Claiming religious authority: Muslim women and new media

Abstract

This chapter addresses issues arising from the juxtaposition of gender, Islam, and new media in the context of women-only, English-speaking Muslim newsgroups. These online forums serve as a platform for Muslim women who are interested in developing their interpretative skills, which helps them in applying Islamic teachings to real-life questions. This study bridges a gap in existing research because to date neither studies on Islam and the Internet (e.g., Bunt 2009, Eickelman and Anderson 2003), nor studies exploring genderbased interpretations of Islamic sources have discussed the potential of the new media to facilitate Muslim women’s engagement with the Qur’an, Sunnah (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) (Piela 2011). As some ordinary, ‘grassroots’ Muslim women attempt to highlight the importance of gender and gender justice, absent from many mainstream interpretations of Islam, other women prefer to preserve the primacy of classical Islamic interpretations produced by male scholars. This chapter explores competing understandings of gender roles and responsibilities in Islam, and tensions that arise from the enactment of these understandings. It also addresses identities that are shaped and reproduced by these understandings as well as discourses defining ‘the position of women in Islam’ (Ahmed 1993). In 2008, Al-Azhar University in Cairo approved an interpretation of theQur’an produced by a woman, for the first time in its history. This event was widely reported globally (see BBC News 2008), but several female Muslim bloggers criticized the way it was presented by the mass media. For example, Muslimah Media Watch, a collective of online writers acting as an informal watchdog monitoring news stories about Islam and Muslims, pointed out that the BBC News article suggested incorrectly that the approved interpretation was the first ever, and that it falsely implied that the interpretation critiqued patriarchal understandings of the Qur’an. In fact, in Egypt all publications dealing with the Qur’an or Islamic traditions have to be recognized by Al-Azhar scholars, and Kariman Hamza, the woman in question, had to apply for their approval before she could publish her tafsir (interpretation of the Qur’an) aimed at young people.