Rebellious Wives Neglectful Husbands Controversies in Modern Quranic Commentaries Hadia Mubarak All Chapter

Rebellious Wives, Neglectful
Husbands: Controversies in Modern

Qur'anic Commentaries Hadia Mubarak
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Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands
Rebellious Wives,
Neglectful Husbands
Controversies in Modern Qurʾanic
Commentaries
HA D IA M U BA R A K
1
3
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930916
ISBN 978–0–19–755330–5
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197553305.001.0001
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Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To my beloved Omar, Jinan, and Ibrahim
and to my parents,
Fatima and Hashem.
My success was built
on the backs of your sacrifices.
Contents
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Dates ix

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Ruptures and Continuities in Modern Islamic Thought 19
2. Deflecting the Colonial Gaze: Women in Modern Qurʾanic
Exegesis 51
3. Modern Approaches to Qurʾanic Interpretation 69
4. Sexually Neglectful Husbands: Classical and Modern
Interpretations of Q. 4:128 98
5. Rebellious Wives: Medieval and Modern
6. A New Rationalization for Polygyny: Medieval and Modern
7. Men’s “Degree”: An Unconditional Privilege? 198
Conclusion 237
Notes 253
Bibliography 315
Index 333
Note on Translation, Transliteration,
and Dates
All translations of the Qurʾanic commentaries are my own, unless otherwise

noted. My transliteration of Arabic terms primarily follows the translitera-
tion system of the Journal of Qurʾanic Studies, with a few exceptions. More
particularly, I have rendered the alif al-mawṣūla, when it follows a preposi-
tion, as an apostrophe instead of a hyphen, for example, bi’l-raʾy, bi’l-maʾthūr,
bi’l-maʿrūf, and Al-Taḥrīr wa’l-Tanwīr, which is more faithful to the Arabic
pronunciation of compound phrases. Furthermore, I transliterate ʿulama
with the initial ʿayn only, as adopted by Muhammad Qasim Zaman in The
Ulama in Contemporary Islam. For individuals’ dates of death, I utilize both
the Hijri and Gregorian calendars, side by side.
Acknowledgments
No expression of gratitude is complete without acknowledging one’s indebt-

edness to God, the beginning and end of all existence. I thank God for en-
abling me to see this book to its completion. I am especially grateful to my
mentor and friend John Esposito for his unwavering support of this book
from its inception. There is one individual whose generous spirit, breadth of
knowledge, and linguistic insight have been like no other in supporting my
academic research: Hatim Yousef, a scholar of the Qurʾan and the Arabic lan-
guage and a man of deep integrity. I am incredibly indebted to him.
I am grateful to colleagues and friends who read and commented on ear-
lier drafts of a section or chapter: Celene Ibrahim, John Voll, Feryal Salem,
Farid Dingle, Mohammed Rustom, Mohja Kahf, Mirsad Krijestorac,
Ovamir Anjum, Samuel Ross, Sherman Jackson, Walid Saleh, and Younus
Mirza. Cynthia Read, OUP’s executive editor of religion, and Zara Cannon-
Mohammed, editorial assistant at OUP, have been incredibly resourceful
throughout this process. This book was partially supported by a generous re-
search fellowship from the Research Institute for the Humanities at New York
University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in 2017–2018. I am grateful for the support
of my colleagues at NYUAD, Martin Klimke, Alexandra Sandu, Mohammed
Rustom, and Justin Parrot, among many others. Without question, the ki-
netic energy I produced during my one-year fellowship sustained my writing
while teaching full time during the last two years. I am grateful to Abdullah
Heyari, Saleh Mubarak, and Mustafa Elqabbany, who graciously provided
feedback on my translations of technical and genre-specific language. I am
very appreciative of the meaningful conversations I had with erudite scholars
of Islamic law, Faraz Rabbani, Abdullah Adhami, and Abdullah Bin Hamid
Ali, who provided insight on Islamic divorce law, Mālikī fiqh, or the problem
of misogyny and tradition.
There are no words that can capture the extent of my gratitude to my hus-
band, Omar, my parents, Fatima and Hashem, and my children, Ibrahim and
Jinan. Omar has been a bedrock of support, selflessness, and encouragement
while I was writing this book. My mother, Fatima Kilani, has been a source
of unmatched inspiration, as she gave me the resolve to move forward when
xii Acknowledgments
I felt I had nothing left to give. My father, Hashem Mubarak, has provided un-
wavering encouragement. My siblings, Mona, Mohammad, Samia, Nusaiba,
and Abdullah, and my husband’s parents, Azhar and Zainab, gifted me with
motivation and empathy throughout my writing. To my children, Ibrahim
and Jinan, I hope that you will one day read this book and recognize within it
your own invaluable contribution as sources of my daily joy and inspiration.
Thank you for everything.
The impetus for examining the impact of modernity on exegetes’ gender
interpretations comes from my conversations with the late Professor Barbara
Stowasser (d. 2013), one of my first mentors in tafsīr studies during my grad-
uate and doctoral studies. Although she tragically passed away in the midst
of my doctoral studies, her critical mentorship pushed me to appreciate
the exegetical tafsīr tradition as a genre of its own with an intellectual his-
tory. Stowasser’s work on women and tafsīr was important not just because
of its contribution to the field of gender in Islamic studies but also because
it brought attention to the important role of hermeneutics in the produc-
tion of religious knowledge. As such, my book builds upon her scholarly
contributions to this field by working within the boundaries of the exegetical
tradition while simultaneously paying appropriate attention to the historical
and intellectual contexts of the modern Qurʾanic commentaries I examine.
A first-rate scholar, Stowasser is dearly missed.
Introduction
Nowhere has the question of divine intent been as pressing for Muslims in
the past two decades than in the field of women and gender in the Qurʾan.
In the twenty-first century, Muslim women are caught in a polarity of inter-
pretations regarding their position and rights within a religious tradition
that spans fifteen centuries. The status of Muslim women in the world today
is by no means monolithic. In some Muslim-majority countries, women
have been elected as heads of state and have a higher percentage of higher
education compared to men.1 In other Muslim-majority states, however,
women still struggle with an unequal standard of citizenship, character-
ized by restrictions on travel, divorce, and custody rights.2 To what extent
are current practices—or their justifications—embedded in religious texts?
Is the Qurʾan, Islam’s primary scripture, inherently patriarchal and even
misogynist, as reflected by the actions of extremists, or is it egalitarian and
empowering to women, as a new wave of Muslim activists and scholars have
argued?3 While this question lies at the center of a fierce academic debate
among scholars in the twenty-first century, this debate was first inaugurated
at the eve of modernity.
One of the most urgent theological issues for Muslims in the modern pe-
riod is the search for divine will, free of the fallibilities of human interpreta-
tion. The return to the Qurʾan as the primary source for Muslims is partially
informed by the quest for divine meaning, divorced from meanings imposed
and projected on it from centuries of human interpretation. Amid the rapidly
changing contexts of modernity, the Qurʾan has served as an unchanging,
stable anchor for Muslims in their quest to both withstand and overcome
the uncertainties of the modern world. Yet the project of determining the
Qurʾan’s meaning, known as Qurʾanic exegesis, has been far from monolithic,
static, or conclusive. While Muslims universally agree upon the Qurʾan’s
primacy in guiding Muslim affairs, modernity has produced a multiplicity
of approaches to Qurʾanic interpretation. I define modernity primarily as
it is understood in the field of sociology, as a set of social conditions, pro-
cesses, and discourses that encompass new structures of power, specifically

2 Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands
the nation-state and its apparatus, “a complex of economic institutions,” and

new intellectual theories, beliefs, and frameworks through which to view the
world.4
This book examines the intersection of modernity and Sunni exegetical
thought on women. More specifically, it places three of the most influential,5
Sunni Qurʾanic commentaries (tafsīr) in the twentieth century at the intersec-
tion of historical and intellectual encounters that impact gendered interpret-
ations of the Qurʾan. The first, Tafsīr al-Manār, co-authored by Muḥammad
ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā, is regarded as the first modernist approach to Qurʾanic
interpretation.6 The second, Sayyid Quṭb’s (d. 1966) Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾan, was
partially written during his imprisonment in Egypt and is described as one of
“the most widely translated and distributed Islamic book[s]‌of all time.”7 The
third commentary, Al-Taḥrīr wa’l-Tanwīr by Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr
(d. 1973), is a revival of the philological, tafsīr bi’l-raʾy (exegesis by reasoning),
tradition in modern exegesis and one of the most methodologically rigorous
commentaries of the twentieth century.8 By situating modern commentaries
within the genre of tafsīr, this book compares the modern interpretations of
ʿAbduh, Riḍā, Quṭb, and Ibn ʿĀshūr with those of seven premodern commen-
taries, spanning from the ninth to fourteenth centuries, on verses dealing with
neglectful husbands (4:128), rebellious wives (4:34), polygyny (4:3), and mar-
ital hierarchy (2:228). These verses have been at the center of a contentious
debate within the past two decades on the Qurʾan’s potential to be a site for
gender justice. Through a close textual analysis of modern shifts in Qurʾanic
exegesis on these four gendered verses, I examine the impact of modernity and
its accompanying discourses on Muslim exegetes’ engagement with the subject
of women in the Qurʾan.
Modernity unleashed a wave of gender consciousness that affected not
only women but religious scholars, intellectuals, and exegetes as well, all of
whom were engaged in shaping the discourse on women’s rights.9 My in-
depth analysis of modern Qurʾanic interpretations on key gender verses—
in comparison to those of a diverse spectrum of premodern and primarily
Sunni exegetes—provides a window into the discursive shifts on women in
modern Qurʾanic exegesis. These modern interpretive shifts in Qurʾanic ex-
egesis reflected new intellectual priorities of exegetes as well as modernity’s
theoretical centering of women’s rights as an analytical category in modern
religious discourses. Venturing into uncharted terrain, I carefully sketch
significant shifts in their modern Qurʾanic commentaries on the subject of
women against the backdrop of broader historical, intellectual, and political
Introduction 3
developments in twentieth-century North Africa. I argue that these three

influential Sunni works of tafsīr reflect not a mere engagement with the
Qurʾanic text itself but a broader engagement with the contemporaneous
debates on women in Islam in twentieth-century North Africa.
For the first time in Muslim history,10 Islam’s treatment of women emerged
as a central debate among colonial administrators and Muslim intellectuals
in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century North Africa. This subject
was deeply embedded in an ideological battle on the merits of Islam and its
compatibility with modernity.11 Colonialists, Christian missionaries, and
well-meaning Western feminists in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-cen-
tury North Africa established a discourse that viewed Islam as the “fatal ob-
stacle” to women’s rights and Western Europe as the model to which Muslims
should look in their pursuit of national reform.12 Indigenous responses to
this discourse either internalized and repeated the arguments made by
colonialists and Westerners or refuted their assessment of Islam as an ob-
stacle to women’s rights. The association between the colonial discourse on
women’s rights and its evaluation of Islam as unfit for modern times created
a highly charged atmosphere, which introduced a new level of theoretical
significance to the female subject in modern Muslim thought. This historical
context frames the three modern Qurʾanic commentaries that I explore.
While a few studies13 have noted the impact of colonialism and modern-
ization on Muslim religious discourse on women, fewer14 have assessed the
impact of this change on modern exegetical interpretations of gender-signif-
icant verses in the Qurʾan. This work departs from existing studies on women
and gender in the Qurʾan by exploring the ways in which context influenced
modern exegetical interpretations of the Qurʾan. As Karen Bauer notes,
“Through time, the ʿulama have formed their views, in part, as a response
to their particular intellectual context.”15 Like premodern exegetes, the his-
torical context in which ʿAbduh, Riḍā, Quṭb, and Ibn ʿĀshūr were writing
their exegetical works impresses itself upon their interpretations of gender
verses in the Qurʾan. Despite reflecting distinct ways of engaging with both
the Qurʾan and modernity, each exegete sets out to absolve the Qurʾan from
the criticism that colonialists, Christian missionaries, secular intellectuals,
and nationalists hurl at it. In applying a comparative analysis of premodern
and modern exegetical interpretations of gendered verses, this book explores
three broad debates in the field of Qurʾanic studies.
First, when comparing medieval and modern exegetes’ interpretations of
verses concerning women in the Qurʾan, do we find a repository of Qurʾanic
interpretation that is “consistently and monolithically patriarchal,”16 as one

scholar described the premodern exegetical tradition’s interpretations on
gender? Or does the heightened gender consciousness of the modern period
yield more egalitarian interpretations of the Qurʾan among the four modern
commentators? To what extent do modern exegetes conform to or depart
from premodern interpretations of the same verses?
Second, what are the external texts that shape exegetes’ engagement with
the Qurʾan? How do exegetes’ positionalities and contexts influence their
engagement with a seemingly static and unchanging pool of sources with
which to interpret the Qurʾan? Third, my scrutiny of the relationship be-
tween methods, meanings, and interpretive authority in Qurʾanic exegesis
foregrounds my engagement with these influential works of modern, Sunni
tafsīr. How have exegetes throughout the centuries succeeded in positing
new interpretations, rejecting previous ones, and modifying existing ones
while also anchoring their authority in this tradition? This is the third schol-
arly debate, and perhaps the most critical, in which my work intervenes.
The Indictment against Tafsīr
The scholarly tradition of Qurʾanic interpretation, known as tafsīr, has

been blamed by several authors for introducing misogyny and patriarchy
into Muslims’ understanding of their scripture. Scholars have described
the classical genre of Qurʾanic exegesis as “consistently and monolithi-
cally patriarchal,”17 “decidedly misogynistic,”18 and “voiceless” of women’s
perspectives.19 Yet, much of the scholarship on women in the Qurʾan evades
a substantive engagement with tafsīr as a scholarly genre.20 This is often
due to a priori conclusions that the exegetical tradition is premised on pa-
triarchal conclusions and is incapable of offering egalitarian interpretations
of the Qurʾan. For example, Islamic studies scholar Aysha Hidayatullah
contends that the genre of Qurʾanic exegesis cannot deliver “radically new
conclusion[s]‌” or ideas, while simultaneously claiming authority; this claim
is premised on her conception of “interpretive authority” as predicated on
reaching the same conclusions as previous exegetes.21 She argues that “inter-
pretive authority works ‘backward,’ ” which means that the authority of new
interpretations on women “depends on them also endorsing the same view of
the sexes (or at least a congruent one)”22 as previous exegetes have. Feminist
exegetes therefore cannot gain authority within this tradition, according
Introduction 5
to Hidayatullah, because their conclusions “subvert” the sexual hierarchies

