Abstract

The identity of women throughout the history of Islam has been determined by androcentric interpretations of the sacred text; the Qur'an and the semi-sacred aura; the hadith. Although Islam proclaims the equality of men and women, in the course of history men were the primary mediators between religious truth and women. The attempts of Muslim feminists have been mainly directed towards providing a link between modern views of women and the views of the pristine Islamic community. This study argues that a link between the modern consciousness of women and the Qur'anic discourse can be established only by revealing the historical continuity in the language formation in the image of woman. ;This historical continuity is observed in four major Qur'anic commentaries, namely Jami'al Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur'an by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari , al-Tafsir al-Kabir by Fakhr al-din al-Razi , Tafsir al-Manar by Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida , and Tafsir al-Mizan by Muhammad Hossein Tabataba'i . In order to analyze the role of language in the formation and transformation of the image of woman in the above works three steps are taken: Drawing upon Gadamer's ontology of language and modern literary criticism, a first step discusses the vital relation between meaning and its linguistic expressions and the inseparable relation between prejudice and language. From this framework step two analyzes the cultural formation of the image of woman within the four commentaries. Particular verses of the Qur'an that are essential to this study deal with issues such as qiwama, male authority or guardianship, veiling, and nushuz, disobedience leading to disruption of marital harmony. The relation and the tension between the pre-existing world-view and Islamic discourse during the lifetime of the Prophet is also addressed. A final step identifies and evaluates the role of language in the interpretations of the sacred text in the formation of the image of woman, as exemplified in the four commentaries as well as their historical continuity