical position as imama in front of a group of men. This becomes also
clear in the following quote of Haifaa Jawad who wrote about Islamic Feminism; “Hence, Muslim
women remain marginalized and underutilized in most arenas, notably in terms of their economic,
intellectual and leadership potential.. and some women who are active ..suffer from ..gender based
occupational segregation. Out of the context of both the Quran and the Prophetic example there is an
established view on women’s sexuality, which depicts as a source of temptation, corruption and
fitna210”. Some even went further by saying that even a woman’s voice is part of the ‘awra (shame /
that what has to be hidden), only Shabir Ally mentioned this was not the case. But the view to put
the women’s voice as ‘awra fits very well in the view that women’s participation is oppressed
founded on the “appealing female body”. The body can be covered; but to declare a woman’s voice
to be ‘awra and thereby covering it, that means she has no say at all.
Women are also seen as irrational and emotional and intellectually inferior to men. In many western
countries, also in the Netherlands, men are overrepresented in Muslim organizations and certainly in
senior functions211. It is remarkable that in higher education as well as at universities, at least in the
Netherlands, Muslim women are doing a better job than their Muslim brothers and in “secular” jobs,
Muslim women in general in the Netherlands are doing better than their brothers too. In the secular
segment there are not the boundaries between sexes which Muslims can experience within an
Muslim community environment. When it comes to religious authority, Muslim women are still
behind because in this sphere, these boundaries still exist. It is interesting that in the western context
a woman's body is provocative in religious matters, but in secular matters this would not be the case.
Or that in secular issues her intellect would be all fine, but in religious matters it would be inferior to
men. Most Muslims would indeed agree that this is not the case and women being intellectually
inferior is an obsolete idea, but in an Arab context this is not an uncommon way of thinking.
Reducing women and their space becomes more extreme when women are claiming their rights. We
saw this after the Wadud prayer when Saudi Arabia intended to forbid women to pray together with
the men in the Masjid al Haram. Women’s bodies remain central in the discussion about women’s
active participation in (Muslim) society. Progressives are more and more saying that this, if the
conservatives keep holding this opinion, would not mean that the woman is inferior, but that the
man is so weak that he cannot control his nafs (soul). For example Amina Wadud, but also some
women in the film of Me and the Mosque and men are joining this thinking too, such as Khaled Abou
El Fadl. The latter also explicitly says that a patriarchal way of thinking is not only bad for women, but
has a very low (self) esteem of men212.
3.3.2. Rethink Ijma
Ijma, or consensus, is deployed by conservatives to argue that there is a consensus among scholars
on the impropriety of women to hold public office and in particular the imama. “The feminist
rebuttal denies such a consensus and cites authoritative sources such as Abu Hanifa and al-Tabari
who, to varying degrees, asserted that Islam (for example) clearly allows women to serve as
judges213”. We also saw this kind of argumentation in the issue of imama. Abu Thawr and al-Tabari
permitted the female imama in absolute terms, according to Ibn Rushd. Al-Muzani and Ibn al-‘Arabi
could be added to this list to (and those are only the famous names who are remembered
nowadays). So what then is consensus? Or better; when is there really consensus? The method of
210
Haifaa Jawad, Islamic Feminism; Leadership Roles and Public Representation, p. 13 and 16
See also Haifaa Jawad, Islamic Feminism; Leadership Roles and Public Representation, p. 17
212
See his article: Abou El Fadl, Khaled, Islamic Authority, uit: New Directions in Islamic Thought; exploring reform and Muslim tradition,
Tauris, London/New York, 2009, p. 129-144
213
Haifaa Jawad, Islamic Feminism; Leadership Roles and Public Representation, p. 15-16
211
47
ijma should be re-investigated and re-determined within the fiqh framework. This asks for further
research to critically investigate the method of ijma, although this issue is actually an old one and
classical scholars have already admitted that absolute consensus cannot exist, or maybe only within a
madhhab. Since the Prophet died, no real or absolute consensus has existed. There are even some
disputes among the classical Sunni scholars regarding ijma and qiyaas; the Zahirites for example
have rejected all types of qiyaas, and al-Zahiri, Abu Hanifa and Ibn Hanbal only accepted the ijma of
the Sahaba. Research has already been done, but a profound discussion between the (selfproclaimed) scholars of Islam on the ijma is needed, because many famous scholars keep referring to
ijma as a source for law, while this could be debated at least.