envisioned by male exegetes.
In contrast to this depiction, scholars of tafsīr studies, a nascent field, dem-
onstrate that the classical exegetical tradition is governed by its methods, not
conclusions.23 For example, Norman Calder writes:
The qualities that distinguish one mufassir [exegete] from another lie less
in their conclusions as to what the Qurʾanic text means than in their devel-
opment and display of techniques which mark their participation in and
mastery of a literary discipline. Just as the skill of, say, a football player can
be recognized only in relation to a complex body of rules (variously con-
stituted by such things as white lines on grass or a complex and developing
off-side rule), so too the literary skills of a mufassir must be assessed not
in terms of the end product (the Qurʾan explained), but in terms of their
skillful participating in a rule-governed activity.24
It is precisely this understanding of tafsīr as a “rule-governed activity” that

allowed for polyvalent and even conflicting interpretations of the Qurʾan
to be continually passed on throughout the centuries.25 Early in its devel-
opment, the exegetical tradition bequeathed to Islam’s central text a mul-
tiplicity of meaning. As Walid Saleh notes, “A verse could have conflicting
interpretations, each of which could be adduced as part of the meaning of
the word of God without disrupting the notion of the clarity of the Qurʾan.
This was a hermeneutical feat not to be belittled.”26 The Islamic exegetical
tradition underscored textual polysemy as an inherent feature of the Qurʾan,
rendering it amenable to a multiplicity of readings.27 As Bauer argues, “[T]‌he
genre [of tafsīr] was never monolithic.”28 Rather, it was “inclusivist,” “poly-
valent,” including conflicting interpretations, and “diachronic,” developing
through time.29
If the genre of tafsīr is “inclusivist” and “polyvalent,”30 then why have
some scholars depicted it as patriarchal,31 misogynistic,32 and characterized
by a “voicelessness”33 of women’s perspectives? There is a clear tension in
these diametric arguments. Are these two arguments among scholars of the
Qurʾan reconcilable? Is it possible that the inherent pluralism of Qurʾanic
exegesis diminishes as it shifts to the subject of women and gender? My book
sheds light on these questions by closely analyzing the spectrum of interpret-
ations offered by premodern and modern exegetes on controversial gender
issues, such as polygyny, marital rights, marital turbulence, the discipline of
rebellious wives, and the liability for a husband’s disinterest or neglect of his
wife. Rather than make sweeping and often unsubstantiated generalizations
about a scholarly genre that spans several centuries, I find it more construc-
tive to identify the ways in which patriarchal readings emerge and become
entrenched in this genre.
What is the origin of androcentrism or patriarchal readings in the genre
of Qurʾanic exegesis? Is androcentrism a function of exegetes’ methods,
conclusions, or worldviews, or are they inherent in the Qurʾanic text? If pa-
triarchal interpretations are a function of the methods that medieval exegetes
used, then do modern exegetes’ use of new hermeneutical tools disrupt pa-
triarchal interpretations of the Qurʾan? Chapters 4 through 7 interrogate the
origins of textual androcentrism in the Qurʾan by identifying the ways in
which exegetes introduce patriarchal readings of the Qurʾan and pointing
out moments in which they challenge patriarchal readings within the tafsīr
tradition. I define androcentrism as the privileging of the male and mas-
culinity as the normative self against which the female and the feminine is
measured. I employ the notion of patriarchy not simply as a system of hier-
archy that favors men but as the very processes of thought that justify male
privilege, authority, and power over women.
Bringing Gender and Tafsīr into Conversation
Despite the flourishing of literature on women in the Qurʾan, there re-

mains a need for scholarship that situates the analysis of gender within the
genre of tafsīr, paying particular attention to the genre’s historical and intel-
lectual developments. A few notable works have begun to bridge this gap,
such as Ayesha Chaudhry’s Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition,
Karen Bauer’s Gender Hierarchy in the Qurʾan, Aisha Geissinger’s Gender
and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority, and Barbara Stowasser’s
Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions and Interpretation, the first western work
devoted to the subject of women in tafsīr. An edited volume of essays,
Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice,34 is perhaps the most re-
cent scholarly work that bridges the gap between tafsīr and gender studies.
Despite these exceptions, much of the conversation on gender hierarchy or
egalitarianism in the Qurʾan tends to take place outside the formal genre of
Qurʾanic exegesis. This trivialization of tafsīr primarily stems from a priori
conclusions about the exegetical tradition as patriarchal, misogynist, or
Introduction 7
voiceless of women’s perspectives. As Shuruq Naguib argues, “[T]‌o hear

the Qurʾan without the mediation of men, some Muslim feminists choose
to suppress the male voices in order to recover what they perceive to be an
originally liberating and egalitarian divine message.”35 Yet this binary con-
ception of the Qurʾan as egalitarian and Qurʾanic commentaries as misogy-
nistic or patriarchal is problematic, as Naguib points out. By writing off the
genre of Qurʾanic commentaries as a priori misogynist, we overlook critical
interventions within this genre that subvert misogynistic interpretations of
the Qurʾan. The following chapters highlight such interventions by each of
the four modern commentators, whose interpretations upend the dominant
classical interpretation of at least one of the four verses I examine. Yet these
modern commentators, like the commentaries themselves, defy cookie-
cutter labels such as “patriarchal” or “egalitarian.” Rather, they reflect a com-
plexity and evolution of thought on women and gender that is not always
consistent or coherent. Capturing the complexity of their attitudes and views
on women, I highlight the ways in which modern exegetes push back against
misogynist interpretations and practices in some instances, while also har-
boring some essentialist views about women in other instances.
This book seeks to bring into conversation the distinct fields of tafsīr
studies and gender studies by situating the genre of tafsīr in the center of a
scholarly analysis of gender in the Qurʾan. My comparison of premodern
and modern works of tafsīr on significant gender verses contributes to the
ongoing scholarly debate regarding the intellectual futility or viability of
discovering or recovering the Qurʾan’s egalitarian impulses. Is the Qurʾan
inherently egalitarian, as some scholars have argued, or is it “a thoroughly
androcentric”36 text, as other scholars suggest? Is its androcentrism a func-
tion of male-centered readings of the Qurʾan? The answers generated by
the past decade of scholarship on gender and the Qurʾan are far from con-
clusive.37 On one end of the spectrum are scholars such as Asma Barlas,
Maysam al- Faruqi, and Riffat Hassan, among others, who absolve the
Qurʾanic text itself of patriarchy and instead blame the exegetical tradition
for the “textualization of misogyny”38 into Islam. In her aim to recover the
Qurʾan’s antipatriarchal epistemology, Barlas blames misogynistic inter-
pretations of the Qurʾan on medieval classical exegesis.39 She writes, “The
choices and sensibilities of medieval jurists, scholars and exegetes became
institutionalized in ways that proved damaging to the pluralism and egali-
tarianism of the Qurʾan’s teachings.”40 Al-Faruqi argues that exegetes often
delivered a “decidedly misogynistic explanation” to “verses that seemed open
to interpretation.”41 Hassan suggests that the Qurʾan’s nondiscriminatory

stance toward women has not been replicated in Muslim consciousness.42 In
her earlier work, Qurʾan and Woman, Amina Wadud adopts a similar posi-
tion; she argues that traditional exegesis failed to examine the Qurʾanic text
as a totality; therefore the issue of gender has not been examined “in light
of the entire Qurʾan and its major principles.”43 In her later work, Inside the
Gender Jihad, Wadud expresses reservations about the “definitive” nature of
human interpretation, recognizing that different communities may arrive
at different interpretations as a product of their historical positionality.44
Despite the differences in their approaches, they all challenge patriarchal
interpretations of the Qurʾan as inconsistent with scripture itself.
On the other end of the spectrum are scholars such as Kecia Ali, Aysha
Hidayatullah, Ebrahim Moosa, and Raja Rhouni who critique feminist
scholars for imposing their own contemporary sensibilities upon the Qurʾan,
even when the literal meanings of the text appear to contradict their egali-
tarian aspirations for it.45 Without entirely dismissing the project of ampli-
fying Islam’s egalitarian voice in its scholarly and advocacy forms, these
critical works have faulted gender-egalitarian or feminist approaches for
their methodological rigidity, “text fundamentalism,”46 and subjective
premise that the Qurʾan is an egalitarian text. This subjectivity, according
to scholars such as Ali, Hidayatullah, Moosa, and Rhouni, has led feminist
exegetes to perform interpretive “acrobatics”47 at times to reconcile the out-
ward meanings of the text with their preconceived notions of gender jus-
tice.48 Hidayatullah writes, “We must admit that the Qurʾan may not fully
align with our contemporary calls for equality and justice, rather than en-
gaging in apologetic maneuvers that aim at explaining away certain textual
elements or in interpretive gymnastics that end up distorting the text.”49
Similarly, Ali questions “whether the egalitarian vision of gender justice that
[she] and others would like to see diverges from God’s understanding of es-
sential human nature.”50
While bringing attention to valid critiques of Qurʾanic feminist herme-
neutics, Ali’s, Hidayatullah’s, Moosa’s, and Rhouni’s arguments take the
project of gender egalitarianism one step back, forcing it to contend again
with patriarchal interpretations of the Qurʾan. By characterizing some of
the more egalitarian conclusions reached by feminist scholars as naïve, dis-
ingenuous, and lacking interpretive authority,51 these recent works con-
tribute to an increasing skepticism about whether gender justice could be
realized within a framework that adheres to religious teachings—a reversal
Introduction 9
of the achievements made by Islamic feminism—a discursive framework

by which Muslims employ scriptural evidence to challenge the bases of dis-
criminatory, unjust, and sexist practices that are given the legitimacy of reli-
gious teachings. As reflected by the works of Margot Badran, Sa’diyya Shaikh,
Miriam Cooke, Asifa Qureishi, and Valentine Moghadam, among others,
the growing movements of Islamic feminism have provided Muslim women
with both theoretical and pragmatic bases to challenge religious patriarchy
on its own terms.52
The contention over which meanings of the Qurʾan hold greater interpre-
tive authority—or any authority—misses a crucial element about this body
of exegetical interpretation: its textual polysemy. The textual polysemy of
Islam’s long-standing interpretive scholarship of tafsīr underscores the fact
that there is no hegemony of meaning but a “hegemonic power” of communal
understanding.53 As Jonathan Brown notes, the community reading the text
establishes the boundaries of interpretive possibility; they are not “intrinsic”
to the text itself.54 In fact, classical exegetes often acknowledged that their
search for God’s intent was by no means certain and could be obfuscated by
several factors, including method, biases, and objective. For example, in his
seminal work, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl Āy al-Qurʾan, Abū Jaʿfar ibn Jarīr
al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) distinguishes the terms taʾwīl and bayān, arguing
that taʾwīl is “God’s intended meaning,” which exists independently of the
exegete, whereas bayān is the exegete’s clarification, which is liable to miss
the mark.
Although the classical genre of tafsīr has conferred on its scholarly com-
munity a corpus of interpretations with a strong patriarchal bent, there have
been outliers to this patriarchal bent throughout the centuries, as identified
by scholars such as Karen Bauer, Omaima Abou-Bakr, Mulki AlSharmani,
and Shuruq Naguib, among others.55 The historical range of interpretation
one finds on these four gendered verses demonstrates that they can and
have been interpreted in ways that do not presume male authority as an in-
herent feature of the text. If patriarchy is not inherent in the Qurʾan itself but
a product of certain male interpretations, then one can argue that patriarchal
interpretations are particular to the time and space in which male exegetes
were interpreting the text, not a transcendent quality of the text itself.
A substantive engagement with the premodern and modern genre of
tafsīr informs the scholarly debate on the Qurʾan’s potential to be read in
both egalitarian and patriarchal modes in three ways. First, it illustrates the
fact that just as feminist exegetes are sometimes guilty of standing on faulty
premises for certain interpretations, as Ali and Hidayatullah argue, so too

are classical male exegetes. For example, the fourteenth-century exegete Ibn
Kathīr—whose Qurʾanic exegesis has been invested with a high level of au-
thority by some modern Sunni communities56 because of his emphasis on
prophetic traditions—says the following about men’s degree over women in
Q. 2:228: “ ‘Men have a degree over women’; meaning, [their degree is] in
their merit (faḍīla), physical constitution (khalq), character (khuluq), status
(manzila), right to obedience (ṭāʿat al-amr), the responsibility of financial
maintenance, overseeing women’s interests, and their preference in this
world and the next (al-faḍl fī al-dunya wa’l-ākhira).”57 Any articulate, edu-
cated Muslim who has read just a third of the Qurʾan can find multiple verses
that contradict Ibn Kathīr’s view that God has preferred men over women
in the afterlife. For example, Q. 16:72 trumps the notion of men’s spiritual
privilege: “To whoever, male or female, does good deeds and has faith, We
shall give a good life and reward them according to the best of their actions.”
Further, Q. 3:195 affirms women and men’s spiritual equality: “So God
answered their prayers: ‘I shall not lose sight of any of your deeds, be it from
man or woman. You are members, one of another.’ ” As for Ibn Kathīr’s as-
sertion that men are preferred in this life, there are interpretations that both
support and contradict this view, which is the very reason for the fierce de-
bate among scholars over the Qurʾan’s androcentric versus egalitarian nature.
This is not a debate one can expect will be put to rest in the foreseeable future.
Second, the findings of this book support existing arguments regarding the
influence of context on readings of the text.58 As scholars have argued, the ex-
egete is not a tabula rasa. He or she brings a whole set of understandings and
suppositions to the text. As Ian Netton explains, interpretive differences re-
flect the fact that texts “can be read differently according to the different con-
ditioning and cultures of authors or readers, not to mention differences in
education, prejudice and a vast variety of other areas.”59 The challenge, there-
fore, for Muslims invested in locating the Qurʾan’s transcendent qualities is to
untangle the relative and particular meanings from those that are universal
and transcendent. Yet our ability to discern the universal is still predicated
upon the particularities of our own context. In accordance with Gadamer’s
theory of “historically effected consciousness,”60 we cannot escape our own
place in history, although we can attempt to be conscious of it: “Every finite
present has its limitations.”61 I agree with Hidayatullah’s argument that “we
often forget that our notions of equality are guided by historical values of
our own that we bring to the text.”62 This is an argument that Barlas has also
Introduction 11
acknowledged: “[I]‌t . . . is impossible not to bring to one’s reading sensibil-

