Asma Barlas
Biographic Data
| ID | 6013644 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asma Barlas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Asma |
| FAMILY NAME | Barlas |
| SIGNATURE | BARLAS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ithaca College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Believing Women in Islam
Reading the word in a foreign tongue
Observant Muslims strive to live in accordance with the teachings of our scripture, the Qur’ān. However, the vast majority of Muslims is neither literate nor Arab and cannot understand Arabic, the language of the Qur’ān’s revelation. Thus, we rely on dominant interpretations and translations of it in our own languages. Yet, Muslims also believe that the translated Qur’ān is not the “real” Qur’ān. What does it mean, then, for Muslims to encounter …
Secular and Feminist Critiques of the Qurʾan
Secular and Feminist Critiques of the Qurʾan: Anti-Hermeneutics as Liberation? Asma Barlas (bio) Some years ago, I reviewed the work of four Muslim women who had interpreted Islam's scripture in a radical break with the Muslim juristic and exegetical tradition.1 This 1,400-year-old tradition is normatively patriarchal and also projects an ideology of male supremacy onto the Qurʾan because it gives men certain rights vis-à-vis women, especially in…
Uncrossed bridges
In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim wom…
Abraham's sacrifice in the Qur'an
It has been stated that the body has overtly or latently been a focal point in the history of the three Abrahamic religions’. However, Islam’s scripture, the Qur’an, does not say that Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) binds his son’s body, nor is the body the focal point of the story—nor, indeed, is it of more than passing interest in Muslim history. This has lead me to question the tendency to homogenize the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice and, by ex…
September 11, 2001
In History, Memory, Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur speaks about the paradox of memory that appears as "an excess of memory here, and an excess of forgetting elsewhere, to say nothing of the influence of commemorations and abuses of memory—and of forgetting." In this essay, I reflect on this paradox and, in particular, on what needs to be forgotten in popular imaginaries as the very condition for commemorating it. My intent is to show how dominant narra…
Women’s readings of the Qur'ān
Some 1,400 years ago, when the Qur'ān was being revealed to the prophet Muhammad, his wife Umm Salama reportedly asked him why it was not addressing women. It seems she was not impressed by the fact that in the Arabic language, as in many others, the male gender is inclusive of the female and that in using it the Qur'ān was, in effect, addressing both. Of course if this had been an idle question on her part and nothing had come of it, the inciden…
Un-reading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
I would like to thank AMSS, and specially Jamin Zine, for inviting me toaddress your conference on “Islam: Tradition and Modernity” today. Since Iam in the midst of enjoying your splendid hospitality, I feel I should beginwith an apology for what I am about to say. A polite guest would havepraised the food and your conference and gone home without being criticalof anything. But unfortunately for you, I was born with an impolitic geneand so I am g…
Teaching about Islam and women
Some years after I began offering ‘Understanding Islam: religion and politics,’ at Ithaca College, I had an opportunity to take part in a roundtable discussion on the challenges of teaching such a
The Excesses of Moderation
I was persuaded to come out here at rather short notice by the promise of adialogue on some of the issues professor Bernard Weiss has raised in hisconceptually nuanced and politically canny essay on “moderate Islam.”1 Infact, I found it to be such a compelling articulation of key themes that I havefocused my own comments around it. (So that we are clear, I am referringto the first draft which has a different slant than the later ones.)My commenta…
Jihad, Holy War, and Terrorism
In the wake of 9/11, the Islamic concept of jihad has been described as both “holy war” and “terrorism.” In this paper, I unpack this twofold conflation within the context of a broader discussion of the problem of some Muslims’ interpretive extremism and the West’s long-standing and willful politics of misrecognition of Islam.2 This politics confuses Islam with Muslims; disregards the role of political, economic, cultural, and historical factors …
The Qur'an and Hermeneutics
This article inquires into the Qur'an's position on patriarchy, defined both as a theory of father's rule and as a politics of sexual differentiation that privileges males, in order to show that the Qur'an not only does not condone patriarchy, but that it teaches a view of human equality that challenges and undermines patriarchal ideologies. Second, it describes a hermeneutics of the Qur'an derived from the Qur'an itself that can help us to read …
Uncrossed bridges
In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim wom…
Un-reading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
I would like to thank AMSS, and specially Jamin Zine, for inviting me toaddress your conference on “Islam: Tradition and Modernity” today. Since Iam in the midst of enjoying your splendid hospitality, I feel I should beginwith an apology for what I am about to say. A polite guest would havepraised the food and your conference and gone home without being criticalof anything. But unfortunately for you, I was born with an impolitic geneand so I am g…
