Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran

by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Overview

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the re-introduction of Sharica law relating to gender and the family, women's rights in Iran suffered a major setback. However, as the implementers of the law have faced the social realities of women's lives and aspirations, positive changes have gradually come about. Here Ziba Mir-Hosseini takes us to the heart of the growing debates concerning the ways in which justice for women should be achieved. Through a series of lively interviews with clerics in the Iranian religious center of Qom, she seeks to understand the varying notions of gender that inform Islamic jurisprudence and to explore how clerics today perpetuate and modify these notions.

Mir-Hosseini finds three main approaches to the issue: insistence on "traditional" patriarchal interpretations based on "complementarity" but "inequality" between women and men; attempts to introduce "balance" into traditional interpretations; or a radical rethinking of the jurisprudential constructions of gender. She introduces the debates among the commentators by examining key passages in both written and oral texts and by narrating her meetings and discussions with the authors. Unique in its approach and its subject matter, the book relates Mir-Hosseini's engagement, as a Muslim woman and a social anthropologist educated and working in the West, with Shii'i Muslim thinkers of various backgrounds and views. In the literature on women in Islam, there is no account of such a face-to-face encounter, either between religion and gender politics or between the two genders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691010045
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/05/1999
Series:	Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics , #7
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a social anthropologist, works as a freelance researcher and consultant. She is the author of Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco and the co-director of a documentary, Divorce Iranian Style, filmed in Tehran.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	ix
	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xxi
	Note on Language	xxiii
	Introduction	3
	Gender in Islam: The Need for Clarity	3
	Perspectives on Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran	7
	Narrative and Debate in Ethnographic Writing	10
	Religious Authority and Knowledge in Post-Revolutionary Iran	11
	Ethnography of Gender Debates in Qom: The Organization of the Book	17
Part 1	The Traditionalists: Gender Inequality	21
	Introduction to Part One	23
1	Women Ignored: Grand Ayatollah Madani	26
	"The Way of Rulings on Marriage and Divorce"	30
	"Newly Created Problems"	31
	Ayatollah Madani in 1997	47
2	Women Politicized: Ayatollah Azari-Qomi	49
	"Women's Image in the Islamic Order"	51
	"The Personality of Woman in Comparison to Man"	58
	"Duties of Wives and Husbands toward Each Other"	63
	The "Culture of Hejab"	65
	"Response to Your Questions"	71
	Ayatollah Azari-Qomi in 1997	78
Part 2	The Neo-Traditionalists: Gender Balance	81
	Introduction to Part Two	83
3	Women Represented: Discussions with Payam-e Zan	86
	The Discussion Begins	88
	A Visit to the Shrine in Qom	110
4	Equality or Balance: Redefining Gender Notions in the Shari'a	112
	The Second Session with Payam-e Zan	115
5	Women Reconsidered: Ayatollah Yusef Sane'i	144
	Discussion with Ayatollah Sane'i	147
	After the Meeting	168
6	Agreeing to Differ: Final Meeting with Payam-e Zan	170
	The Final Session	172
	A Second Visit to the Shrine	207
	Payam-e Zan in 1997	208
Part 3	The Modernists: Toward Gender Equality	211
	Introduction to Part Three	213
7	Challenges and Complicities: Abdolkarim Sorush and Gender	217
	Sorush's Lectures on Women	222
	Sorush in London	237
8	Gender Equality and Islamic Jurisprudence: The Work of Hojjat ol-Eslam Sa'idzadeh	247
	Sa'idzadeh in 1997	268
	Conclusion	273
	Glossary	281
	Bibliographic Essay	283
	Bibliography	287
	Index	303

Editorial Reviews

Anthropologist Mir-Hosseini presents her transcribed discussions with Iranian religious figures during research trips back to her native land. All but one (Abdu Karim Soroush) are clerics, and three are ayatollahs. Together, they represent three tendencies: the traditionalists who accept gender inequality, the "neo-traditionalists' who seek "gender balance" while staying within the traditional Islamic legal paradigm, and the modernists who demand gender equality and a more flexible Islamic legal system. Mir-Hosseini also describes women's journals in Iran and the public discussion of gender. These debates, just like their subjects, are often veiled.
— Foreign Affairs

L. Carl Brown