ities shaped by existing ideas, debates, concerns and anxieties.”63 Similarly,
Wadud accepts “that even [her] own reading is dwarfed by [her] context in
history.”64 One’s reading of the exegetical tradition should therefore bear in
mind that just as medieval exegetes’ readings were sometimes influenced by
their particular contexts, so are ours.
Third, a closer engagement with tafsīr reveals a more complex image
of medieval and modern exegetes’ attitude toward women, a byproduct
of the genre’s interpretive pluralism. Although medieval male exegetes
do not appear to place a premium on notions of gender justice or gender
equality as we understand these concepts in our contemporary context,
this does not mean that medieval exegetes and jurists were not attuned to
other notions of significance to scholars invested in gender justice.65 For
example, one finds that the themes of justice, women’s rights, and men’s
responsibility to provide kind companionship to their wives (ḥusn al-
muʿāshara), among other rights, were central to exegetes’ understanding
of marriage and divorce in the Qurʾan. For example, in medieval exegetes’
interpretations of Q. 4:3 on polygyny, they argued that the priority of jus-
tice to female orphans and women overrides a man’s desire or lust for a
particular orphan under his legal care or for more than one wife. While
they did not find polygyny to be inherently problematic, they also believed
that the aim of the polygyny verse is to serve justice; therefore, polygy-
nous relationships that engendered injustice were, in fact, problematic
to medieval exegetes.66 For example, in his interpretation of the phrase
“then marry only one,” al-Z amakhsharī, writes, “So choose one and leave
polygyny [literally, the combining of wives] altogether. Indeed, the en-
tire matter revolves around justice, so wherever you find justice, then you
are enjoined to follow it.”67 Similarly, al-R āzī’s interpretation of Q. 2:228
reflects a concern for the potential of abuse by men. After identifying eight
reasons for men’s merit or virtue (faḍīla) over women, he writes:
If all these male prerogatives are proven, this would make women like feeble
hostages in the hands of men. For this reason, the Prophet peace be upon
him said, “take care of women for they are bound to you (ʿawān).” . . . And
the meaning of the verse is that due to the degree that God gave men over
women in capability, they are entrusted with fulfilling more of women’s
rights. Therefore, the mention of this is like a warning to men against
encroaching upon women to harm or injure them.68
The medieval exegetical tradition, despite its patriarchal bent, simultane-

ously reflects a consistent concern for women’s welfare and well-being. This
is not an attempt to absolve the exegetical tradition of the patriarchy it has
imposed on Qurʾanic scripture at different junctures. Rather, it is an argu-
ment for understanding the historical and intellectual processes that govern
the tafsīr tradition. The textual polysemy of this tradition suggests that a bi-
nary approach to the exegetical tradition as either “misogynistic” or “egali-
tarian” is neither useful nor accurate.69 Departing from binary conceptions
of Qurʾanic tafsīr as patriarchal or gender-conscious, this book complicates
not only readings of scripture but also our readings of its interpretation, par-
ticularly those of the exegetical tradition. What significant shifts do modern
exegetes bring to the interpretations of key verses related to gender hier-
archy and male privilege in the Qurʾan? What are some of the “pretexts” or
precursors that induce these changes? By shedding light on the range of in-
terpretive space offered by both premodern and modern exegesis on women
and gender norms in the Qurʾan, this book intervenes in the scholarly debate
on gender justice in the Qurʾan.
My State of “Double Consciousness”
Any discussion of women and gender in Islam, particularly in the West,

operates within visible and invisible structures of power. I cannot ignore
the way such politics of power have influenced my own biases, goals for the
book, and discourse. I write my work within an intellectual context in which
discussions on women and Islam occur against a long history of Western
representations of Muslim women, often characterized by “gendered
Orientalism.”70 As a Muslim American woman whose existence blends the
very contours of East and West, who occupies the invisible spaces between
“here” and “there,” I am acutely aware of the way my “specific reception en-
vironment”71 shapes the way my work is read, interpreted, and utilized.
My “double consciousness” as a Muslim American, which W. E. B. Du Bois
coined and eloquently described in his 1897 essay, “Strivings of the Negro
People” in the Atlantic, as “this sense of always looking at one’s self through
the eyes of others,”72 pulls at the strings of my own moral and intellectual
conscience and forces me to reckon with the critiques and questions I have
chosen to invest with theoretical stock. Du Bois was articulating the struggles
of Black Americans in the late nineteenth century, a people who had endured
Introduction 13
three centuries of explicit and implicit racism, yet Du Bois’s articulation

resonates for many of us who also feel this “two-ness” and “double-aimed
struggle.”73 How has this double consciousness influenced the very questions
I explore? To whom am I speaking, and what interests will my scholarship
primarily serve? Without asking these questions of myself, I risk the possi-
bility of becoming entangled in the very structures of power that I critique.
I strive, therefore, throughout this book to follow the evidence to where it
leads, whether to dark alleys of misogyny or broad horizons of ethical her-
meneutics, without assuming the posture of defensiveness or warrantless
critique.
Choice of Exegetes
My selection of three modern Qurʾanic commentaries is motivated by

three distinct reasons. First, I choose these three commentaries because
each of their authors represents a unique orientation of Islamic thought in
the modern period: Islamic modernism, Reform-Salafism, Islamism, and
neo-traditionalism. These diverse intellectual orientations influence their
engagement with the Islamic scholastic tradition, which influences their ap-
proach to Qurʾanic interpretation. I employ an understanding of tradition
as defined by scholars such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Talal Asad as prima-
rily a discursive tradition with a history of arguments and debates over key
doctrines in shared languages and styles of discourse.74 My engagement
with these modern commentaries illustrates the diverse ways that signifi-
cant orientations of modern Muslim thought respond to the epistemological
challenge of articulating the Qurʾan’s positions on women within the twen-
tieth century.
Second, these three modern commentaries provide a window into the
ways that evolving historical contexts shape exegetes’ engagement with
gender issues in the Qurʾan. Each of their exegeses illustrates a heightened
gender consciousness that is notably absent from the premodern exegetical
tradition. By acknowledging the “changing nature of ‘modernity’ ”75 in the
Muslim world, this book takes into consideration modern exegetes’ changing
intellectual and historical landscapes and distinct interactions with moder-
nity. While their discourses on women reflect diverse views and positions, all
four modern commentators are engaged in a dialectic as they interpret the
Qurʾan’s verses related to women. Each of their commentaries functions as a
response to a particular critique of Islam by distinct segments of their socie-

ties. Although ʿAbduh and Riḍā are co-authors of one commentary, Tafsīr al-
Manar, there is a clear distinction between their interpretations on women,
which is partially a function of their different intellectual orientations, as I il-
lustrate in c hapters 1 and 3. Third and most significant, the exegetical works
of these four modern intellectuals are among the most influential works of
Sunni tafsīr in the twentieth century,76 although certainly not the only im-
portant ones. Further, their Qurʾanic commentaries span diverse approaches
to Qurʾanic exegesis: rational-modernist, thematic, literary-critical, legal,
and philological.
While centering the modern Qurʾanic commentaries in my analysis,
I compare their interpretations with those of a range of premodern exegetes
spanning the tenth to fourteenth centuries. The primary classical works of
tafsīr I examine are Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 310/
923) Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl Āy al-Qurʾan, Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn
ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī’s (d. 538/1143) Al-Kashshāf ʿan Ḥaqāʾiq al-Tanzīl
Wa-ʿUyūn al-Aqāwīl fī Wujūh al-Taʾwīl, Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 543/
1148) Aḥkām al-Qurʾan, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1209) Mafātīḥ al-
Ghayb, Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Anṣārī al-Qurṭubī’s (d.
671/1273) Al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾan, ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar al-Bayḍāwī’s
(d. 685–710/1286–1310)77 Anwār Al-Tanzīl wa-Asrār Al-Taʾwīl, and Abū
al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr’s (d. 773/1371) Tafsīr al-Qurʾan al-
ʿAẓīm. I occasionally reference the classical work of Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn
Muḥammad Ibn Ḥabīb al-Māwardī (d. 364/972), al-Nukat wa’l-ʿUyūn, in
chapters 5 and 7, the exegesis of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī and Jalāl al-Dīn
al-Suyūṭī, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn in c hapter 5, and the Shiʿi commentary of Abū
Jaʿfar Muḥammad Ibn Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (d. 406/1068) in chapter 6. I select
the seven medieval exegetes, in particular, because they, among others,
represent a diverse spectrum of medieval Sunni exegetical approaches,
capturing the legal, theological, and hermeneutic pluralism of medieval
Qurʾanic tafsīr. Further, their exegeses reflect modern articulations of
tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr and tafsīr bi’l-raʾy categories, despite the problems with
modern usages of these labels.78
One may question why a book that analyzes modern shifts on women and
gender issues in Qurʾanic exegesis does not focus on the works of female
exegetes. This design is not a function of choice but of circumstance. Despite
the plethora of female religious scholars throughout Islamic history,79 there
Introduction 15
remains a dearth of female exegetes who have produced commentaries upon

the entire Qurʾan. One of the few female exegetes who authored a major
Qurʾanic commentary is the Iranian Shiʿi scholar, Nuṣrat Amīn (d. 1983),
who wrote the fifteen-volume Makhzan al-ʿIrfān Dar ʿUlūm-i Qurʾan. ʿĀʾisha
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 1998) is commonly regarded as the second modern
female mufassira of the Qurʾan.80 Publishing under the pseudonym Bint
al-Shāṭiʾ, her two-volume al-Tafsīr al-Bayānī li’l-Qurʾan al-Karīm covers
fourteen short chapters of the last juzʾ of the Qurʾan. Yet neither of these two
works fit my book’s aim of exploring modern shifts in Sunni Qurʾanic com-
mentaries on women’s issues against the backdrop of historical developments
in twentieth-century North Africa. Although Bint al-Shāṭiʾ’s work belongs to
the region and time period explored in this study, her Qurʾanic commentary
does not engage the gendered issues at the center of this book. In consid-
eration of the book’s methodological criteria, I, therefore, limit my analysis
to the influential Sunni Qurʾanic commentaries I described earlier. There is
a growing body of female scholarship that engages in Qurʾanic interpreta-
tion, including the critical works of Celene Ibrahim, Asma Lamrabet, Zainab
Alwani, Ruqaia Al-Alwani, Amina Wadud, and Asma Barlas, among others.
This prospect offers hope that future scholars will have a broader selection of
commentaries to explore.
Outline of the Book
The first chapter of this book situates the four commentators within existing
typologies of modern Islamic thought. Rather than be held captive to labels,
however, the chapter highlights the personal over the ideological. More spe-
cifically, I provide a brief biographical sketch of the four commentators,
paying considerable attention to the historical, personal, and political events
that shape their intellectual trajectory. In exploring their respective intel-
lectual frameworks, I offer historical revisions to prominent claims often
made about each of the four intellectuals. Finally, I highlight their distinct
encounters and engagement with modernity in consideration of important
political, structural, and social changes in Egypt and Tunisia, respectively,
thereby affirming the notion of “multiple modernities”81 in the Muslim world.
Chapter 2 argues that modernity imparts a new preoccupation with
women’s issues as a distinct theme in Qurʾanic exegesis. The modern impulse
to demonstrate Islam as egalitarian or fair to women is in many ways a re-

sponse to the epistemological crisis induced by Western modernity. The three
influential, modern commentaries reflect a broader engagement with con-
temporaneous debates on women in Islam in early to mid-twentieth-century
Tunisia and Egypt. This chapter captures the unique historical encounters
and considerations that frame their exegetical commentaries on women.
Chapter 3 explores the aims, methods, and significance of ʿAbduh and
Riḍā’s Tafsīr al-Manār, Quṭb’s Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾan, and Ibn ʿĀshūr’s Al-
Taḥrīr wa’l-Tanwīr. Qurʾanic exegesis was not immune to the sweeping
changes encountered by Muslim societies during the first half of the twen-
tieth century. First published in its entirety in 1927, Tafsīr al-Manār shat-
tered all preexisting typologies of tafsīr by creating a new form of exegesis
that was unique in both methodology and content. Similarly, Quṭb’s exe-
gesis, written between 1951 and 1965, represented a unique development
in twentieth-century modern exegesis by approaching the Qurʾan as an
organic, textual unity. While much ink has been spilled on the exeget-
ical contributions of modernists and Islamists, such as Tafsīr al-Manār
and Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾan, Western scholarship has paid less attention to the
signiﬁcance of Ibn ʿĀshūr’s exegetical output. Published in its entirety in
1970, Ibn ʿĀshūr’s commentary represents an overlooked intellectual ori-
entation of embracing change through continuity with tradition. Al-Taḥrīr
wa’l-Tanwīr is an illustration of an exegete’s ability to revive and leverage
classical methods of exegesis to present new interpretations for changed
realities. By capturing the threads of change and continuity in modern
Qurʾanic commentaries, this chapter disrupts prevalent conceptions of
the exegetical tradition as static and unchanging, pointing to a pluralistic
and evolving notion of tradition.
Chapters 4 through 7 offer four case examples of interpretive shifts in
modern Qurʾanic commentaries by comparing premodern and modern
interpretations of four key verses related to gender hierarchy and male priv-
ilege: Q. 4:128, Q. 4:34, Q. 4:3, and Q. 2:228. An overlooked verse in the
scholarship on women and gender in the Qurʾan, Q. 4:128 offers a striking
parallel to Q. 4:34. While Q. 4:34 locates the blame for rebellion, contempt, or
defiance (nushūz) with the wife, Q. 4:128 locates the blame for nushūz with
the husband. By exploring interpretations of men’s and women’s nushūz in
tandem (Q. 4:34 and Q. 4:128), I illustrate the discrepancies that arise in pre-
exegetes’ gendered definitions of nushūz, a term that has come under much
contestation in the modern period. In my book, I center discussions on men’s
Introduction 17
nushūz to offset contemporary scholarship’s disproportionate attention to

women’s nushūz.
It is no exaggeration to state that Q. 4:34 has provoked more scholarly
debate than any other verse related to women and gender in the Qurʾan.
Despite the proliferation of works on Q. 4:34, most of this literature does not
interrogate the contributions of modern exegesis, as a genre, to exegetical
understandings of this verse. Chapter 5 illustrates the significant shifts that
modern exegetes bring to existing interpretations of Q. 4:34. While ʿAbduh,
Riḍā, and Quṭb employ idioms and notions that are particular to their late
nineteenth-and twentieth-century contexts, their commentaries on Q. 4:34
offer a new framing that attempts to package the Qurʾan’s injunctions as
empowering or liberating to women, a distinction that reflects the particu-
larities of their historical contingencies. Chapter 5 further brings attention
to a neglected yet significant modern interpretation of Q. 4:34 that involves
legal authorities in the adjudication of nushūz cases—often interpreted as re-
bellion, defiance, or abnormal deviation.
Chapter 6 explores modern Muslim interpretive approaches to polygyny,
which are diverse, complex, and, at times, full of internal tension. Despite the
significance of the colonial critique on polygyny, it is a mistake to subsume
all modern Muslim engagements with polygyny as a response to the colonial
encounter. Modern exegetes, at times, reflect a willingness to turn the colo-
nial critique inward and admit to the exploitative abuse of polygyny among
some men. Yet their attempts to rationalize the institution of polygyny most
distinguishes their Qurʾanic commentaries from premodern engagements
with Q. 4:3. Unlike modern exegetes, premodern exegetes felt no need
to defend, justify, or rationalize the Qurʾan’s qualified endorsement of po-
lygyny. In sharp contrast to modern exegetes, premodern exegetes displayed
no anxiety or reservations with the Qurʾan’s qualified license of polygyny.
This contrast reflects the impact of evolving historical contexts on Qurʾanic
commentaries.
While chapters 4 through 6 focus on verses related to marriage or mar-
ital turbulence, c hapter 7 focuses on legal procedures following a man’s pro-
nouncement of divorce. The legal aspects of Q. 2:228 have received much
less attention from scholars than the last part of the verse, which declares
that “they (women) have rights like the rights upon them, according to hon-
orable norms, and men have a degree over them. God is almighty and wise.”
Yet exegetes’ interpretations of Q. 2:228 were largely informed by law. This
chapter explores the critical intersections of law and exegesis through a
comparative analysis of modern and premodern interpretations of Q. 2:228.

