Women in Quran

"What is communicated to the hearer or reader is sufficiently close to what is intended by the speaker or writer, that we do well to be awed and grateful; and yet it is in principle never exactly the same-and especially not in important or subtle or deep matters. Since the meaning of any person of any term or concept, let alone of any phrase or sentence is intergraded into the person’s experience and worldview, is or becomes a part of it… therefore meaning can never be exactly the same for any two persons… nor for any two centuries… nor for any two regions"(quoted in Esack, 76).

I found that Cantweel-Smith elucidates this issue well and helps my argument that everyone has different ways to understand and experience. They affect how we understand the world, text and so on.

        Stowasser published Women in the Qur’an, Tradition and Interpretation. This book focuses on the Qur’anic law regarding women’s social rights and obligations. According to her, the goals of this book are to:

With the understanding of her interest and goals, we know that these factors will affect how she understands and writes about the chapter of Mary in the Qur’an.

        In her book, Stowasser discusses how Mary is interpreted and portrayed in the Qur’an. Her view is that there are multiple meanings and interpretations for the Qur’anic women of the Qur’an. Those differences occurred and were shared culturally. Stowasser states "Muslims past and present have developed a number of paradigms, that is, specific models that structure perception and also serve as an agenda for the future"(Stowasser, 82). Her main focus is to illustrate that there are various ways of understanding and interpretation related to the need of each generation of Muslims to understand the world.

        Mary is the only female to whom an entire Sura is devoted in the Qur’an. Her name appears more frequently in the Qur’anic text than in the entire New Testament (Stowasser, 67). Mary was chosen to be the mother of Jesus Christ, who is one of God’s righteous prophets, and she was viewed as "an example for the believers" due to her chastity, faith and obedience (Stowasser, 67). The Qur’an states,

"And Allah sets forth an example to those who believe the wife of Firon when she said: My Lord! build for me a house with Thee in the garden and deliver me from Firon and his doing, and deliver me from the unjust people. And Marium, the daughter of Imran, who guarded her chastity, so We breathed into her of Our inspiration and she accepted the truth of the worlds of her Lord and His books, and she was of the obedient ones"(Sura 66:11-12)

Many places in the Qur’an discuss Mary. For example, there are parts of the Qur’an discussing Mary and Jesus as a person who was revealed to be a sign from God: "And she who guarded her chastity, so we breathed into her of Our inspiration and made her and her son a sign for the nations"(Sura 21:91) "We made the son of Marium and his mother a sign, and We gave them a shelter on a lofty ground having meadows and springs"(Sura 23:50)

        To illustrate the multiplicity of interpretation, Stowasser introduces many discourses among Muslim scholars. One of them is the prophethood of Mary. Some Muslim theologians believe that Mary, Sara and the mother of Moses are to be deemed as among God’s prophets because angels spoke to them with God’s inspirations. On the other hand, although Zahirite Ibn Hazm of Cordoca agrees with the idea of Mary as one of prophets, he distinguishes Mary’s prophethood from messengerhood. According to him, the knowledge of Mary, Sara and the mother of Moses received from God through word of inspiration was true, but he believes it is the knowledge received by male prophets through revelation (Stowasser, 77). Therefore, for Zahirite Ibn Hazm of Cordoca, although Mary is a prophet, her role was more as a messenger.

        Parrinder published a book called Jesus in the Qur’an. This book is written for readers in the western world. Its aim is to help students who study theology and comparative religion as well as the public. His interest in this book is chiefly "theological and questions of textual criticism, a subject peculiarly delicate for Muslim who have largely been left aside"(Parrinder, 10).His main goal is to remove some of the misunderstandings and lead toward deeper appreciations of Muslim and Christian faith by going back to the fundamental scripture.

In his book, one of the chapters focuses on Mary (Maaryam). Due to his intention in the book, he seems to stress how Christians and Muslims view Mary in very similar ways, which we can see in various places in the chapter. For example, he states that:

" The Qur’an uses the name Mary more times than does the New Testament; thirty four times in the former, nineteen times in the latter… Neither in the Bible nor the Qur’an is she called the Virgin Mary, the title of latter Christian reverence, though these scriptures may well assume her virginity" (Parrinder, 60).

He continuously discusses the passages in which Muslims and Christians share the interpretation concerning Mary. In the Qur’an and in the Gospel, "the attitude of Mary is one of humble acceptance of the part God assigned to her: ‘prostrate thyself’ (Sura 3:38-43) and ‘behold the servant of the Lord’ (Luke.1: 38)

Sura 3:38-43 says:

"There did Zakariya pray to his Load; he said: My Lord! Grant me from thee good offspring; surely Thou art the Hearer of Prayer. Then the angels called to him as he stood praying in the sanctuary: That Allah gives you the good news of Yahya verifying a world from Allah, and honorable and chaste and a prophet from among the good ones. He said: My Lord! When shall there be a son born to me, and old age has already come upon me, and my wife is bared? He said: Even thus does Allah what He pleases. He said: My Lord! Appoint a sign for me. Said He: Your sign is that you should not speak to men for three days except by signs; and remember your Lord much and glorify Him in the evening and the morning. And when the angels said: O Marium! surely Allah has chosen you and purified you and chose you above the women of the world. O Marium ! keep to obedience to your Lord and humble yourself, and bow down with those who bow"( Sura 3:38-43)

Luke.1:38 says, " Mary said, ‘I am the Lord’s servant! Let it happen as you have said’. And the angel left her" With these quotes from both the Qur’an and the Bible, Parrinder illustrates that Mary’s surrender to the will of God s fundamental to both the Qur’an and the Bible. This is the key concept to understand some of its deepest mysteries (Parrinder, 61).