Jihad, Holy War, and Terrorism
In the wake of 9/11, the Islamic concept of jihad has been described as both “holy war” and “terrorism.” In this paper, I unpack this twofold conflation within the context of a broader discussion of the problem of some Muslims’ interpretive extremism and the West’s long-standing and willful politics of misrecognition of Islam.2 This politics confuses Islam with Muslims; disregards the role of political, economic, cultural, and historical factors …
The Qur'an and Hermeneutics
This article inquires into the Qur'an's position on patriarchy, defined both as a theory of father's rule and as a politics of sexual differentiation that privileges males, in order to show that the Qur'an not only does not condone patriarchy, but that it teaches a view of human equality that challenges and undermines patriarchal ideologies. Second, it describes a hermeneutics of the Qur'an derived from the Qur'an itself that can help us to read …
Jihad, Holy War, and Terrorism
In the wake of 9/11, the Islamic concept of jihad has been described as both “holy war” and “terrorism.” In this paper, I unpack this twofold conflation within the context of a broader discussion of the problem of some Muslims’ interpretive extremism and the West’s long-standing and willful politics of misrecognition of Islam.2 This politics confuses Islam with Muslims; disregards the role of political, economic, cultural, and historical factors …
The Excesses of Moderation
I was persuaded to come out here at rather short notice by the promise of adialogue on some of the issues professor Bernard Weiss has raised in hisconceptually nuanced and politically canny essay on “moderate Islam.”1 Infact, I found it to be such a compelling articulation of key themes that I havefocused my own comments around it. (So that we are clear, I am referringto the first draft which has a different slant than the later ones.)My commenta…
Women’s readings of the Qur'ān
Some 1,400 years ago, when the Qur'ān was being revealed to the prophet Muhammad, his wife Umm Salama reportedly asked him why it was not addressing women. It seems she was not impressed by the fact that in the Arabic language, as in many others, the male gender is inclusive of the female and that in using it the Qur'ān was, in effect, addressing both. Of course if this had been an idle question on her part and nothing had come of it, the inciden…
Un-reading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
I would like to thank AMSS, and specially Jamin Zine, for inviting me toaddress your conference on “Islam: Tradition and Modernity” today. Since Iam in the midst of enjoying your splendid hospitality, I feel I should beginwith an apology for what I am about to say. A polite guest would havepraised the food and your conference and gone home without being criticalof anything. But unfortunately for you, I was born with an impolitic geneand so I am g…
Teaching about Islam and women
Some years after I began offering ‘Understanding Islam: religion and politics,’ at Ithaca College, I had an opportunity to take part in a roundtable discussion on the challenges of teaching such a
Abraham's sacrifice in the Qur'an
It has been stated that the body has overtly or latently been a focal point in the history of the three Abrahamic religions’. However, Islam’s scripture, the Qur’an, does not say that Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) binds his son’s body, nor is the body the focal point of the story—nor, indeed, is it of more than passing interest in Muslim history. This has lead me to question the tendency to homogenize the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice and, by ex…
September 11, 2001
In History, Memory, Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur speaks about the paradox of memory that appears as "an excess of memory here, and an excess of forgetting elsewhere, to say nothing of the influence of commemorations and abuses of memory—and of forgetting." In this essay, I reflect on this paradox and, in particular, on what needs to be forgotten in popular imaginaries as the very condition for commemorating it. My intent is to show how dominant narra…
Uncrossed bridges
In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim wom…
Secular and Feminist Critiques of the Qurʾan
Secular and Feminist Critiques of the Qurʾan: Anti-Hermeneutics as Liberation? Asma Barlas (bio) Some years ago, I reviewed the work of four Muslim women who had interpreted Islam's scripture in a radical break with the Muslim juristic and exegetical tradition.1 This 1,400-year-old tradition is normatively patriarchal and also projects an ideology of male supremacy onto the Qurʾan because it gives men certain rights vis-à-vis women, especially in…
Believing Women in Islam
Reading the word in a foreign tongue
Observant Muslims strive to live in accordance with the teachings of our scripture, the Qur’ān. However, the vast majority of Muslims is neither literate nor Arab and cannot understand Arabic, the language of the Qur’ān’s revelation. Thus, we rely on dominant interpretations and translations of it in our own languages. Yet, Muslims also believe that the translated Qur’ān is not the “real” Qur’ān. What does it mean, then, for Muslims to encounter …
Philosophy (11 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Islam (8 works) · Islamic Studies and History (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Theology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Education and Islamic Studies (5 works)