My conclusion affirms the need for a critical engagement with the Qurʾanic
exegetical tradition, highlighting the ways in which such an engagement
opens up new epistemic channels through which to explore the Qurʾan’s
broader ethics, including gender egalitarianism and justice.
1
Ruptures and Continuities in Modern
Islamic Thought
The debate on women’s status in Islam takes place within the context of
what becomes the great political upheaval and institutional restructuring
witnessed by the Muslim world. In the span of the twentieth century,
the Muslim world witnessed the demise of its last religious empire, impe-
rial governance and occupation, the dismantling of religious authority, the
creation of modern nation-states, and the forging of new national identi-
ties and sources of legislation. The loss of Muslims’ global political power
was accompanied by a collapse of the authority and power once held by the
ʿulama, religious scholars. The newly bureaucratized state created modern
courts, appropriated legislative processes, previously the purview of the
ʿulama, restructured traditional religious seminaries, and took over their fi-
nancial wellspring, the awqāf, thereby depriving the ʿulama of a major source
of economic power and independence.1 These significant changes, among
others, led to the gradual marginalization of the ʿulama class, who previously
enjoyed unparalleled social authority and prestige.2 Such internal ruptures,
alongside foreign occupation and the loss of political power, incited an epis-
temological crisis in the Muslim world, shattering Muslims’ confidence in
religious authority and the worldview it represents. As Jonathan Brown
writes, “The colonial expansion of European powers heralded a new age for
the custodians of the Qurʾan and Sunna. No longer would the words of God
and Muhammad or the interpretive sciences that the ʿulama had developed
be paramount in the arena of law or society.”3
The rapid changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
created a context that gave rise to new intellectual modes of engagement
with modernity. In the words of historians Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer
Nafi, “[T]‌his change has transformed the discursive underpinnings and
assumptions of Islamic thought in the twentieth century, as well as its sub-
ject matter. It has created overlapping and interacting junctures of intellec-
tual rupture and continuity never witnessed before in Islamic intellectual

history.”4 A perpetual tension of ruptures and continuities thus characterizes

trends in modern Muslim thought.5 This book explores the themes of change
and continuity in modern Qurʾanic commentaries, in specific, and the emer-
gence of new forms of discourses on women in this scholarly genre.
Each of the four modern Qurʾanic commentators I analyze in this book
represents a modality of thought that continues to shape modern Muslim
societies, despite the constant ebb and flow of their respective impacts.
Despite their diverse intellectual orientations and methodologies, these four
exegetes were united in their concern over Islam’s diminishing role in the fu-
ture of Muslim societies. In their attempts to demonstrate Islam’s relevance
to the needs of modern societies, all four Muslim intellectuals anchored
their calls for broader societal change in the religion’s foundational text, the
Qurʾan. They believed that the Qurʾan’s framework and principles should
undergird Muslims’ embrace of modernity. Yet in “anchoring” their vision
for Muslim societies in the Qurʾan, the exegetes reflect distinct ideological
orientations, methods of Qurʾanic interpretation, and visions for the fu-
ture. The four Qurʾanic commentators whose works I compare, Muḥammad
ʿAbduh (1849–1905), Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935), Sayyid Quṭb (1906–1966),
and Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (1879–1973), each represents one
of these four significant intellectual orientations in the modern history
of the Arab world: Islamic modernism, Reform-Salafism, Islamism, and
neo-traditionalism.
ʿAbduh was a champion of Islamic modernism, one of the earliest
attempts in modern Muslim thought to synthesize Islam’s overarching prin-
ciples and values with the changing needs and urgencies of modernity. While
Riḍā is regarded as ʿAbduh’s most important disciple, single-handedly re-
sponsible for the dissemination of the former’s work, Riḍā’s orientation of
Islamic thought is in fact distinct from that of his teacher. Riḍā shifts to-
ward Salafism, with an acute interest in geopolitics, during the middle of
his career. Quṭb, whose exegesis has been translated into several languages,
reflects a strand of Islamist intellectual thought that emerged in the context
of postrevolutionary Nasser Egypt; this period in which Quṭb was most ac-
tively writing his tafsīr had witnessed the Nasser regime’s systematic repres-
sion of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Quṭb was a member.6 Ibn ʿĀshūr
represents a form of intellectual thought that has not received as much at-
tention as the former two, Islamic modernism and Islamism. As a neo-tradi-
tionalist, he was one Tunisia’s most renowned scholars, holding the positions
of shaykh of Zaytūna University, Mālikī shaykh al-Islam,7 and the state grand
Ruptures and Continuities in Modern Islamic Thought 21
muftī. A traditionally trained scholar who outlived Zaytūna scholars’ earlier

enthusiasm for reform, Ibn ʿĀshūr witnessed the gradual marginalization of
his class, the ʿulama, and more significantly, the scholarly tradition through
which religious authority had been historically mediated. As an heir and
guardian to this tradition, Ibn ʿĀshūr articulates in his scholarship a path
for change by reviving the principles and methodologies that underlie the
Islamic tradition.
In this chapter, I situate each of the four modern exegetes within broader
typologies of modern Islamic thought. Highlighting the individual over the
ideological, I first offer a brief biographical sketch of each exegete, paying at-
tention to the most important personal, historical, and political events that
shape their ideas and programs for reform. Second, I locate their intellec-
tual orientations among broader movements in modern Muslim thought. In
exploring their respective intellectual frameworks, I offer historical revisions
to prominent claims often made about each of the four intellectuals. Third,
I highlight their distinct encounters and engagement with modernity in
consideration of important political, structural, and social changes in Egypt
and Tunisia. As a result of the evolving nature of modernity, each of the
intellectuals I examine reflects different responses and interactions with his
evolving cultural and political contexts, affirming the notion of “multiple
modernities”8 in the Muslim world.
How Useful Are Labels?
The human mind exhibits a natural tendency to organize and categorize its
thought. By using typologies, we often render human ideas more tangible and
concrete, thereby minimizing the potential for obscurity and ambiguity. The
Western study of modern Islamic thought reflects the tendency to explain
intellectual and ideological orientations in the twentieth century through the
use of typologies. How do these typologies contribute to our understanding
of intellectual phenomena in the modern Muslim world? What is at stake
in our use of such typologies? An honest response to both questions is nec-
essary for an academic study that promises to avoid the pitfalls of reducing
human beings to their ideas. William Shepard captures the predicament of
using labels when writing about modern Islam: “It is probably fair to say
of labels such as ‘fundamentalist,’ ‘modernist,’ and ‘secularist,’ which are in
common use today in writing about modern Islam, that we cannot live very
easily with them, but that we certainly cannot live without them.”9 Shepard’s
acute observation rings true for this study. On one hand, the abstract na-
ture of human thought often requires an organizational structure or frame-
work by which we can connect corresponding ideas and trends. On the other
hand, the use of labels threatens to obscure our understanding of a scholar’s
intellectual trajectory, lose sight of the complexities of the individuals we are
studying, or trivialize the evolution of their ideas. Further, the use of ideolog-
ical typologies might underestimate the impact of personal, societal, and po-
litical events that have shaped the development of a person’s thought. Worse
yet, typologies run the risk of reducing human beings to labels, a process by
which we may dehumanize our subjects.
“Dehumanizing always starts with language, often followed by images.
We see this throughout history,”10 writes psychologist Brené Brown.
This dilemma is exacerbated when dealing with Muslim political actors,
intellectuals, and trends in modern Muslim thought. It is compounded by the
fact that the terms “Islam” and “Muslim” carry a semantic baggage in Western
scholarship that is not true for most of the world’s major religions. Terms
such as “Islam,” “Islamic,” and “Islamist” are understood against a long back-
drop of Western engagement with the Muslim world, accentuated by imperi-
alism, war, and violence. When words travel around the world, they “acquire
baggage—connotations, implications, valuations.”11 When a U.S. presiden-
tial candidate states “I think Islam hates us”12 on national television or an
American professor writes “Islam has bloody borders,”13 their choice of
words is not inconsequential to the images we conjure or the conclusions we
draw. Such expressions conflate contemporary political actors from patches
of the Middle East with a global religious tradition that spans fifteen centu-
ries and five continents. As Donald Emmerson notes, a scholar’s decision to
use the term “Islam” or “Islamic” rather than “Muslim” “drains attention from
a multiplicity of differently living Muslims and concentrates it on the defini-
tional uniformity of the singular noun Islam as one monotheistic faith—one
God, one book, and by implication one community as well.”14 In contrast,
“the plural term Muslims is centrifugally humanizing. . . . Other things being
equal, when discourse shifts from Islamic to Muslim, the infallible Word of
God gives way to a welter of human imperfections.”15
Considering the setbacks involved in using classifications and labels, then,
why use them at all? Why situate the four modern Qurʾanic commentators
within significant typologies of modern Islamic thought? First, as Shepard
argues, “[w]‌e certainly cannot begin to make sense of an area as vast and
complex as the modern Muslim world unless we can analyze its manifold
phenomena into a manageable number of categories with designations. It is
not a question of whether we use labels, but how we use them.”16 Second,
there are clear connections between certain intellectuals’ premises, agendas,
methods, and outlooks that one would be remiss not to point out. The ideas
of Islamists, Salafis, Islamic modernists, and neo-traditionalists are rooted
in common premises, employ similar lines of reasoning, and follow similar
trajectories. Third, there is a logistical efficiency achieved by categorization,
a reality well known to those less skilled in the organizational department.
Categorization gives us an organizational structure by which we can group
together similar ideas and thinkers from diverse regions and begin to discern
important patterns that emerge between them.
My use of typologies of modern Muslim thought is guided by three basic
principles. First, I highlight the individual over the ideological. I analyze
modern exegetes through the lens of their personal biography, paying spe-
cific attention to their intellectual development and the range of personal,
social, and political influences that impress upon their ideas. Second, I ac-
knowledge the intersectionality and fluidity of their identities. Their ideolog-
ical frameworks constitute one aspect of their identities. Quṭb, for example, is
not only an Islamist but a literary critic who succeeds in applying a thematic
and literary reading to the Qurʾan in a way that had never been applied. Ibn
ʿĀshūr is a traditionally trained scholar who wishes to revive lost elements
of the scholastic tradition, yet he is also a reformer who pushes back against
dogmatic methods of naql (transmission) that are not grounded in reason or
explicit texts. An analysis of their exegetical works solely through their ide-
ological orientation would miss these crucial distinctions. When one wears
purple-colored lenses, everything is imbued with purple. Third, while the
labels “Islamist,” “modernist,” and “neo-traditionalist” are useful in situating
an individual thinker within broader trends of modern Muslim thought,
I qualify my use of such labels by acknowledging when an individual thinker
diverges from the conditions of a set typology, rather than stretch a label be-
yond its aim. In this chapter, I highlight the most salient aspects of their lives,
which influenced their intellectual and political trajectory. I situate their in-
tellectual framework within broader political, structural, and social changes
in Egypt and Tunisia and highlight their distinct encounters and engagement
with modernity. Finally, I offer a revision to some of the assumptions that
abound in academic literature about these four influential intellectuals and
Qurʾanic commentators.
Muḥammad ʿAbduh: A Biographical Sketch
ʿAbduh’s agitation with the state of Egypt’s educational system began when
he was still a student. Born in the village of Maḥallat Naṣr (in Buḥayra prov-
ince)17 in Lower Egypt in 1849, his first teachers were a private tutor and a
reciter of the Qurʾan. By the age of twelve, ʿAbduh had memorized the entire
Qurʾan. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to Tanta to study at the Aḥmadī
mosque, “considered second only to the great al-Azhar University as the
place to learn the Qurʾan and recitation.”18 Dismayed by the instruction at the
Aḥmadī mosque, which focused on rote memorization, he left, “convinced
that he would never again take up academic life,” Yvonne Haddad notes.19
One of his uncles, a shaykh of the Shādhilī Sufi order, would later reignite his
love for learning, as ʿAbduh became acquainted with the ascetic practices and
moral teachings of the Sufi order. This Sufi influence remained with ʿAbduh
throughout his life and set him apart in ideology from his disciple, Riḍā, who
complained of studying Islamic texts full of “Sufi superstitions.”20
In 1866, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, ʿAbduh left for al-Azhar
University in Cairo, one of the most prestigious Islamic universities in the
Muslim world and the center of Egypt’s intellectual life at the time. ʿAbduh’s
traditional learning gave him the experience that informed much of his later
critique of the educational systems of traditional Islamic seminaries. The
quality of education at al-Azhar in the late nineteenth century, when ʿAbduh
was studying there, “consisted of learning by heart a traditional corpus of
material, encumbered by all that successive generations had added to it,”21 as
Jaques Jomier describes it.
ʿAbduh did not settle for the type of education that al-Azhar offered. As
a professor in the late 1870s, he exposed students to new texts in theology,
Islamic history, and Western scholarship. As Anke von Kügelgen explains,
“ʿAbduh instructed advanced students in a complicated work that was
hardly ever taught, the commentary of the Ashʿarī Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftazānī
(d. 793/1390) on ʿUmar al-Nasafī’s (d. 537/1142) treatise on Māturīdī dogma
(ʿaqāʾid), thereby risking the revocation of his permission to teach.”22 He
nonetheless received his degree of ʿālim from al-Azhar and began to teach
at the newly established Dār al-ʿUlūm college in 1878. In his new post, he
continued to expose students to nontraditional texts, one of which was Ibn
Khaldūn’s Muqaddima, a fourteenth-century work of universal history,
“regarded as the earliest attempt by any historian to discover a pattern in the
changes that occur in man’s political and social organization.”23 Ironically,
when ʿAbduh tried to incorporate this significant historical work into al-
Azhar’s curriculum a decade later, it was rejected on the premise that it did
not belong to “the tradition.”24 Thus, ʿAbduh’s early experiences on both
ends of the classroom, as a student and instructor, sparked his ardent enthu-
siasm to overhaul Egypt’s educational system, to which he committed most
of his life.
ʿAbduh’s Political Consciousness
The changes brought forth by rapid modernization, colonialism, and the