3.3.3. Bid’a or Sunna?
We have seen that some have called the practice of imama a bid’a, others called it an Islamic practice
that can be found in the Islamic sources, especially the ahadith. “Scholars say that there are five
classes of innovation: obligatory, laudable, prohibited, reprehensible and permitted. Among the
obligatory are: organizing the proofs of the theologians against the heretics and innovators and
things like that. Among the laudable are writing of books of (religious) knowledge, building
madrassa’s (religious schools) and ribat (religious retreats) and other things”214. It is remarkable that
the women’s mosques in china are widely accepted as a laudable bid’a, but that female absolute
imamas are seen as a bad bid’a. Who decides then in modern times what is laudable and what is
bad? We have three types in this discussion when it comes to bid’a. All opinions against mention that
it is a bid’a and that bid’a (in general) is not allowed. We have on the side of pros two kinds, first
there are those who agree that it is a bid’a but that female imamate over men is a “laudable bid’a”,
(Gamal al-Banna, Abou El Fadl) and some who say that it is not a bid’a at all (Silvers and Elewa, Ibn al‘Arabi) founded on the umm Waraqah hadith or on the notion of female prophecy in the Quran.
Elewa and Silvers say that unrestricted female prayer leadership is legal by default rather than an
innovation as many critics have charged215. They follow Ibn al-‘Arabi by calling it “Legal by default”.
Qaradawi said that the “opinion (that a woman can lead the Friday Prayer) is an innovation and a
heresy on any account, nullified by all (again all, who are all?) scholars and anyone who calls for it or
helps implement it is a heretic. It’s an innovation, something unknown in the history of Islam”. AbdulMoti Bayoumi, of the Islamic Research Center at Al-Azhar, said Wadud had carried out “a bad and
deviant innovation” that contradicted the Prophet Mohammed's sayings and deeds. The pros simply
say that it is not a bid’a (quoting the umm Waraqah hadith and Ibn ‘Arabi) or that it is a laudable
bid’a, the contras say it is bid’a. An interesting question for the contras can be: how “new” must
something be for something to become a bid’a? The approval and non-approval of early scholars
makes clear that female-led prayers were already a point of discussion in the early period, and that
makes the debate on women-led prayers nowadays strictly speaking “not new”. Especially Gamal alBanna, who took the effort to write a complete book on it, could have found more material for his
arguments if he had gone deeper into this.
3.3.4. Reclaiming Authority
By using the classical sources, modern debaters are reclaiming authority. Some are referring to great
classical scholars too in order to reclaim authority, but the general trend is that the Quran and
ahadith are used, along with ijtihad and hermeneutics. Especially the pros in the debate in female
imams construct their thinking from the idea that no one but God is authoritative216 and therefore
Muslims have to go back directly to the revealed sources and not stop at interpretations by previous
scholars, as the conservatives do. By doing this they follow clearly a reformist way of thinking.
Hammer says that Muslim women scholars are often themselves activists and thus translate their
214
Sahih Muslim sharh al-Nawawi (Beirut: al-Dar al-Thaqafah al-`Arabiyyah, 1929), v. 6, 154-55. Quoted in Ingrid Mattson “Can a woman be
Imam”; Debating Form and Function in Muslim Women’s Leadership, via: http://www.onbeing.org/program/new-voice-islam/feature/canwoman-be-imam-debating-form-and-function-muslim-womens
215
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 144
216
See Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s name, Islamic Law, Authority and Women, Oneworld publications, Oxford, 2003, but many
others are reclaiming this too as Reda in the article of Elewa and Silvers.
