A Hermeneutics of Intimacy

Abstract

AbstractAll four of the volumes discussed here integrate erudite historical and textual scholarship in Islamic studies with clearly articulated ethical and theological projects of gender justice, which are in turn rooted in the authors’ engagements in Muslim communities worldwide. This combination is a hallmark of recent work on gender and sexuality in Islamic contexts, where scholars foreground the complex intersection of their own ethical standpoints, their historically and linguistically grounded exegesis of classical sources, and their hopes for gender justice in contemporary Muslim communities. In the process, they offer a range of evocative models for how to combine descriptive and constructive work in religious ethics. Further, this cluster of works contributes to an ongoing conversation in religious ethics about the concept of tradition. This review draws out a focus on the relational intimacy of the hermeneutical project that I argue constitutes an overarching theoretical intervention in the concept of an ethical tradition.