dissolution of the Ottoman state had not yet reached their climax during
ʿAbduh’s lifetime. Nonetheless, by 1870 European military imperialism in
the Muslim world, specifically North Africa, was becoming a reality that
could no longer be ignored. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838–1897), whom
ʿAbduh named as his second teacher, directed his attention to the need to
thwart European intervention and unify Muslim-majority territories into a
pan-Islamic entity.25 ʿAbduh’s affiliation with al-Afghānī would prove to be
costly. Within one year of the start of his teaching career, in 1879, ʿAbduh
was dismissed from his position and banished to his native village due to this
affiliation with al-Afghānī. The latter had become increasingly controversial
due to his outspoken criticism of the country’s leaders and rejection of for-
eign intervention in the country.26 As a result, al-Afghānī was expelled from
Egypt by Khedive Ismāʿīl in 1879. In 1882 ʿAbduh was also exiled from Egypt
due to his siding with the nationalist cause against the khedive’s pro-British
policies. After a two-year stay in Beirut, at al-Afghānī’s invitation he moved
to Paris, from where al-Afghānī had been warning against the dangers of
Western imperialism and control of Muslim territories.27 There the pair
founded the greatly influential organization al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqā (The Firm
Bond) and an eponymous publication.28 Al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh called upon
Muslims to unite politically under a pan-Islamic identity and overcome ra-
cial and national differences. They identified the growing internal division
among Muslims into national identities to be one of the main sources of the
global community’s decline and vulnerability to imperialism.
According to most of ʿAbduh’s biographers, his association with al-
Afghānī influenced the trajectory of ʿAbduh’s reformist vision and political
career. For example, in one of the earliest biographies of ʿAbduh written in
English, first published in 1933, Charles Adams writes:
The initial impulse to the reform movement in Egypt originated, not within
Egypt itself, but from the teaching and influence of that noted exponent
of Pan-Islamism and advocate of thorough-going reform in Islam, the
Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghānī, who spent the years 1871–1879 in Egypt.
Muhammad Abduh was one of the many young Egyptian students who
were profoundly influenced by the ideas of the magnetic Afghan savant;
but it was Muhammad Abduh who more than any of the others was to
prove his spiritual and intellectual kinship to the great teacher. By his active
participation in the political, social and religious life of his country, by his
writings, and most of all by his energetic practical reforms, he perpetuated
the spirit and ideals of his master. He thus became the prophet of a new day
for Egypt and for Islam.29
The credit given to al-Afghānī and his influence on Egypt’s reform

movement, however, is not entirely accurate. Itzchak Weismann, for ex-
ample, questions the extent of al-Afghānī’s actual impact on ʿAbduh’s
political career and vision. He argues that orientalist scholarship30 on
ʿAbduh had “uncritically reproduced” Riḍā’s “genealogical construction of
early Islamic Modernism,” which went from al-Afghānī to ʿAbduh to Riḍā.
The reason for this uncritical reproduction in Western scholarship, ac-
cording to Weismann, was an overreliance on Riḍā’s biographical account
of ʿAbduh. Riḍā’s enchantment with al-Afghānī led him to overemphasize
al-Afghānī’s influence on ʿAbduh and to downplay the conflict that led to
their eventual split. This was Riḍā’s way of linking himself to al-Afghānī,
whom he admired as a youth but never met.31 More recently, Ahmed El
Shamsy’s assessment of ʿAbduh’s literary output and contributions to the
production of classical texts reflects a more independent streak. ʿAbduh’s
reformist vision appears to be the outgrowth of his disenchantment with
the inadequacies of the traditional religious curriculum, his broad and re-
fined scholarly training, the impact of the cultural revolution in book cul-
ture, and the emergence of a new scholarly elite outside the traditional
realm of religious scholarship.32
The reasons are speculative, but midway through his career ʿAbduh shifted
his focus from political activism to legal and educational reform. The ur-
gency that he once felt to politically respond to the external threat seemed to
dissipate in the latter half of his career. The reasons for ʿAbduh’s withdrawal
from political activism could be multiple. Perhaps he realized that the task
of overcoming the imperial threat of colonialism was too daunting for men
outside the role of governance. Perhaps he saw his role as a man of religion
better executed by undertaking another difficult task, of intellectual regener-
ation and reform. At any rate, it is clear that he saw the treatment of internal
problems as part of the solution to the external challenge facing the global
Muslim community. For ʿAbduh, political activism and educational reforms
both offered different solutions to the Muslim world’s problems. While one
dealt with the external challenge of European colonialism, the other dealt
with the internal problems of intellectual deterioration, the inability to re-
form laws in light of changing conditions, and internal division. ʿAbduh
believed that broader educational reform would give rise to the moral re-
generation of society in a way that was far more lasting than an abrupt po-
litical coup. Therefore, his focus on educational and legal reforms stemmed
from his belief that greater political change would ensue from changing the
people’s condition, specifically by awakening an accurate understanding of
their faith.33 One of the earliest biographers of ʿAbduh, Osman Amin (d.
1978) explains:
After the disappearance, at the end of 1884, of the journal al-‘Urwah al-
Wuthkā, and after the failure of their revolutionary projects, ʿAbduh pro-
posed to his mentor [al-Afghānī] to consecrate henceforth their efforts
to the education, and to the creation of a sort of special school, which,
following a new method, would contribute to the regeneration of the
manners and customs, and to the formation of an elite among Egyptian
youth, which would better correspond to the moral idea which they pur-
sued. Every result obtained by this means was certainly much slower
than could be obtained by a revolution, but it is also more profound and
certain.34
In 1888 the khedive allowed ʿAbduh to return to Cairo, but he was for-
bidden from teaching there, perhaps due to fear of his influence on the young
people of Egypt.35 Instead, he was appointed a judge in the country’s “native
courts,” established to implement the khedive’s new laws. In 1895 he became
a member of al-Azhar’s administrative council and was appointed grand
muftī of Egypt. He used these positions to introduce reforms to Egypt’s reli-
gious courts and educational system, specifically its ancient and prestigious
al-Azhar University.36
Islamic Modernist Thought
Although some scholars have depicted ʿAbduh’s advocacy for a return to the
ways of the “pious forefathers” (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ) as a distinctly Salafi out-
look,37 a few scholars view ʿAbduh’s modernism and Riḍā’s Salafism as two
distinct strands of thought.38 The characterization of ʿAbduh and al-Afghāni’s
reform agenda as “Salafi” dates back to the French scholar Louis Massignon
(d. 1962), who first made this association in Revue du monde musulman in
1919. Henri Lauzière critiques Massignon’s “flawed” conception of Salafism:
Since then, Massignon’s narrative and its resulting typology have been reit-
erated in countless works through a chain of Western scholars who trusted
each other’s authority, thereby becoming one of the fundamental postulates
on which the study of modern Islamic thought is based. Although it is true
that al-Afghānī and Abduh provided the initial élan for a type of Islamic re-
formism that later became known as modernist Salafism, primary sources
do not corroborate the claim that they either coined the term or used it to
identify themselves in the late 19th century.39
Lauzière’s revision of the history of modern Salafism was not accepted by

all. Frank Griffel, for example, writes a blunt critique of Lauzière in Die Welt
des Islams (2015) and provides a rather unconvincing defense of Massignon’s
narrative of modern Salafism. Historical facts, however, favor Lauzière’s argu-
ment that Islamic modernism cannot be conflated with modern Salafism. As
El Shamsy illustrates in Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, ʿAbduh’s breadth
of expertise, training, and revival of classical texts in philology, exegesis, his-
tory, and Islamic ethics undermine his earlier depiction as a Salafi in Western
scholarship.40 Further, as both David Commins and Weismann contend,
Salafism was not a mere offshoot of the modernist trend in Egypt but was a
separate trend that emerged among the reformist-minded ʿulama of the late
Ottoman Empire and specifically in Damascus. Reversing Massignon’s ear-
lier claim that ʿAbduh and al-Afghānī were the founders of the modern Salafi
movement, Commins suggests that the progenitors of modern Salafism were,
in fact, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (1866–1914)41 and Ṭāhir al-Jazāʾirī (1852–
1920), both of whom belonged to the reformist intellectual circles of Syria.42
One of the greatest differences between the two strands of thought,
Islamic modernism and Salafism, is their relationship to reason. According
to Islamic modernists like ʿAbduh, there is no question that Islam is a
thoroughly rational religion and that the Qurʾan’s conclusions and com-
mandments naturally accord with human reason and intellect.43 An impli-
cation of ʿAbduh’s belief is that human intellect can discern the rationale
for God’s commandments. If one wants to know, for example, why God has
asked us to not kill or take interest on capital, it is sufficient for one to use
one’s intellect.44 In his most important theological work, Risālat al-Tawḥīd,
ʿAbduh argues for the primacy of reason in Islam, which distinguishes him
from the position of Salafis. In his book Al-Islam wa-l-Naṣrāniyya (Islam
and Christianity), a collection of six journal articles that first appeared in
al-Manār, ʿAbduh argues for the unique civilizational potential of Islam as
a religion that embraces science, rationalization, and progress.45 Although
he attempts to demonstrate the harmony between revelation, reason, and
human moral temperament in Islam, reason wins out. “In case of a dis-
parity between reason and what has been transmitted by tradition, reason
predominates,” ʿAbduh writes.46 While I do not regard Salafis as antiratio-
nalist, as do some critics,47 I argue that reason does not operate as a her-
meneutical constraint in their methodology, unlike the case with ʿAbduh.
According to Salafis’ text-centered methodology, authenticated traditions
from the Prophet and the first three generations of his followers triumph
over reason.
ʿAbduh’s reform project was not “primarily an endeavor to adapt Islam
to the challenge of the modern West”48 but was an internal process of
reform that grew out of frustration with Muslims’ intellectual, cultural,
and political decline. In addition to situating ʿAbduh as a modernist
rather than a Salafi, I argue that ʿAbduh’s vision and program for reform
functions more as an internal response to the intellectual and political
decadence of his time than simply a response to Westernization. The focus
on ʿAbduh’s reform movement as primarily a response to Westernization
reflects a Eurocentric bias in much of the earlier Western scholarship on
ʿAbduh. This bias betrays the notion that all genuine impulses of reform
in the world derive their inspiration from the West. While the colonial
critique of Islam unquestionably looms on his radar, ʿAbduh is far more
interested in internal religious reform, as he primarily addresses fellow
religious scholars, rather than Westerners, and engages his peers on their
own terms. ʿAbduh’s concern for internal reform, rather than responding
to Western critiques, is most evident upon contrasting ʿAbduh and Riḍā’s
exegesis of Q. 4:3, which allows men to marry up to four women simul-
taneously, with the condition of justice. For example, in his critique of
polygyny in his exegesis on Q. 4:3, ʿAbduh doesn’t reference Western crit-

icism of this institution, unlike Riḍā, although he was certainly aware of
British administrators’ disdain for polygyny. Rather, ʿAbduh appeals to
fellow religious scholars, primarily Ḥanafī jurists, to repeal the laws on
polygyny in Egypt.49 As I illustrate in chapter 4, he does not argue that
this institution is ancient or out of sync with modernity but invokes the
Islamic legal maxims of preventing harm and securing the public wel-
fare of society (maṣlaḥa), which, he argues, are basic principles of Islamic
law.50 In fact, ʿAbduh is the only commentator among the premodern and
modern Qurʾanic exegetes I examine who takes a strong stance against the
modern application of polygyny.
There is a discernible attempt by ʿAbduh, nonetheless, to refute the
Western colonial narrative on Islam as an impediment to women’s progress,
although this impulse is far more evident in Riḍā’s commentaries on women.
As Leila Ahmed writes, ʿAbduh “was probably the first to make the argu-
ment, still made by Muslim feminists today, that it was Islam and not the
West that first recognized the full and equal humanity of women.”51 Yet even
in doing so, ʿAbduh’s gaze remains inward, directed at the failures of Muslims
to live up to their religion’s teachings. He makes this argument throughout
his tafsīr and other works. For example, in his interpretation of Q. 2:228, he
argues:
This status to which Islam has elevated women has not been realized by any
previous religion or any legal system. In fact, no nation before Islam or after
it has reached this height [in its treatment of women]. These European na-
tions fall short of the status that Islam gave to women, although they have
exaggerated the dignity and respect they pay to women and have attended
to women’s education in the sciences and arts, as a result of the influence
of their [recent] progress in civility and urbanization. Yet some of their
laws continue to deny women the right to freely act with their own wealth
without their husbands’ permission and deny them other such rights that
Islam granted to women nearly three hundred and fifty years ago . . . and
these French, whose civility falls short of our Sharīʿa in its elevation of
women, have become boastful over us. In fact, they accuse us of savagery in
our treatment of women. And those who are ignorant of Islam among them
think that our current conditions are the result of our religion. . . . Look at
how we have become an argument against our religion.52
Sayyid Quṭb: A Biographical Sketch
Quṭb’s significance and influence unquestionably climaxed after his execu-