48
own exegesis into activist projects and agendas. Hammer did not go deeper into the question why
they do this. In modern times, as we saw in the introduction, the power relationship, especially in
authoritative positions, has changed. “Interpretative authority no longer rests in the hands of
religious scholars alone. More people are now familiar with and have knowledge of Islamic
arguments and practices217”. This movement can be seen clearly when it comes to the academics and
activists in the US. We can notice their influence mostly in more highly educated environments in the
rest of the world.
It is interesting that authority is claimed mainly at Islamic sources as the Quran, hadith, sunna and
historical Islamic (legal) practice. In this perspective, which is very much based on usul ul-fiqh
arguments, we see that there is a trend to redefine Islamic law, because Muslim jurists claim, and
Muslims believe, that justice and equality lie at the basis of the law218. More and more Muslim
women and Muslim academics hold the opinion that as long as patriarchy is upheld in the name of
Islam, there can be no justice. Ziba Mir-Hosseini holds the opinion that reinterpretations have to be
made and a critical attitude has to come towards the authoritarians nowadays. She promotes
distinguishing clearly between the Shari’a and usul ul-fiqh, for while the first is unchangeable and a
transcendental ideal, the latter is the human effort to interpret and is therefore changeable. She
aims towards a new religious thinking, which is aware of the principle that human understanding of
Islam is flexible. She finds Islamic feminism, based on Islamic language and sources, positive, and
necessary to claim legitimacy. Muslims should rewrite their authoritative texts and ban androcentric
and male dominated interpretations to ban patriarchy219. In order to do this, the focus has to be on
Islamic law, in order to claim legitimacy, but also because “Islamic jurisprudence became the prisoner
of its own legal theories, which in time has come to bypass the Quranic call for justice and reform.220”
The focus on law is also seen in the work of Mohammed Fadel. Jurisprudence allows according to his
research, “the possibility of a gender-neutral interpretation of female participation in the law”. This is
because jurisprudence has a broader interpretative perspective, according to Mohammad Fadel,
while exegesis was often dominated by verse-by-verse interpretations, which allowed the
misogynistic assumptions of the reader to dominate the text221. While jurisprudence was thus
generally used against women’s authority, more research on this topic is necessary, in order to show
that Islamic jurisprudence can be used on the contrary: for more female religious authority, and
legitimize it in an Islamic framework.222 This focus can also be seen in the work of Kecia Ali223, and
others224 and some225 even claim that this “gaining of women’s rights” might be more a kind of
reconstruction instead of reform, showing the historical legal arguments in favour of women’s
authority. They are doing this by rereading the sources with the hermeneutical method. By
reclaiming it instead of creating it, it will not be a bid’a, but a fully, authoritative Islamic principle.
There is nowadays an enormous emergence of female religious scholars who study the sources,
search for historical evidence of historical women interpreting texts. Even giving fatawa is a manner
217
Nathal M. Dessing, Thinking for oneself? Forms and elements of religious authority in Dutch Muslim women’s groups, in: Women,
Leadership and Mosques; Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill, 2011, p. 227; Nathal M. Dessing says in the article just cited that
this has shifted, among others, to national legislatures and specialized communities. Dessing argued that institution as Islamic relief are
authoritative. I must say I disagree with Dessing on this point. The institutions that are meant here are in my view not national but more at
a European or worldwide level. There are indeed new kinds of authority institutions, but are more circuled around specific scholars as
Qaradawi, fatwa councils (even online) or traditional systems within cultural background circle’s.
218
See Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality: Between Islamic Law and Feminism, Critical Inquiry 32, summer 2006,
University of Chicago, p. 629
219
See: Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality, p. 642
220
Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality, p. 643
221
Mohammed Fadel, Two Women, One Man: Knowledge, Power, and Gender in Medieval Sunni Legal Thought, International Journal of
Middle East Studies (1997) 29, p. 186
222
He argues in his article that women can be judges, mufti’s and witnesses, and shows different cases of medieval sunni court situations
and their foundations and arguments.
