Abstract
According to Qur’an, God’s divine merit-demerit system never allows for any biased treatment towards men or women. Dignity instead is what God has granted on all children of Adam. The present article, hence, sought to trace back women’s dignity and equality to the discourse of Qur’an working on a sample of 11 Surahs. The discourse analysis was based on combinatory perspectives of text linguistics, pragmatics, and rhetoric. The results revealed that the most salient marked discoursal devices of women’s equality and dignity were the techniques such as parallelism, anaphoric repetitions, juxtaposition of the believers’ attributes, emphatic negative propositions. In addition, the sometimes situated hierarchical pattern of relationship between men and women were not indicative of any unfair evaluation of either gender. Instead, the yardstick was the amount of the believers’ efforts in the way of God’s “forgiveness and reward”.
Highlights
Humans are “entities with natural capacities for thought and free choice” (Lee & George, 2008, p. 175)
The study of Qur’an has been encouraged by the very Qur’an: “ [it is] a book we have revealed to you abounding in good that they may ponder over its verses, and that those endowed with understanding may be mindful” (Q: 38:29)
Within the main traditions of discourse analysis[4], the combinatory structural and functional approach of the study borrows ideas from text linguistics, pragmatics and rhetoric to establish a kind of interlink between the samples and their social functioning
Summary
Humans are “entities with natural capacities for thought and free choice” (Lee & George, 2008, p. 175). Dignity, singled out, encourages individuals to deepen their virtuous qualities since it prevailingly operates in normative, constitutional, and doctrinal dimensions of human life (Weinrib, 2016) In this regard, most heavenly teachings have ventured to raise awareness in people of their inalienable rights, and ability to do the best and feel dignified. As stated in Qur’an, “We have bestowed dignity on the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them the good and conferred upon them special favors above the greater part our creation” (Q: 17:70) This conceptualization of “special favor”, “dignity”, and equality for “children of Adam” manifestly celebrates a point of departure from erstwhile longstanding mentality to treat women and people of different ethnicities as inferiors. “And those who will do some good deeds, male or female and be a Muslim, they shall enter Paradise, and they shall not be wronged a bit” (Q: 4:124)
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