tion by Egypt’s regime in 1966. Decades later his personality, ideology, and
political agenda are still very much in debate. In the heated post-9/11 climate,
his writings became the object of much attention by some U.S. politicians,
journalists, and academics, as they sought to understand the ideological
motivations behind those who attacked the United States. Many Western
scholars began to identify Quṭb’s writings, in particular Maʿālim fī al-Ṭarīq
(Milestones), published in 1964, as the source of the terrorists’ ideological
inspiration. For example, Lawrence Wright, author of Looming Tower, sin-
gled out Milestones, one of Quṭb’s last works, as the “fountainhead of rad-
ical Islam.”53 Further, in the New York Times Magazine in 2003, Paul Berman
identified Milestones as “the classic manifesto of the terrorist wing of Islamic
fundamentalism.”54 This verdict wasn’t confined to American journalists.
Academic likes Fawaz Gerges argued in The Far Enemy, “More than anyone
else, Sayyid Quṭb . . . inspired generations of jihadis, including al-Qaeda’s
senior leaders, Osama Bin Laden and his deputies.”55 Within the past two
decades, journalists and academics alike have turned the pages of Milestones
in an attempt to construct a link between Quṭb’s political ideology and al-
Qaeda’s terrorist actions.
An analysis of Quṭb’s ideas through the lens of the 9/11 terrorist attacks or
the radicalism of al-Qaeda, however, is anachronistic. It betrays an intellec-
tual obsession with tracing a genealogy of thought that doesn’t always match
up. Neither al-Qaeda’s emergence nor the horrific attacks of 9/11 occurred
in the span of Quṭb’s sixty-year life, as he was executed in 1966. As Roxanne
Euben and Qasim Zaman also note, “Quṭb’s work and legacy are far more
complex, polyvalent, and susceptible to multiple readings than such labels
[i.e., Berman’s title, ‘Philosopher of Islamic Terror’] suggest.”56 This book
seeks neither to incriminate nor to vindicate Quṭb but to assess his com-
mentaries on women and gender in the Qurʾan through a comparative anal-
ysis with significant premodern and modern commentators. Despite the
public fascination with Quṭb’s more controversial writings (which reflect
the last phase of his life, during his imprisonment), his most significant lit-
erary output was, by far, his Qurʾanic exegesis, Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾan. It has been
reprinted (both legally and illegally) several times, translated into English,
French, German, Urdu, Turkish, Indonesian, Persian and Bengali, among
other languages,57 and figured as the subject of hundreds of works of sec-

ondary literature in many languages. In the next section, I assess the develop-
ment of his political thought in light of his personal biography and historical
context. In doing so, I seek to locate the Quṭb of history rather than the Quṭb
of our literary imaginations.
Quṭb’s Upbringing and Literary Training
Quṭb was born in 1906 to a middle-class family in the village of Mūsha near
Asyūṭ in Upper Egypt. He left his native village in 1920 to pursue his sec-
ondary education in Cairo. He studied at Dār al-ʿUlūm, an educational insti-
tution that combined traditional Islamic education with the secular sciences.
Later, in 1946, this institution would become a part of Cairo University as
the the Faculty of Dār al-ʿUlūm.58 After completing his education there,
Quṭb worked as a teacher for almost six years, after which he served as a
functionary in the Ministry of Education for nineteen years.59 During this
time, he made his mark as a literary critic and writer in Egyptian cultural
circles, but his tone was still not overtly religious. It was not until he joined
the Muslim Brotherhood around 1951,60 after a two-year visit of the United
States, that he adopted a more religious tone.
Quṭb was both a product of his intellectual climate and a contributor to
the ideas that permeated Egyptian intellectual life during the 1920s–1960s.
As a public intellectual, writer, and teacher, he was clearly engaging in a di-
alectic, responding and contributing to passionate debates of his time, such
as the political future of Egypt as a modern state and the role of Arab nation-
alism, and defining what it means to be an Egyptian in the twentieth cen-
tury. Secularism was on the offensive in Egypt in the 1920s–1930s, especially
after the liberal, nationalist movement gained political power in 1919.61 The
leadership of the 1919 Wafd Revolution, which Quṭb had supported, was
dominated by secularists who appeared to be under “the spell of European
thought and who were willing to adopt not only European ideas, but the
very institutions that grew in Europe.”62 Despite the political appeal to Arab
nationalism, Egypt’s intellectual culture was dominated by an obsessive
valorization of the West. This period of “cultural imperialism”63 was most
evident in the trajectory of the state’s reforms and the writings of Egyptian
intellectuals such as Qāsim Amīn and Taha Ḥusayn, who advocated for the
Europeanization of Egypt.64 As a young man, Quṭb came under the influence
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Ludwig und Bodak — lauter tüchtige, prächtige Männer, die für solch
eine Reise wie geschaffen waren.
Der Himmel sah bedenklich aus, nur ein einziger Stern blitzte
zwischen den zerfetzten Wolken. Ich lag noch eine Weile wach und
lauschte der wunderbaren Stille der Wüste, die nur hier und da von
Hundegebell in der Ferne oder von den Lauten eines Nachtvogels
unterbrochen wurde. Ich hörte meine Uhr unter dem Kopfkissen
ticken und die langen, tiefen Atemzüge meiner beiden
Reisekameraden. Dann schlief auch ich ein.
Gegen 11 Uhr aber erwachte ich durch einen furchtbaren
Sturzregen. Schwere Tropfen platschten draußen in neu
entstandene Wasserlachen und trommelten auf die Zeltbahnen. Und
das Trommeln dauerte die ganze Nacht mit unverminderter
Heftigkeit! So oft ich erwachte, hörte ich dieses trostlose Rauschen,
das uns mindestens auch für den nächsten Tag den Weg nach
Osten versperren mußte.
Am Morgen spannten wir bei immerfort strömendem Regen die
Zelttür zu einem Dach auf, das von zwei Stangen getragen wurde,
und frühstückten auf dieser luftigen Veranda Eier und Schinken, die
wir auf einem Primuskocher gebacken hatten. Nach Norden zu lag
die freie Steppe vor uns, aber von den nahen Bergen war keine Spur
mehr zu sehen. Schwere Wolken schwebten über der Erde, und wer
das Zelt verließ, sank fußtief in den roten Schlamm ein.
Gegen Mittag hörte der Regen eine Weile auf. Da kamen auch
schon die Dorfleute neugierig heran, und ein altes runzliges Weib
bat um Medizin für ihren Sohn, den seit einigen Tagen starker
Kopfschmerz und Fieber plagten. Dr. Reith gab ihr etwas für den
Kranken. Vor kurzem war in Bir-dava der Flecktyphus ausgebrochen
und hatte von den fünfunddreißig Einwohnern sieben weggerafft. Für
Geld und gute Worte brachte man uns etwas armseliges Reisig zu
einem Feuer, dessen Glut wir in einem eisernen Kessel ins Zelt
trugen, um in der feuchten Kälte nur ein gewisses Gefühl von
Wärme und Trockenheit zu gewinnen. Kleine zerlumpte Kinder
sammelten Konservenbüchsen und leere Flaschen, und die
Dorfhunde wurden immer frecher auf der Suche nach Abfällen.
Sogar eine Maus quartierte sich unter unsern Kisten und Säcken ein
und entwischte uns immer wieder, so oft wir auch Jagd auf sie
machten.
Schließlich begann es wieder zu regnen. Man hörte und sah, wie
ein Regenschauer nach dem andern wolkenbruchartig über die
Steppe daherkam. Sogar in unserm Zelt waren wir nicht mehr sicher.
Die Chauffeure mußten ringsherum einen Kanal graben und einen
Erdwall aufwerfen, um uns vor Überschwemmung zu schützen. Vor
dem Eingang bauten sie eine Brücke aus Planken des
Lastautomobils. Das ganze Feld war ein einziger Sumpf, denn es
dauerte lange, bis das Regenwasser den Lehm durchdrang, dessen
Oberfläche glatt war wie Seife. Ein tragikomisches Schauspiel bot
eine vorüberziehende kleine Karawane von Mauleseln: die auf den
schwer beladenen Saumsätteln sitzenden Araber hatten ihre
schwarz- und braungeränderten Mäntel über den Kopf gezogen, und
der Regen floß nur so von ihnen und ihren Tieren herunter. Die
endlich hereinbrechende Dämmerung wirkte fast wie eine Erlösung.
Wir bereiteten mit möglichster Langsamkeit unser Abendessen und
überließen uns einer neuen Nacht.
Gegen Mitternacht weckte mich wiederum ein fast tropischer
Regenguß aus dem Schlaf. Feine Wassertropfen sprühten durch das
Zelttuch auf uns herab, und einige Stunden später regnete es so
kräftig herein, daß Dr. Reith in das Unwetter hinaus mußte, um den
Schutzlappen des Zeltfensters an der Windseite wieder
festzubinden, der aufgegangen war.
Am Tage wurde es nicht besser. Die Zelttür mußte geschlossen
bleiben, denn der Wind stand gerade gegen sie; wir frühstückten auf
meinem Bett und saßen da wie Schiffbrüchige auf kleiner Klippe in
einem Meer von Schlamm; der Zeltgraben stand ebenfalls bis an die
Ränder voll Wasser. Die schmutzigen Hunde wurden immer kecker,
da wir sie nicht verfolgen konnten. Dazu kam die erschreckende
Nachricht, daß der Kranke von gestern über Nacht gestorben sei —
wir hatten also den Flecktyphus als nächsten Nachbarn!
Später am Tage sahen wir denn auch, wie sich ein kleiner
Leichenzug nach dem Friedhof bewegte, der in einiger Entfernung
südöstlich von unserm Zeltplatz lag. Auf einer Bahre trug man den
Toten langsam dahin. Am Grabe sprachen die Begleiter
Totengebete; bald reckten sie die Hände in der Richtung nach
Mekka empor, bald sanken sie in dem fürchterlichen Schlamm
neben der Leiche nieder. Endlich wurde der Tote in die Erde
gesenkt, abermals Gebete gesprochen und das Grab zugeschaufelt.
Ich glaube, die Zeremonie dauerte ein paar Stunden. Dabei regnete
es unaufhörlich, und die groben Mäntel der Fellachen glänzten von
Wasser. Nach vollbrachter Arbeit ging das Trauergefolge ebenso
langsam nach Haus, wie es gekommen war.
Während der Flecktyphus-Epidemie in Aleppo haben deutsche
Ärzte die Beobachtung gemacht, daß Europäer für Ansteckung weit
empfänglicher sind als Eingeborene. Auch hat sich während des
Krieges gezeigt, daß die Krankheit bei russischen Soldaten und
Kosaken einen milden Verlauf nimmt, weil sie an Ungeziefer
gewöhnt sind. Je älter der Patient ist, um so schwerer kommt er
durch.
Einem türkischen Soldaten, der gen Westen ritt, gab der Major
einen Brief mit, worin er die zurückgelassenen Chauffeure über
unsre Lage unterrichtete. Sonst zeigte sich kein Reisender, der kühn
genug gewesen wäre, den Kampf mit den Elementen aufzunehmen.
Bei Dunkelwerden hörte der Regen auf. Da brachte „Lohengrin“
— wie Lundgren von den Kameraden genannt wurde — das
Teewasser ins Zelt und meldete, im Norden sei eine Reihe Feuer
sichtbar. Was mochte das sein? Biwakfeuer? Doch nicht etwa
russische? Aber das war unmöglich, dann hätten wir etwas von
einem Rückzug der Türken merken müssen. Diese waren aber im
Vormarsch. Nach der Karte lag in jener Richtung, nur 10 Kilometer
entfernt, Mardin, das sich seit gestern hartnäckig hinter dem
Regenschleier verborgen hatte; die Feuer waren nichts anderes als
die Lampen in den Häusern dieser Stadt. Wir konnten uns also ohne
Sorge in unserm Gefängnis zur Ruhe begeben und den
Regenschauern lauschen, die am Abend mit vermehrter Heftigkeit
einsetzten.
Am nächsten Tag dasselbe Bild! Man steht auf, wäscht sich,
kleidet sich an, öffnet einen Spalt der Zelttür, frühstückt und hat den
ewig langen Tag vor sich. Ich habe Bezolds „Ninive und Babylon“
und „Moltkes Briefe aus der Türkei 1835–39“ bei mir, aber die Ruhe
zum Lesen fehlt. Man wartet in sehnsüchtiger Qual, daß irgendetwas
geschehe, uns aus dieser hoffnungslosen Lage zu befreien.
Volkstypen zu zeichnen ist auch unmöglich; Leute mit Flecktyphus
bringenden Läusen ins Zelt hereinlassen — das fehlte noch! Im
Dorfe geht das Leben seinen alltäglichen Gang. Frauen treiben von
den Feldern Schafe und Ziegen herein oder holen in Lehmkrügen
Wasser am Brunnen. Der Himmel ist blauschwarz. Zuweilen grollt
unglückverheißend und dumpf der Donner in den Bergen. Und das
ist Mesopotamien im April, wo ich Frühlingswärme erwartet hatte,
Trockenheit und Skorpione! Aber wir waren ja freilich in einer Höhe
von 550 Meter und am Fuß eines Gebirges, wo der Winter noch
nicht gewichen war. Nachmittags um 5 Uhr zeigte das Thermometer
nur 10 Grad, eine Temperatur, die wir nach den warmen
Sonnentagen in Aleppo als Kälte empfanden.
Drei Soldaten kamen von Ras-el-Ain zu Fuß; sie hatten unsre
verunglückten Automobile und das Zelt der Chauffeure gesehen. Ein
paar andere zogen in entgegengesetzter Richtung. Sie waren schon
20 bis 30 Kilometer östlich von Nesibin in das Moorbad geraten, das
bis hierher reichte, und sie gaben uns die tröstliche Versicherung,
daß mindestens zwei Tage warmer Sonnenschein nötig seien, um
das Land wieder zu trocknen.
Am Nachmittag trat einen Augenblick die Sonne hervor, und mit
ihr in Nordnordwest die alte Festung von Mardin auf dem Gipfel des
Bergkammes; unmittelbar darunter die Häuser wie Schwalbennester
an den Böschungen, dazwischen die armenischen und syrischen
Kirchen und weißen Minarette. Aber bald verschwand wieder alles
unter schwarzen Wolkenmassen und neuen Regenschauern.
Eine verzweifelte Lage! Wären wir nur einen Tag früher
aufgebrochen, so wären wir bereits in Mosul! Die ganze Strecke ist
nur 320 Kilometer lang, für ein Auto zwei Tage Fahrt. Nun saßen wir
in diesem elenden Gefängnis und konnten weder vor- noch
rückwärts. Proviant hatten wir ja noch für acht Tage, nur Brot und
Wasser gingen zu Ende. Aber an letzterem war ja kein Mangel — wir
brauchten nur ein Stück Segeltuch aufzuspannen, um die Kannen
gefüllt zu erhalten.
Am Morgen des 3. April weckte uns die Meldung, die Sonne
scheine. Wirklich! Der halbe Himmel blau und hell, und über die
andere Hälfte segelten freundliche weiße Frühlingswolken. Wir
kleideten uns in aller Eile an und rasierten uns sogar aus lauter
Feststimmung. Für vier Soldaten, die von Ras-el-Ain
dahergewandert kamen, kauften wir bei der Dorfbevölkerung einige
Brote, denn sie hatten nichts mehr zu essen, da sie während der
Regentage hatten liegen bleiben müssen.
Mardin von Südosten gesehen.