223
Kecia Ali, Progressive Muslims and Islamic Jurisprudence, the necessity for critical engagement with marriage and divorce law, in:
Progressive Muslims, Gender and Pluralism, 2003, p. 163-183
224
For example: Mona Zulficar, Gender Equality: rereading the Legal Sources, Journal of the Dutch-Flemish Levinas Society, XVI December
2011, p. 14-20
225
Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh, Women’s Rights in the Muslim World: reform or reconstruction?, Third World Quarterly,
2006 vol. 27, no. 8, p. 1481-1494
49
to legitimate female interpretative authority226. Dr. Akram Nadwi says that the image of women
being only mothers and housewives is in fact a modern phenomenon, given examples of socially
(outside the house) active women in the early times of Islam. Biographical sources227, theological
context of the reports228, Quranic hermeneutics and legal “proof” all create a basis for legitimizing
female religious authority and reclaiming it instead of creating it.
3.3.5. Redefining Ulama and Patriarchal Interpretations?
A way for contemporary Muslim scholars to give their opinion and seek their authority is by writing
fatawa and legal statements. But there exists a complexity when it comes to fatawa and how they
functioned in Islamic religious thought; it is not clear to whom and when these rules apply. The basic
principle is that fatawa are special statements for individual cases in such and so specified matters
(as was the case with the fatwa of Abou el Fadl). It was originally also a basic rule that only a mufti
could proclaim a fatwa. Now many fatawa are seen as a source of law for new laws, whereas in early
practice is was only a specification of the existing law. Opening this structure creates room for new
scholars, who are not muftis per se. It is remarkable that Khaled Abou el Fadl himself gave a fatwa.
He is an academic Islamic scholar, not a traditional Islamic scholar in the classical sense of the term.
But this can be easily said about all people trained in the West. From this we can notice that a new
structure of ‘alim is on the rise, changing from scholars who are only trained in a classical framework
into scholars who are trained in Islamic studies as well. But their authoritativeness is not always
accepted in (eastern) Muslim communities. There has to be more debate within the Ummah about
the question when someone is an Islamic scholar. Many hold patriarchal interpretations responsible
for the lack of female religious authority, the lack of female scholars in general, and the issue of
imama specifically. Silvers and Elewa say that they hope to “expose the patriarchal assumptions at
work in legal system that so quickly moves to exclude women from access to religious or ritual
authority.229” We see that women and (western) modern scholars are more and more advocating
individual interpretative authority. This fits in the idea of Taji-Farouki and Nafi who say that with
secular universities, and modern education in general, new types of professionals and intellectuals
were created. But this is still a minority group. For example, we see in the Netherlands that “rather
than emphasizing the importance of ijtihad, the women, except the members of al Nisa, continue to
ascribe this right to a small group of religious experts230” (mostly men). Many women would say that
their knowledge of Islam is too limited, and that one must consult reliable sources for authoritative
viewpoints. But there is, certainly in the academic debate, a near consensus about the wide-ranging
influence of patriarchy in interpretations of Islam throughout history and also a consensus that this
must be changed in order to interpret Islam nowadays in an appropriate way. Ceylan Weber, former
chairwoman of Al Nisa argued that “the call for real equality of women will lead to a reopening of the
gate of ijtihad, and therefore to fundamental changes in the practice of faith231”. The Majority of
female Muslim leaders exercise authority on the basis of their traditional training, knowledge and
expertise. They are respected in the community at large, but their authority is often reduced to
women only and often depends on male-interpreters232”. The question of authority is thus central in
the wider debate on women in Islam.
