Gender relations understood as drawing towards equality
In the framework of social and public life, or political decision making to begin with, Asma Lamrabet expresses surprise at the marginalisation of some Quranic concepts she considers key principles for the respect of the Other and of human values, to wit togetherness and social relations, gender relations, the quest for the “common good” as well as freedom of speech. She observes that while classical exegesis admits only of spiritual equality, contemporary exegesis attests the concept of co-responsibility and joint socio-political involvement.
She disputes the interpretation of the Qiwama concept underpinning the presumption of masculine absolute superiority. To this end, she stresses the polysemic aspect of the term qawwâmûn, debarred of any superiority content. To the Quranic verse used to justify male supremacy, she opposes others e.g. 4 /135: “O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm(qayâmîn) in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives... and 5 /8: “O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm (qâwamîn)for Allah, witnesses in justice ...” on which she rests to distinguish between a person's private and public life. In two verses, she writes, the “divine message” calls on women and men alike to respect such values as justice, fairness, impartiality and piety. The other verse, which is concerned with the familial, indeed private sphere, is aimed more specifically at men. The sense of al-Qiwama in that verse may mean seeing a thing carried through, protecting and preserving another person's interests. Al- qawwâmûn may, as such, mean that men must meet women's material needs, protect their interests, but nowhere proclaims the divine right for men to dominate women advanced by a number of Quran commentators.
Asma Lamrabet explains how that commonplace understanding has lead to the proliferation of a demeaning literature and has “stood in the way of the juridical and social implementation of the Quranic message's liberating attitude towards women...”. She demands the reinterpretation of the concept in view of the financial co-responsibility prevailing in contemporary families. She never ceases inveighing against the inequality Muslim women fall prey to, “justified in the name of the faith” and wonders with a degree of bitterness at a reality which contrasts with what she perceives in the hadiths of Prophet Muhammad as “unbelievable realms of freedom, whereas today these same realms are quite simply beyond imagining in the majority of Muslim communities”.
With a view to make up for the scarce data concerning women's input, Asma Lamrabet has focussed part of her writing on women who have marked the history of Islamic sciences. She has dedicated a whole book to Aisha, the youngest of the prophet's spouses and his favourite “whose life, progress, journey are”, she says, “an example to mull over and to follow, even more so in the current context”. She mentions the defence of women's right to education by the woman who had studied Arabic and poetry from her earliest years. She stresses her role in the transmission of the acts and saying attributed to Mohammad. She points out that, in the Sunni tradition, Aisha was privileged to witness some moments of the “divine revelation” and that she shared the last moments of the Prophet's life, whereby she occupies a special place in the research field of “circumstances of revelation” and thereby of interpretation of the Quran. She recalls Aisha's roles as jurisconsult and military strategist, especially after Muhammad's death. She paints her as an unswerving opponent of Caliph Mu'âwiyya[1] because he brought in a form of hereditary monarchy. Accordingly “to reclaim Aisha's feminine Islam”, Asma concludes, “is to contribute, alongside Muslim men, to the renaissance of this humane Islam which is the very essence of the faith”.
In another book titled Women in the Quran, Lamrabet mentions other high figures, emblematic of virtue as much as of suffering but united in their femininity. She is in awe of the wisdom and intelligence of Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba, enthralled by the figure of Mary in whom she finds the incarnation of eternal perfection. She rejoices in the glorification of Agar's memory. The mother of Ishmael, son of Abraham, who abandoned mother and son in the desert; harried by hunger and thirst and at her wits' end she began to run, the Muslim tradition tells us, between two hills. Re-enacting her action is an important element of the hadj. This way to honour her memory could be surpassed by no finer homage to a human being that the author could think of.