Dann beobachteten wir mit zunehmender Spannung, wie die
Regenlachen zusammenschrumpften und die Ackerschollen rings
um unsern Lagerplatz immer deutlicher hervortraten. Kurz nach
Mittag war alles Wasser auf der Erdoberfläche verschwunden. Nur
um Zelt und Autos herum war der von uns und den Chauffeuren
zerstapfte Lehmschlamm noch fußtief. Die Mistkäfer aber schienen
dem guten Wetter noch kein Vertrauen zu schenken, so eilig rollten
sie ihre Erdklümpchen daher.
Nun zeigte sich auch wieder Leben auf der Straße. Eine
Karawane von fünfzig mit Munition beladenen Kamelen zog nach
Nesibin, und ein türkischer Offizier kam mit seinem Diener von
Westen geritten. Wir luden ihn in unser Zelt ein und bewirteten ihn
mit Kakao und Keks. Der Türke war Leutnant Ahmed Dschemal, von
kurdischer Abkunft, als Kompagnieführer auf dem Marsch nach dem
Irak; morgen sollte er in Nesibin sein. Der Major bat ihn, eine
Depesche nach Schamallan-han mitzunehmen, die Ersatzteile für
die verunglückten Automobile bestellte, und vom Kaimakam von
Nesibin acht Jailewagen zu verlangen, die schleunigst hierhin
kommen sollten, um unser schweres Gepäck zu holen. Jeder dieser
Wagen konnte bei schlechtem Weg 200 Kilogramm fassen und so
das Auto mit seiner Last von 3000 Kilogramm um die Hälfte
erleichtern. Als der Leutnant hörte, daß unser Brot zu Ende sei,
schenkte er uns aus seinem reichen Vorrat einige herrliche türkische
Kommißbrote. Bald kam auch seine Kompagnie dahermarschiert,
gegen 100 Mann, leicht bepackt und in vortrefflicher Verfassung.
Ihnen folgten eine Stunde später Packpferde mit Waffen, Munition
usw., und zuletzt zwei Gepäckwagen. Die Leute waren die vier Tage
im Platzregen marschiert und bis auf die Haut durchnäßt; aber bis
Bagdad wurden sie wohl wieder trocken!
Ahmed Dschemal war mit seiner Truppe kaum abmarschiert, als
sich über den Bergen neue Wolkenmassen sammelten. Wir hatten
zu früh gejubelt. Die blauen Flecke am Himmel verschwanden, und
es wurde dunkler und dunkler, und plötzlich stürzte ein neuer
Platzregen, zur Abwechslung mit Hagel vermischt, auf uns herab. In
wenigen Minuten waren Ackerfurchen und Zeltgraben wieder mit
Wasser gefüllt und das ganze Land ein unermeßlicher Sumpf. Es
wurde 3 Uhr, 5 Uhr, 6 Uhr — der Regen rauschte mit Erbitterung
herunter. Als er um 7 endlich aufhörte, hatte sich eine neue Nacht
auf die Erde gesenkt und unsre Hoffnungen auf baldige Befreiung
begraben.
Obgleich es am andern Morgen nicht mehr regnete, war die
Straße hoffnungslos. Ein vorüberreitender türkischer Soldat
versicherte, ein fester Kiesweg am Fuß des Gebirges entlang
verbinde Mardin mit Nesibin; auf diesem Wege hätten die Türken
noch vor fünf Tagen Geschütze nach Osten transportiert; diese
Richtung sollten wir einschlagen. Ehe der südliche Weg trocken
werde, könnten wir noch einen Monat oder länger hier liegen
bleiben! Sofort schickten wir die Chauffeure aus, um den nördlichen
Weg zu untersuchen. Sie fanden ihn — noch schlechter als den
unsrigen!
Da der Schlamm um uns her lebensgefährlich wurde, verlegten
wir unser Zelt etwa 20 Meter nordwärts von der Straße, zogen neue
Kanäle und Wälle, bauten zwischen Zelt und Wagen eine Brücke
und luden die Benzinfässer aus, um sie beim ersten Sonnenschein
über die gefährliche Senkung zu rollen, am liebsten gleich 6
Kilometer weit, damit das Auto schneller vorwärts komme.
Vergebliches Bemühen! Um 5 Uhr goß es wieder in Strömen.
Man sah, wie sich die Regenzentren am Gebirgsrand im Osten und
weiter südlich bildeten, nach Westen zogen, über unserem Lager
haltmachten und ihre Wolkenmassen über uns ausbreiteten. Es war,
als beeile sich jedes einzelne Wassermolekül, das aus dem
Mittelmeer und dem Persischen Meerbusen aufstieg, ausgerechnet
nach der Gegend zwischen Ras-el-Ain und Nesibin zu kommen und
dort niederzugehen, wo wir in dem roten Lehm, dem vorzüglichsten
Terrakottamaterial, so elend gestrandet waren!
Nachdem wir noch einen Tag im Sumpf gelegen hatten, war die
Geduld des Majors erschöpft. Am Morgen des 6. Aprils fragte er
mich plötzlich, ob ich Lust hätte, mit ihm allein nach Ras-el-Ain
zurückzukehren.
„Ja, mit Wonne, wenn wir nur von Bir-dava fortkommen!“
„Dann fahren wir jetzt gleich mit dem Benz und nehmen nur das
Unentbehrlichste mit. Was zurückbleibt, lasse ich nach Mosul und
Bagdad schaffen, sobald die Straßen besser sind.“
„Aber glauben Sie, daß das Auto in dem Schlamm und Regen
vorwärtskommt?“
„Wir mobilisieren jedes Dorf bis zur Eisenbahn!“
Und so geschah es. Wir ließen die Chauffeure bis auf Hofmeister
bei Dr. Reith zurück, der wohl oder übel sich in das Schicksal
ergeben mußte, auf unsrer Schlamminsel bei dem zurückgelassenen
Gepäck auszuharren. Vor unsern Benz spannten wir zunächst die
männliche Bevölkerung von Bir-dava, soweit sie sich anwerben ließ,
und mit vereinten Kräften zogen und stießen wir unsern Wagen bis
zum nächsten Dorf, wo eine neue Abteilung Fellachen requiriert
wurde. So ging es zum Verzweifeln langsam, aber sicher, von Ort zu
Ort; denn Zugtiere waren nirgends aufzutreiben. Wo die Bevölkerung
phantastischen Kriegslohn forderte, halfen uns türkische Soldaten
aus der Verlegenheit.
Das Auto wird an Bord einer Fähre geholt.
Bis zu den beiden verunglückten Lastautos blieb der Regen

unser treuer Begleiter. Am 8. April endlich klärte sich das Wetter auf,
die Wege wurden wieder fahrbar, und wir durften unsern Wagen
endlich wieder seiner eigenen Motorkraft überlassen.
Schwierigkeiten machten nur noch die beiden Arme des
Dschirdschib, die durch den tagelangen Platzregen zu reißenden
Strömen angeschwollen waren. Über den ersten brachte uns eine
Fähre, die zum Truppentransport zur Stelle war; und durch den
zweiten zog uns eine Koppel Ochsen von einer türkischen
Trainkolonne. Motor, Ochsen und Chauffeur hatten dabei aber ein so
gründliches Bad genommen, daß wenigstens die ersteren streikten.
Wir mußten daher noch einmal militärischen Vorspann nehmen,
diesmal von Pferden, und so fuhren wir sechsspännig in pechfinstrer
Nacht endlich wieder am Bahnhof von Ras-el-Ain vor.
„Kapitän“ Mohammed am Steuerruder.
Viertes Kapitel.
Mein neuer Feldzugsplan.
E in Feldzugsplan im wörtlichen Sinne war es nun eigentlich nicht,

denn daran war mir auf den grundlosen Feldwegen nach Bir-
dava und zurück die Lust vergangen. Aus den zwei Tagen, in denen
ich Mosul hatte erreichen sollen, waren zwei Wochen Ungemach
geworden. Wenn doch einmal alles zu Wasser werden sollte —
warum sich dann nicht lieber diesem Element ganz anvertrauen und
noch einmal solch eine fröhliche Stromfahrt versuchen, wie ich sie
schon zweimal vor Jahr und Tag im Innern Asiens auf den Fluten
des Tarim und des Brahmaputra unternommen hatte?
Der Euphrat war mir noch so gut wie fremd. Im Mai 1886 hatte
ich ihn zum erstenmal gesehen. Damals war ich auf dem englischen
Dampfer „Assyria“ vom Persischen Meerbusen in den Schatt-el-Arab
hineingefahren und einige Tage später nach Korna gekommen, wo
am Zusammenfluß des Euphrat und Tigris das Paradies gelegen
haben soll. Dann war ich im November 1905 bei einem kurzen
Aufenthalt in Erserum bis in die Nähe der Quelle des Frat-su oder
Euphrat geritten. Jetzt hatte mich mein Schicksal zum drittenmale an
diesen gewaltigen Strom geführt, der in der Geschichte der
Menschheit älter ist als Nil und Brahmaputra. Ließ ich diese
Gelegenheit, ihn gründlich kennen zu lernen, ungenutzt
vorübergehen — wer weiß, ob sie jemals wiederkehrte!
Am 9. April saß ich wieder in der Bahn, die mich von Aleppo nach
Ras-el-Ain gebracht hatte, und ich fühlte mich wie befreit aus langer
Gefangenschaft, als ich endlich wieder die mächtig wogende
Wasserstraße vor mir sah, die mich jetzt — dazu war ich fest
entschlossen — meinem Ziel, der Stadt der Kalifen, entgegenführen
sollte. In Dscherablus verabschiedete ich mich von Major Reith und
war bald wieder in der deutschen Marinestation am Euphrat.
Kapitänleutnant von Mücke war vor einigen Tagen nach
Konstantinopel gefahren, statt seiner empfingen mich nun sein
Vertreter, Schiffsbaumeister Schneider, und acht deutsche Flieger
und Artillerie-Offiziere, die sich in den nächsten Tagen zur 6. Armee
nach Bagdad begeben sollten.
Sofort machte ich mich an die Vorbereitung meiner Euphratfahrt.
Etappeninspektor Oberst Nuri Bei überließ mir einen einheimischen
Doppelschahtur, und bald fanden sich zwei Schahturtschis, Ruderer,
bei mir ein, um die Löhnung für die Reise zu vereinbaren. Dem
Ustad oder Kapitän bewilligte ich zwei türkische Pfund, die anderen
Schiffer erhielten je ein Pfund und zwar für die Strecke bis Der-es-
Sor, wo die türkische Besatzung von Arabern abgelöst werden sollte.
Als Sicherheitswache sollte mich ein Gendarm begleiten; gegen
einen Überfall durch Beduinen hätte der aber wohl schwerlich viel
ausgerichtet.
Auf der Werft war alles in lebhafter Tätigkeit. Kräftige deutsche
Matrosenfäuste schwangen die Äxte, Türken und Araber sägten und
hämmerten. Ein Boot nach dem andern wurde fertiggestellt, auf
einen Wagen geladen, zum Ufer hinabgerollt und dem Strom
übergeben. Jedes erhielt einen Namen nach irgendeinem berühmten
Ereignis des Weltkriegs. Auf einer Flottille solcher Boote oder Fähren
verstaute gerade eine Fliegerabteilung ihre Tauben und
Doppeldecker; bald sah ich sie den Strom hinab schwimmen und bei
der ersten Biegung verschwinden. Man hatte mich freundlichst
eingeladen mitzufahren; aber mir lag jetzt vor allem daran, meine
völlige Unabhängigkeit zu bewahren.
Auf andere Fähren schob eine bayerische Batterie unter Major
von Schrenk, deren Train wir am Dschirdschib begegnet waren, ihre
15-cm-Haubitzen und Munitionswagen. Jedes dieser plumpen, aber
praktischen Fahrzeuge trug 25 Tonnen, wurde aber nur bis zu 18
beladen und faßte vier volle Munitionswagen und eine bedeutende
Menge loser Munition. Mehrere Tage noch sollte die Verladung
dauern, und der Batterieführer wollte warten, bis auch sein letzter
Schahtur reisefertig war.
Für meine Fahrt den Euphrat abwärts hatte ich einen starken
türkischen Doppelschahtur, dessen beide Hälften mit Stricken fest
zusammengekoppelt wurden. Seine Länge betrug 6,58 Meter, seine
Breite 5. Hinten wurde ein Steuer angebracht, vorn an jeder Seite
ein Ruder. Reserveruder durften natürlich auch nicht fehlen.
Gewöhnlich rechnet man auf die Fahrt bis Feludscha zwei Wochen.
Ich brauchte aber längere Zeit, da ich die Reise dazu benutzen
wollte, eine Karte des Stromes aufzunehmen; die Nächte über
mußte ich also vor Anker gehen. Deshalb wollte ich an Bord
einigermaßen bequem wohnen, und der Zimmermann Murat mußte
mir nach einem Papiermodell das Fahrzeug entsprechend
einrichten. Die linke Fähre erhielt ein Holzdeck, das vorn und hinten
für Kapitän und Ruderer Raum ließ. Auf Deck wurde eine 3 Meter
lange und 2 Meter breite Hütte aufgeschlagen, deren schmale
Vorderwand in Angeln ging und sich nach oben aufklappen ließ.
Tagsüber diente diese als Sonnendach für meinen Arbeitstisch;
nachts wurde sie herabgelassen. Das übrige Mobiliar bestand aus
Feldbett und zwei Kisten. Proviant, den ich in Dscherablus gekauft
hatte, wurde unter Deck verstaut. Ein Fenster in der Steuerbordseite
ermöglichte mir im Stehen den freien Ausblick auf den Strom, ein
zweites kleineres Fenster wurde gegenüber so angebracht, daß ich
auch im Liegen hinaussehen konnte. Beide wurden mit Gardinen
versehen. Ein niedriges Regal unter dem Fenster des Steuerbords
enthielt Waschgeschirr, Seife und alles das, was zur Pflege des
äußeren Menschen unentbehrlich ist. Ein Querbrett an der schmalen
Wand trug Fernrohr, Thermometer, elektrische Lampe, Metermaß,
Stearinkerzen, Zigaretten, Zündhölzer und meine kleine Bibliothek.
Letztere bestand nur aus drei Büchern, die aber zur Not für ein
ganzes Menschenleben ausreichten: der „Assyrischen und
Babylonischen Geschichte“ von Bezold, einer „Praktischen
Grammatik der osmanisch-türkischen Sprache“ von Wahrmund und
dem Buch der Bücher, der Bibel, die ich noch nie mit solchem
Interesse gelesen habe als auf dieser Fahrt in das Land der
babylonischen Gefangenschaft. Meine greisen Eltern hatten sie mir
bei meinem letzten Abschied von Stockholm mit auf die Reise
gegeben.
Hussein am Steuerbordruder.
Ich hatte den 12. April als Tag der Abreise bestimmt, nicht etwa
um dem 13. auszuweichen, denn diese Zahl hat mir auf meinen
Reisen in Asien immer Glück gebracht, nur weil ich vor Ungeduld
brannte, endlich fortzukommen. Schon früh am Morgen erklangen
die Hammerschläge und rasselte die Säge; die Wände der Hütte
wuchsen an ihren Pfosten hinauf; etliche kurze Bretter fügten sich zu
einem Tisch zusammen, und ein bodenfester Stuhl baute sich
daneben. Als alles fertig war, schien vom hellen, wolkenfreien
Himmel die untergehende Sonne auf den Euphrat herab. Der Strom
war nach den heftigen Regenfällen der letzten Wochen und infolge
der Schneeschmelze, die jetzt Tag für Tag zunahm, noch immer im
Steigen. Die Wassermasse, die sich unter der Brücke
hindurchwälzte, berechnete man auf 1200 Kubikmeter in der
Sekunde; das konnte noch ganz anders kommen, denn einmal in
den letzten Jahren hatte man 2000 Sekundenkubikmeter gemessen.
Die Reise war also nicht ohne Gefahr, auch wenn mein tapferer
Gendarm alle Beduinen und sonstigen Wegelagerer in die Flucht
trieb, und von den mancherlei Abenteuern auf den Wellen und an
den Ufern des Euphrat darf ich dem Leser in den folgenden Kapiteln
einiges berichten.
Nur noch ein paar Worte über die Besatzung meiner Fähre. Mein
„Kapitän“ Mohammed war ein Türke aus Biredschik im stattlichen
Alter von achtzehn Jahren. Seit acht Jahren hatte er, erst als Gehilfe
seines Vaters, dann als eigener Herr, gegen hundert Reisen nach
Der-es-Sor gemacht, und Arabisch sprach er so geläufig wie
Türkisch. Hussein am Steuerbordruder war noch drei Jahre jünger,
aber trotz seiner Jugend schon zwanzigmal zu Schiff in Der-es-Sor
gewesen; der sechzehnjährige Kerif am Backbordruder nur
siebenmal. Diese Stadt bezeichnete die Grenze der Ortskenntnis der
türkischen Schiffer. Beide Jungen waren ebenfalls Osmanen aus
Biredschik und radebrechten wenigstens etwas Arabisch. Der vierte
im Bunde war der Gendarm Mahmud, ein Türke aus Urfa von
zweiundvierzig Jahren, der zwanzig Jahre im Heer des Großsultans
gedient hatte, seit Beginn des Weltkrieges in Biredschik stand und
mit seinem grau gesprenkelten Bart wie ein Greis aussah. In seinem
grauen, groben Soldatenmantel, das Gewehr über der Schulter,
präsidierte er in martialischer Haltung auf der Steuerbordfähre, wo
sich die kleine Mannschaft einzurichten hatte. Was mir fehlte, war
nur ein Dolmetscher, um mich mit meinen eignen Leuten leicht zu
verständigen — ein heilsamer Zwang, mein mangelhaftes Türkisch
durch eifrigstes Studium zu vervollkommnen.
Meine Fähre am Ufer der Silman-Araber.
Fünftes Kapitel.
Auf den Wellen des Euphrat.
E s war ½6 Uhr nachmittags, als ich mich von meinen deutschen