Besides the role of the mosque as an authoritative institute, “the search for authentic interpretations
of the Quran and hadith .. resulted in madrasahs emerging (during the tenth century) as the other
226
Very interesting is the work of dr. Akram Nadwi, The Lost Female Scholars of Islam. He wanted to investigate history and to write a book
about women who were scholars of Islam, his research resulted in a 40-volume collection!
227
An interesting recourse and overview of women who related report of the Prophet is: Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani and Laleh
Bakhtiar, Encyclopedia of Muhammad’s Women Companions and the Traditions They Related, Chicago, ABC International Group, 1998
228
See also Laury Silvers, “God Loves Me”: the Theological Content and Context of Early Pious and Sufi Women’s Sayings on Love, Journal
for Islamic Studies, vol. 30, 2010 p. 33-59
229
Ahmed Elewa & Laury Silvers, “I am One of the People”, p. 169
230
Nathal M. Dessing, Thinking for oneself? Forms and elements of religious authority in Dutch Muslim women’s groups, in: Women,
Leadership and Mosques; Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill, 2011, p. 217
231
Nathal M. Dessing, Thinking for oneself?, p. 221
232
Ibid., p. 232
50
authority233”, because this was where the traditional ‘ulama were trained. With the emergence of
Muslims in the West, enjoying (secular) Islamic training at Western Universities, we can notice that a
new type of Islamic religious authority is on the rise. An excellent example of this is Amira Sonbol,
who was born and raised in Egypt but studied in the USA and gained a doctorate in seventeenth to
nineteenth century Shari’a law at Georgetown university. Her academic work on Islamic law made
her “scholarly enough” to improve laws in Egypt and Jordan for women. She holds the opinion that
in pre-modern Muslim societies, women were freer and less oppressed, because Islamic
jurisprudence was not static or unchanging. She pleads, just like Wadud, for the absolute authority of
the Quran, to de-emphasize ahadith and isra’iliyyat that either contradict or have no basis in the
Quran234. Many efforts are made to reclaim female religious authority.
4. Conclusion
In this research I examined how the position of a female imam was viewed and argued in the
contemporary Islamic debate. The central question was “what kind of reasoning is used to argue the
position of imama and what do the arguments tell us about discourse notions of religious authority
and gender roles in modern Islam?
I started my research by giving the historical context of the debate of female imams, which started in
de modern time in 2005, and concluded that this debate actually starts with the question of “space
of women” in the mosques in general. Although the number of absolute imamas is still very marginal,
the debate which arose after 2005 raised a new awareness of the classical Islamic roots of the issue,
as we could see for example in the Bidaya of Ibn Rushd. I have shown that there were many reactions
on the female-led prayer and that the debate about this issue still continues. I also showed that
particularly women in the US and Canada participated in this debate and in activist performances. In
the rest of the world there are no records of absolute imamas, but there is a rise of female religious
authority in women-circles. Due to this debate, there is a growing awareness of the approval of
women-led prayers by historical scholars such as Ibn al-‘Arabi, al-Muzani, al-Tabari and Abu Thawr
and also by present-day scholars such as Abou el Fadl, Silvers, Wadud and Shabir Ally. But until this
day most Muslims think, as we saw for example with regard to the Netherlands, that the issue of
imama is not an issue with priority in the debate about women’s authority in Islam. Although the
number of female imams is still quite small, I think we can speak about a movement which is slowly
growing and getting more and more support and followers. A man like Shabir Ally, who has a
traditional Islamic education, approves the absolute imamate. I have shown that we are dealing with
open and tolerant ideas in the movement of female imams, therefore we cannot speak about a
rigidly organized movement. Instead of this, there are long distance relations between people who
share the same point of view. In this sense we can speak of a network, more or less institutionalized.
