Exploring Misogyny in Modern Muslim Societies: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Qur’anic Exegesis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Numerous sociological studies indicate that the societal perception of women in Muslim countries is generally poor. These perceptions, argue the promulgators of such ideas, are based on the Qur’an. There is, nevertheless, no consensus on the interpretation of the qur’anic verses that supposedly promote such views. One of the main sources of negative perceptions of women is the Hellenistic learning that permeated the corpus of qur’anic commentaries. This article explores the influence of the translation movement on the exegetical tradition. There is a marked difference between the earliest qur’anic commentaries, written before the works of Aristotle and Galen were translated into Arabic by around 850 AD, and those that came after. While the former show relatively little in the way of androcentric interpretations of the Qur’an, the latter adopt Aristotelian and Galenic views of women’s ontological inferiority due to increased coldness and wetness, and use these to justify patriarchal interpretations.