Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qur'anic Commentaries

Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands brings into conversation the distinct fields of tafsÄ r (Qur'anic exegesis) studies and women's studies by exploring significant shifts in modern Qur'anic commentaries on the subject of women. Hadia Mubarak places three of the most influential, Sunni Qur'anic commentaries in the twentieth century- TafsÄ r al-ManÄ r, FÄ ZilÄ l al-Qur'an, and al-TahrÄ r wa'l-TanwÄ r - against the backdrop of broader historical, intellectual, and political developments in modern North Africa. Mubarak illustrates the ways in which colonialism, nationalism, and modernization set into motion new ways of engaging with the subject of women in the Qur'an. Focusing her analysis on Qur'anic commentaries as a scholarly genre, Mubarak offers a critical and comparative analysis of these three modern commentaries with seven medieval commentaries, spanning from the ninth to fourteenth centuries, on verses dealing with neglectful husbands (4:128), rebellious wives (4:34), polygyny (4:3), and divorce (2:228). In contrast to assessments of the exegetical tradition as monolithically patriarchal, this book captures a medieval and modern tafsÄ r tradition with pluralistic, complex, and evolving interpretations of women and gender in the Qur'an. Rather than pit a seemingly egalitarian Qur'an against an allegedly patriarchal exegetical tradition, Mubarak affirms the need for a critical engagement with tafsÄ r studies among scholars concerned with women and gender in Islam. Mubarak argues that the capacity to bring new meanings to bear on the Qur'an is not only an intellectually viable one but inherent to the exegetical tradition.

Author: Hadia Mubarak
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/06/2022
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.50w x 1.30d
ISBN13: 9780197553305
ISBN10: 0197553303
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Islam | History
- Social Science | Gender Studies

About the Author

Hadia Mubarak is Assistant Professor of Religion at Queens University of Charlotte. Mubarak's publications include, "Violent, Oppressed and Un-American: Muslim Women in the American Imagination" in The Personal is Political, ed. Christine Davis and Jon Crane, "Gender and Qur'anic Exegesis" in The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender, ed. Justine Howe, and "Women's Contemporary Readings of the Qur'an" in The Routledge Companion to the Quran.