The friendship between the imamas Wadud and Silvers and the relationships between several
activists involved in the Wadud prayer in 2005 show more informal types of networking. The Woman
Imam’s Network and Meetup Groups also show that there is a certain organization in regulating and
providing the expansion of female imams. At this moment the ideas of the movement in general are
only practiced in Toronto’s el Tawhid Juma Circle235. In addition, a worldwide network of supporters
has come into being. On the one hand, if the number of supporters keeps growing, more prayer
circles headed by female imams are certainly not unthinkable. On the other hand, the group of
Muslims who is against women-led prayers and female absolute imams remains large. This group is
233
Masooda Bano, Conclusion: female leadership in mosques: an evolving narrative, in: Women, Leadership and Mosques; Changes in
Contemporary Islamic Authority, Brill, 2011, p. 507
234
See: Hibba Abugibeiri, The Renewed Woman Of American Islam: Shifting Lenses Toward ‘Gender Jihad?, The Muslim World, Volume 91,
2001, p. 6-9
235
http://salaamcanada.org/el-tawhid-juma-circle-mosques/ visited at 21-08-2012
51
very active in their polemic against female imams and the latter are not unfamiliar with receiving
serious threats. Quite often, for this reason female-led prayer circles remain low profile. For the
researcher, this makes the study of these groups more difficult.
I determined the arguments of the contributions pro and contra in this debate and analyzed them,
using the categories of usul ul-fiqh and modern religious statements. It turns out that most
contributors refer a lot to fiqh sources to authorize their way of thinking. A central fiqh source of
importance was the Umm Waraqah hadith. The discussion was mostly situated around the
interpretation of the word dar. It certainly opened the debate which almost forced the contemporary
scholars to elaborate on the views of the classical ulama who allowed female imamas. This raised
awareness of the existence of the opinions pro, but maybe more importantly, out of this discussion it
became clear that many scholars do allow women to act as imama for her household, including her
mahrams, and sometimes even tarawih prayers in absolute terms. It was remarkable that the
apparently strictest school of law, the Hanbali madhhab, turned out to allow for the widest range of
female ritual leadership. The present research made clear that there is, even among conservative
scholars, more ritual leadership possible then many Muslims (and non-Muslims) would expect and
were aware of.
Central notions in this debate were the interpretation of the Umm Waraqah hadith, women’s bodies
and the danger of the loss of al-haya, the question of absolute imamas being a bid’a (bad or
laudable) or sunna, and the quest whether ijma exists or not. All participants are trying to interpret
the sources by using ijtihad. The contras in this debate often use the more traditional fiqh concepts
of ijma and sunna and the wider idea al-haya which could lead to the distraction of men. The pros
use no ijma of the past, but do quote some classical individual scholars to authorize their statement
and to nullify the ijma argument of the contras. Furthermore they cite the Quran and ahadith more
directly to authorize their views and in their way of arguing I noticed a clear influence of a reformist
way of thinking. This was remarkable because many of the pros do not refer to reformists
themselves, while over all the contras see themselves more influenced by reformist thinkers. The
pros are often educated in the West (most often in the USA) and are clearly influenced by western
hermeneutical thinking. Fazlur Rahman can be called the founder of this way of thinking. Finally I
made clear that the discussion about female imams fits in the (hermeneutical) framework of the lack
of female authority in general and that the classical tradition is used to authorize opinions both pro
and contra. The extensive female-tafsirs of the Quran, for example written by Asma Barlas and Amina
Wadud, lies at the basis for the authorization of this kind of thinking. That is why hermeneutics in the
debate about imama and ritual authority is closely related to the debate about female religious
authority in Islam. As Amina Wadud argued: if the basic rule is that men and women are equal, they
are equal in all matters, including the ritual matter of being an imam.
Although most Muslims do not see female-led prayers as priority when it comes to women’s rights or
female authority in Islam, it turns out that many arguments against women-led prayers lie also at the
heart of arguments against women’s participation in society in general. By struggling for (spi)ritual
leadership for women, Muslims can contribute in the debate of religious leadership for women in
general. The debate is most profoundly done in academic spheres and most academic contributors
are activists themselves. They are Islamic scholars working in western academic institutions instead
of traditional Islamic training systems. Judging from the large number of supporters and followers of
academics such as Wadud and Abou el Fadl, a new kind of religious authority is on the rise. It must be
said that this concentrates mostly in the US and Canada. Their influence nevertheless stretches to
other parts of the world too (especially among the higher educated in Western Europe). Although the
debate continues and no “new ijma” is realized, new kinds of authority are already put into action.
Again, Toronto’s el Tawhid Juma Circle is a pioneer in this as well: everyone is welcome to take a turn
giving the call to prayer, giving the sermon, and leading the ritual Friday prayer. The group calls this
‘shared authority’, because only God is the absolute authoritative. Here they clearly follow the
thought of Abou el Fadl and the group cites Wadud’s notion of horizontal reciprocity also. The Juma
52
Circle adds that “we all have authority and we all have something to teach and something to
learn”236.
The contras seem to want to let this discussion pass by as soon as possible, the pros would love to
gain more acceptance for their thought, but remain low profile in order to practice in peace what
they think is right. In this way there is no quest for more structural debate, because the gap between
both camps seems too large. This however, did not change the opinions of the pros that the debate
in itself is important and has to continue. Every existing idea in favour of female religious authority is
necessary in order to succeed in the struggle for gender-just interpretations in Islam. The reexamination of scholars and their authority in Islam remains a struggle; who decides in the end?
Muslims will probably say that only Allah knows the answer to that. The rest remains in debate, at
least in the matter of imamas.
“while the paths are many, the way of Truth is single. The seekers of the Way of Truth are individuals. So
237
although the Way of Truth is one, the aspects it presents vary with the varying conditions of its seekers.”
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Appendix 1 ; Fatwa by dr. Abou el Fadl: On Women Leading Prayer
Salaam Aleikum, Dear Brother Khaled,
We here at [Name Withheld for Privacy] have a small problem which I hope you can advise us on.
Having met you when you did a NPR program at the MIT auditorium, and being a frequent distributor
of the book, "The Place of Tolerance in Islam," to friends, I believe you might be able to offer some
guidance in the following matter: For the past two years the young students here, male and female,
have been guided in prayer by a young man, Egyptian, raised in Saudi Arabia, who led Jummah
prayers and offered the Khutba. He is graduating this spring. This leaves three girls (Afghan, Lebanese
and Pakistani) as the students most informed about Islam and able to lead prayer. There are two
young boys, just past puberty. All together will be eight Muslims. I am their advisor. I believe that the
girls should be able to lead prayer and are competent to do so. I believe that given the small size of
the group the imam can be in the center with girls on one side and boys on the other with no one
behind. Is this acceptable? The girls are very willing. The boys are very hesitant, including this year's
Imam, who believes I am offering something that is very Haram. Could you please help use through
this conundrum? If the girls do not lead we might not have a Jummah Prayer. For years I have been
trying to train the students to lead their own prayers so that when they go off to college they will be
leaders in their own right. I don't want them to be dependent on me to lead prayers and solve
problems - except this one. Wasalaams, [Name withheld for privacy]
***********************************************
By the name of God the most Merciful and Compassionate
Al-salamu 'alaykum,
Thank you for contacting me, and I pray that you are in the best of health and spirit.
As you know, you raise a very controversial issue. First, I will say something about the purpose of an
imam in prayer, and second, I will comment on the gender issue.
In general, there has been two main orientations regarding the qualifications of an imam at prayer-especially Friday services--the first more liberal than the second. The first orientation practically
demands nothing of an imam other than the ability to pray. As long as a man could perform the
requisite set of acts and oral recitations required in prayer, the first orientation argued, he was
deemed qualified to lead prayer.
