When the Rūḥ Meets Its Creator
The Qurʾān, Gender, and Visual Culture in Contemporary Iranian Female Sufism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3220975 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yunus Valerian Hentschel (0000-0002-7660-1123, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 132 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel16020132 |
| OpenAlex | W4406804860 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
This article delves into two Iranian Sufi women's approaches to the Qurʾān, gender, and visual culture: (1) Parvāneh Hadāvand, a Sufi leader in Tehran, uses visual means to enhance the spiritual-aesthetic-emotional experiences of her students. She challenges gender norms within male-dominated spaces by reinterpreting visual-material objects and asserting her authority as a woman Sufi guide. (2) Mītrā Asadī, a Sufi teacher in Shiraz, problematizes the overall visual culture of gender roles by arguing that, through the spiritual transformation of the human being's genderless essence (Arabic rūḥ; Persian jān), categories of gender become ephemeral and irrelevant. These two case studies are examined in terms of how these Sufi women utilize aesthetic experience, visual aspects, and visual-material culture in their Sufi practices and teachings. Further, it is investigated how these practices shape Hadāvand's and Asadī's gender performativities
Aesthetics · Art · Islam · Sociology · Sufism · Theology · Visual arts · Visual culture · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam
Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms
The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender
Muslima Theology
The Cambridge Companion to Sufism
Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'ān
Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology
Alternative Iran
“God Loves Me”
Visual culture studies
Soziologie des Körpers
From his Mother Nūr al-Anṣāriyya to his Šayḫ Fāṭima bt. Ibn al-Muṯannā
A Lightning Trigger or a Stumbling Block
Mystical metaphors
The Sublime Quran
Women and Sufism
Relations, Narrations, and Judgments
In Search of al-Insan
"Did a Woman Edit the Qur'an? Hafsa and her Famed "Codex
Using the Qur’ān to Empower Arab Women? Theory and Experimental Evidence From Egypt
Autoethnography
What Is an Image
Shia Clerics, Holy Sites, and the Online Visual Culture of the Revolutionary Youth in Iran
An Inquiry into the Nature of the Female Mystic and the Divine Feminine in Sufi Experience
The sincere subject
An introduction to the history of modern Persian Sufism, Part I
Bodies That Matter
The Private Performance of Salat Prayers
Analytic Autoethnography
Piety, Transgression, and the Feminist Debate on Muslim Women
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |