Woman's Identity And The Qu'ran A New Reading

"A valuable contribution to the Islamic scholarship-activism explosion of the 21st century."-Middle East Journal "Readers of this work will learn that men and women are equal when it comes to the worship of God. Thus, the male-dominated practices of several centuries derive not from divine revelation but from human error."-Charles E. Butterworth, University of Maryland An original study of the Qur'anic foundations of women's identity and agency, this book is a bold call to Muslim women and men to reread and reinterpret the Qur'an and to discover within its revelations an inherent affirmation of gender equality. Barazangi asserts that Muslim women have been generally excluded from full participation in Islamic society, and thus from full and equal Islamic identity, primarily because of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and the entire range of early Qur'anic literature. Based on her study of the sacred text, she argues that Islamic higher learning is a basic human right, that women have equal authority to participate in the interpretation of Islamic primary sources, and that women will realize their just role in society and their potential as human beings only when they are involved in the interpretation of the Qur'an. Barazangi offers a curricular framework for self-teaching that could prepare Muslim women for an active role in citizenship and policymaking in a pluralistic society by affirming the self-identity of the Muslim woman as an autonomous spiritual and intellectual human being.Barazangi, Nimat Hafez is the author of 'Woman's Identity And The Qu'ran A New Reading', published 2004 under ISBN 9780813027852 and ISBN 0813027853.