The second and more demanding orientation set out what can be called a priority or preference
system for an imam. This orientation saw the imam as a sort of teacher to the community--someone
who could perform an educational or instructional role during the Friday services. Therefore, the
second orientation gave preference to the person who memorized more of the Qur'an compared to
others in the community, so that he could recite various portions and expose the community to a
wider selection of the Qur'an. The second orientation gave preference to the person who could
pronounce and vocalize the words of the Qur'an the best. Importantly, it also gave preference to the
person who was the most learned in religion and also the most learned about the affairs of the
community. During the khutba this person would be able to educate the community about the
meaning of the Qur'an and Sunna and apply the teachings of Islam to the specific issues that are
relevant to the community of worshippers. The first orientation practically expected nothing of the
khutba--it was deemed sufficient for the imam to remind people of a few religious obligations and
exhortations and then move on. The second orientation, relying on the precedent set by the Prophet
and al-Khulafa' al-Rashidun, expected the khutba to be an opportunity for inspiring a discourse in the
community about the most pressing or pertinent issues confronting the imam's own community.
Therefore, it is not enough that the imam be able to recite a few suras from the Qur'an. Rather, the
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imam should be able to provoke the love of learning in the community, and should set an example as
to how the teachings of Islam should and can inform and affect real-life challenges. The way these
scholars used to put it is that the imam should play a leading role in creating a community bonded by
enjoining the good and forbidding the evil (i.e. bonded by an ethical and moral discourse).
Between the two orientations, I believe, and God knows best, that the second is by far the more
correct and the most true to the spirit of jumu'a.
Now, as to the gender issue. There is no question that the vast majority of jurists excluded women
from ever leading men in prayer. Many jurists, however, permitted women to lead women in prayer,
if no male is available to lead the prayer. Some jurists said women may lead women even if a male is
available to lead as long as women lead only women.
The Qur'an itself does not mandate that only men be allowed to lead prayer. The Sunna is indecisive
on the issue. There is evidence that the Prophet on more than one occasion allowed a woman to lead
her household in prayer--although the household included men--when the woman was clearly the
most learned in the faith.
Up to the fourth Islamic century, there were at least two schools of thought that allowed women to
lead men in prayer, if the woman in question was the most learned. In such a case, the men stood to
the side so that they were not praying behind the woman imam. However, these schools (al-Thawri
and Ibn Jarir) became extinct. So it is fair to say that since the fourth century all schools of thought
did not allow women to lead men in prayer.
In my view, I look at the evidence and ask the following question: if a female could better teach and
instruct the community about the Islamic faith should she be precluded from doing so because she is
a female? Now, there is no dispute that a female could hold a class (halaqa) and instruct women and
men about Islam. I think everyone agrees on that point. But the question is: Is there a specific
exclusion against women when it comes to prayer? It seems to me that if there is such an exclusion
the evidence in favor of this exclusion ought to be strong, if not unequivocally so. But the legal
evidence in favor of such an exclusion is not very strong--it is more an issue of customary practice
and male-consensus than direct textual evidence. Consequently, in my opinion, priority ought to be
given to what is in the best interest of the community, and knowledge is the ultimate good. It seems
to me that if a female possesses greater knowledge than a male--if a female is more capable of
setting a good example in terms of how she recites the Qur'an and also in terms of teaching the
community more about the Islamic faith, a female ought not be precluded from leading jumu'a
simply on the grounds of being female.
I do agree with your position that the community of students should learn to depend on themselves.
I also agree that if a female leads prayer, the males should not stand directly behind her--she could
stand ahead of the lines with the men standing to her side.
This is a controversial issue, and so I do not offer this advice lightly. Ultimately, God knows best, and I
might be wrong. So please read what I have written, reflect on the matter, pray on it, and then do
what your conscience selflessly dictates. It is the conscience that is the ultimate protector from
liability before God. I pray that God guides us both to what pleases Him, and leads us to His straight
and just path.
I pray this has been of some assistance to you, and please remember me in your prayers.
Al-salamu 'alaykum. Sincerely,
Shaykh Abou El Fadl
http://www.scholarofthehouse.org/onwolepr.html 2011
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