        At last, he also focuses on the aspect that the prophet Muhammad had a deep veneration for Mary as the mother of Jesus. He introduces an example from the oldest historian of Mecca, Azraqi, who died in 858 A.D. According to Parrinder, Azraqi said that on the column nearest the door in the Ka’ba, there was a picture of Mary with Jesus on her knee. When the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to destroy the idols and wash off all the paintings of Ka’ba , he covered with his hands the picture of Mary with Jesus on her knee and said ‘Wash out all except what is below my hand" (Parrinder,66). Regardless of the trustworthiness of this story, according to Parrinder, it symbolizes that the prophet Muhammad showed the utmost respect for Mary and Jesus.

        Wadud focuses on women’s perspectives of interpretation of the Qur’an. She observes that women are not deemed as important as in most Muslim majority or minority countries that the Muslim women do not enjoy a status equal to men. To have a deeper understanding of women’s equality, she emphasizes the importance of giving clear and resounding attention to women’s voices both as a part of the text and in response to it (Wadud, 1). She stresses "how a Qur’anic hermeneutics that is inclusive of female experience and of the female voice could yield greater justice to Islamic thought and contribute toward the achievement of that justice in Islamic praxis"(Wadud, 5). She also proposes a hermeneutics of Tawhid to emphasize the importance of comprehension of what the Qur’an says, how it says it, what is said about the Qur’an and how it is doing the saying (Wadud, 8).

In the discourse of women in the Qur’an, Wadud considers the difference between woman as individuals and women as members of society. She believes that for the most part, Qur’anic consideration of women centers on women as members of society. However, she notes that it is vital for us to comprehend that what the Qur’an says about the relationship between Allah and the individual is not in gender terms. In regard to spirituality, there are no rights of women distinct from the rights of men (Wadud, 34). This shows her ways of interpretation emphasizing the equality of women.

Wadud also discusses Mary, introducing how special she is and how she bore Jesus. What is unique about Wadud’s discussion regarding Mary is that she talks about grammatical considerations in relation to Mary. She states that the Qur’an classifies her as one of the qanitin(co-operative and subservient)(Sura 66:12). The masculine plural form of the word is used which indicates one devout before Allah. She believes that there is no reason not to use the feminine plural form; except to emphasize that the significance of Mary’s example is for everyone who believes, despite their gender. She believes that her virtue was not confined by gender (Wadud40).

        Awde published a book called Women in Islam. This book contains translations of major references to women in the Qur’an and Hadith and various topics are covered such as divorce, prayer, sex,unlawful sex and chastity. In the book, Mary is introduced as one of the four perfect women in Islam followed by Asiya(pharaoh’s wife), Khadija(first wife of the Prophet) and Fatima(the prophet’s favorite daughter) (Awde,205). However, Awde does not discuss any issue specific to Mary. I think this is because the goal of Awde is different from the rest of the scholars that I have introduced earlier. Awde’s interest and goal is to introduce women’s roles, tasks and expectations in different situations such as divorce and prayer. Perhaps, this is why she did not discuss Mary specifically in her book.

        Hekmat also examines Mary in the Qur’an in her book called Women and the Koran. According to her, the purpose of this book is to demonstrate that despite all self-deceiving, dogmatic and frequently biased rhetorical statements, the social standing of women was demoted by Islam. Still today, women are still humiliated, abased, mistreated and ignored (Hekmat, 10). She focuses on the historical and grammatical errors in her book. For example, she notes that there is a error in chapter 19, which is about Mary and Jesus.

"Then Mary brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing. O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot"( Sura 19:27-28)

According to Hekmat, this is a great error. Mary did not have a brother named Aaron. She believes that most likely Mary did not have any brother at all. Therefore, Hekmat believes that in this case:

"prophet Muhammad confused Jewish and Christian tradition. He may have heard that the sister of Aaron and Moses was named Miriam (Arabic Maryam) and mistakenly thought that the Miriam was the same person as the mother of Jesus" (Hekmat, 11).

Using the example of Mary, Hekmat illustrates that there are could be errors in the Qur’an. I am not sure how significant it is for her to use this example to talk about Mary in the Qur’an. However, I strongly believe that it is very important for us to know that there are errors. Then, my question is how it is possible to have errors in the Qur’an even though it is deemed as the direct word of God. Does this means that the prophet made a mistake when he was transmitting the story from the God to people?

        To conclude my paper, I would like to bring attention to the importance of comprehension of Hermeneutics. As I discussed earlier, Hermeneutics is "operations of textual exegesis and theories of interpretation--religious, literary and legal--date back to antiquity"(quoted in Esack, 50). Everyone comes to a text with her or his questions and expectations. I believe that it is vital for us to remember this when we obtain information. For example, my method to examine any text is to find an author’s interest, purpose, focus, goal and his/her background. This is because I know that these factors affect how an author writes a book. With an understanding of authors’ biases, we can understand the topic better and more deeply. Based on this belief, I have demonstrated how various scholars discuss, understand, and focus differently due to the their different interests, purposes, and goals regarding Mary in the Quran.

Bibliography

Awde, Nicholas.2000. Women in Islam: An Anthropology from the Quran and Hadiths.New York.

Hekmat,Anwar.1997. Women and the Koran: The Status of Women in Islam. New York.

International Working Meeting on Qur’anic Interpretation by Women

1990. Women in the Qur’an: Information kit prepared fro Women living under Muslim Laws. Karachi

Shakir, M H. 1993. The Quran . New York.

Stowasser, Freyer Barbara.1994. Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation. New York.

Wadud, Amina.