CONCURRENT INTERPRETIVE CALAMITIES: MALE AUTHORITY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN QURAN 4: 34
CONCURRENT INTERPRETIVE CALAMITIES: MALE AUTHORITY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN QURAN 4: 34

Summary/Abstract: There is a series of contemporary Islamic issues which cannot be solved by invoking the pre-modern exegeses or the classical Islamic jurisprudence, otherwise than, at most, by resorting to a strategic artifice of identifying minority and isolated perspectives from the tradition or through selective and forced reformulations of some canonical opinions. Verse four of Surah Al Nisaʼ | the Women chapter of the Quran is probably the most unsettling Quranic verse, at least from a gender perspective, its exegesis being an infallible criterion for the tracking of egalitarian or hierarchical visions promoted by various pre-colonial Islamic schools of thought or by contemporary Islamic orientations. The interpretations attached to this verse concretely and very decisively affect the Muslim women’s life, their right to self-determination and autonomy, creating the juridical framework according to which all the other rights and duties of women have been traditionally distributed. Although Muslim authors have argued the validity of certain egalitarian interpretations, relying even on pre-modern juridical and hermeneutic procedures, progressive Muslims have also highlighted the need to reconstruct the bases of the traditional exegesis and jurisprudence by including the non-Islamic knowledge, through the contextualization and a holistic-thematic approach to the sacred text, in keeping with the universal Quranic ethical principles and, simultaneously, the contemporary realities, suppositions and necessities, with a view to an efficient and productive reshuffling of the classical, and gender-discriminating juridical verdicts.

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