Abstract
In her recent analysis of Islamic feminist philosophies, Aysha Hidayatullah concludes that Islamic feminists need to embrace radical uncertainty, in a path toward freedom. Amina Wadud, on the other hand, argues for a conception of individual freedom as engaged surrender, in which the moral agent is critically engaged in a relationship of trust with God, in the service of social justice. I argue that while openness to uncertainty and transgression of limits are guiding normative principles of western secularism, the attachment to this negative form of freedom can also serve as a form of closure to alternative discourses of freedom, in which freedom is understood as engagement in relationship. I suggest that the ideal of engaged surrender could be taken up as an exemplary form of agency and individual freedom for an understanding of freedom of speech that includes receptivity and listening.
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Notes
- 1.
See Hidayatullah (2014) for a discussion of the term Islamic feminism . While many of the scholars reject the term feminist, Hidayatullah argues that the work arguing for gender equality is by definition feminist. Hidayatullah therefore distinguishes between the feminist work and the scholar who may not identify as feminist. I discuss Islamic feminism and conceptions of freedom in Islamic feminist work in ‘Islamic Feminisms and Freedom’ (2013b).
- 2.
Aysha Hidayatullah identifies three interpretive strategies employed by feminist exegetes: historical contextualization, intratextual reading (comparing terms and verses across the text of the Qur’an and in light of the Qur’an’s overall movement toward justice for all human beings), and the ‘tawhidic paradigm’ (the argument that given God’s oneness and omniscience, no human interpretation can be considered final, but can only be an attempt to understand God’s meaning, and that any claim of superiority of men over women is a form of idolatry, since it attributes God-like roles to men).
- 3.
I thank Anshuman A. Mondal for this formulation.
- 4.
Wadud notes that there are ‘endless and circular theological discussions’ about free will in the Qur’an (p. 35). She does not provide references for these debates, and writes that she will disregard them.
- 5.
For a feminist philosopher, Wadud’s conception of the khalifah as trustee might resonate with Annette Baier’s conception of women’s moral agency as engagement in a relation of trust.
- 6.
I discuss agency and freedom in relation to Mahmood’s Politics of Piety in “Feminism and the Islamic Revival: Freedom as a Practice of Belonging,” in Identities and Freedom (Oxford 2013a). A condensed version of this chapter is in Hypatia: International Journal of Feminist Philosophy 28, 2, 2013.
- 7.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Tanja Dreher and Anshuman A. Mondal for their critical engagement with this chapter. I thank them also for organizing the colloquium, ‘Ethical Responsiveness: Listening and Reading Across Difference’, at the University of Wollongong, and thank all of the participants in that colloquium for inspiring conversations.
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Weir, A. (2018). Freedom and Listening: Islamic and Secular Feminist Philosophies. In: Dreher, T., Mondal, A. (eds) Ethical Responsiveness and the Politics of Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93958-2_5
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