Freunden in Dscherablus, von Rittmeister von Abel, der
dienstlich dorthin gekommen war, von Major von Schrenk und seinen
Offizieren, und von Nuri Bei verabschiedete.
„Jallah! Bismillah rahman errahim!“
Auf dieses Kommando stieß meine Fähre vom Ufer ab, wurde
sogleich vom Strom erfaßt, und bald waren Dscherablus und die
deutsche Marinestation außer Sehweite. Ich war, wie so oft auf
meinen Entdeckungsfahrten, allein mit meiner Arbeit unter wenigen
eingeborenen Begleitern.
Unaufhaltsam trägt die starke Strömung meine Fähre gen Süden.
Die schmale Vorderwand meiner Hütte ist als Sonnendach
hochgeklappt; Kartenblatt, Kompaß und Uhr vor mir, sitze ich an
meinem Schreibtisch und zeichne unsere Fahrtrichtung und die
Formen der Ufer ein. Die steilen Bergfronten, die Klippen und
Sandbänke, die grasbewachsenen Inseln, die Wiesen, Dörfer und
Zelte, Lehmhäuser und Hügel, die Ergebnisse der Tiefen- und
Geschwindigkeitsmessungen, sogar die weidenden Herden, alles
wird in die Karte eingetragen. Selten ist die Richtung fünf Minuten
lang die gleiche; gewöhnlich muß ich nach zwei, drei Minuten neue
Peilungen machen, und ich habe kaum Zeit, zwischen den einzelnen
Beobachtungen eine Zigarette anzubrennen. Ein Fernrohr ermöglicht
mir, das Leben der Nomaden an den Ufern zu beobachten und die
Eigentümlichkeit des beständig wechselnden Landschaftsbildes
genauer zu studieren. Kleine Entenscharen flattern dicht über der
Oberfläche des Flusses vor uns her. In der Ferne schreit der
Kuckuck, und von den Ufern her klingen die Glocken der
Schafherden. Wenn es ganz ruhig ist, hört man an der Oberfläche
des Wassers ein Brodeln und Zischen, wie wenn Wasser eben zu
kochen beginnt. Dieser Laut begleitete mich mehrere Tage und
verschwand erst, als Luft und Wasser wärmer geworden waren. Tag
und Nacht bin ich auf dem Flusse; ich bin eins mit ihm, lebe sein
Leben und fühle, wie er arbeitet und sich rührt, um weit im Süden bis
zur Küste vorzudringen und im Meere seine Freiheit zu gewinnen.
Das Land ringsum ist eine ungeheure Miozänkalksteinplatte, die
bis unterhalb Hit am Euphrat und bis Samarra am Tigris reicht und
nicht nur Nordsyrien bedeckt, sondern auch el-Dschesire, die Insel,
oder das Land zwischen den beiden Brüderströmen, das ungefähr
dem alten Assyrien entspricht. Ihre Höhe beträgt bis 500 Meter, so
daß man von einer Hochebene sprechen kann. Wo im Süden die
tertiäre Kalksteinschale aufhört, beginnt reines Schwemmland,
dessen alluviale Ablagerungen eine bedeutende Tiefe erreichen.
Vermehrt durch den Schlamm, den beide Ströme mit sich führen,
schieben sich diese Ablagerungen immer weiter in den Persischen
Meerbusen vor. 2000 Jahre vor unserer Zeitrechnung lag die
chaldäische Stadt Suripak an der Küste, jetzt sind ihre Ruinen 210
Kilometer von ihr entfernt! Noch zur Zeit Sardanapals mündeten
Euphrat und Tigris jeder für sich in den Persischen Golf. Der Schatt-
el-Arab, zu dem sich beide jetzt vereinen, ist also einer der jüngsten
Ströme der Welt. Dies Alluvialland entspricht dem alten Babylonien,
dem Irak-Arabi der Gegenwart. In seinem subtropischen Klima
gedeihen Zuckerrohr, Reis und Datteln, und in naher Zukunft sollen
hier reiche Baumwollernten eingebracht werden.
Durch diese Kalksteinplatte arbeitet sich der Euphrat in zahllosen
kleinen Windungen nach Südosten. Wo das Gestein dem Ansturm
des Stromes getrotzt hat, und dieser sich daher auf etwa 100 Meter
Breite zusammendrängt, fallen die Ufer schroff ab; in den oft
alabasterweißen Wänden hat das Wasser in jahrtausendelanger
Arbeit schalenförmige Vertiefungen und gigantische Felsentore,
Grotten und Höhlen, Löcher und Klüfte ausgewaschen, in denen
Raubvögel und Dohlen horsten. Hier und da scheint die Natur mit
der Überlegung des Menschengeistes geschaffen zu haben; steile
Treppen mit gewaltigen Stufen führen die Uferwände empor, oder
man glaubt mächtige Kais zu erkennen, die das Wasser eindämmen
sollen. Meist ist die Erosionsterrasse bei konkaven Uferstrecken ein
oder mehrere Meter hoch, senkrecht und sogar überhängend;
Wurzelfasern von Kräutern und Sträuchern reichen ins Wasser
herunter, und ab und zu stürzen Erdklumpen klatschend ab. Man
hört und sieht, wie der Fluß sein Bett unablässig formt, am konkaven
Ufer bricht er ab und reißt er nieder, und die Wellen schäumen um
Felsblöcke, die herabgestürzt und an seichten Stellen liegen
geblieben sind; am konvexen Ufer baut er auf, manche flachen,
unfruchtbaren Anschwemmungen können erst gestern oder
vorgestern entstanden sein. Auf diesen Strecken lassen sich nur hier
und da schmale Uferstreifen bewässern und bebauen.
Dann wieder schiebt sich die Kalksteinschale rechts und links
mehrere hundert Meter zurück, so daß der Strom bei Hochwasser
eine Breite bis zu 800 Metern gewinnt und sich wie eine
Meeresbucht vor uns ausdehnt, deren Weite und Richtung kaum
erkennbar ist. Die Gipfel der Höhen schimmern grün, hier und da ist
Lava drübergebreitet. Oft tragen die beherrschenden Höhen auch
Ruinen von Festungen und Türmen, von denen aus die Völker des
Altertums wahrscheinlich herannahende Kriegsgefahr meldeten. Auf
dem weiten Uferland weiden Ziegen, Schafe und Rinder, der
Reichtum der Nomaden; Klippen und Landzungen springen als
schaumumwirbelte Wellenbrecher in den Strom vor, auf breiten
Schlammbänken sitzen Möwen und Meerschwalben wie
Perlenreihen und steigen bei unserem Nahen mit gellenden
Schreien in die Luft. Oft teilt sich auch der Strom durch
langgestreckte Inseln, die das Hochwasser jetzt überspült; Sträucher
und Steinhütten, die über die Oberfläche hervorragen, verraten dem
Steuermann der Fähre ihre Nähe. Erst wenn das Wasser fällt,
werden sie wieder zu richtigen Inseln.
Während der ganzen Stromfahrt bietet der Durchbruch des
Euphrat durch diese Kalksteinplatte eine Fülle charakteristischer
Formen, und ich habe das großartigste Naturtheater vor mir, das
sich denken läßt; in wechselnden Szenerien kommt mir die
Landschaft entgegen, während ich selbst in tiefster Ruhe das
köstliche Schauspiel genieße. Kletterte ich die Uferwände hinan, so
sähe ich nur eine öde, endlose Steppe; man braucht sich nur wenige
Kilometer vom Euphrat zu entfernen und sieht keine Spur mehr von
der Nähe dieses prächtigen Flußtals.
In den ersten Tagen ging meine Stromfahrt so langsam vor sich,
daß ich schon daran verzweifelte, auf diesem Weg überhaupt
Bagdad zu erreichen. Ein oder zwei, höchstens drei Meter in der
Sekunde war bei ruhigem Wetter die Durchschnittsgeschwindigkeit
meiner Fähre; das machte in der Stunde 4 bis 7 Kilometer, an sich
ein ganz erfreuliches Tempo. Da aber meine Arbeit an Bord
Tageslicht erforderte, mußten wir die ruhigen Nächte über still liegen;
außerdem machten uns Nebel und die Frühlingsboten, Regen und
Sturm, so viel zu schaffen, daß wir immer wieder in den Schutz der
steilen Uferwände flüchten und halbe Tage lang vor Anker gehen
mußten. Bei 13 und 14 Grad Luftwärme fror ich im Schatten meines
Sonnendachs. Der Wind pfiff quer durch meine Hütte, und durch die
Dachritzen tropfte der Regen auf Bett und Schreibtisch, bis ich ein
kleines, grünes Zelt darüber nagelte, das ich auf meiner
unglücklichen Autoreise von Major Reith erhalten hatte; mein
eigenes großes, weißes Zelt hatte bei dem übrigen Gepäck in Bir-
dava bleiben müssen. Erst am 17. April machte sich der
Frühlingsanfang mit 24 Grad Wärme bemerkbar. Trotzten wir dem
Wind, so trieb die Fähre regellos von einem Ufer zum andern, drehte
sich wie eine Nußschale, so daß Ruderer und Steuermann machtlos
waren, trieb auch wohl auf erst in der Nähe erkennbare
Schlammbänke, und einmal mußten wir sie sogar wieder in ihre
beiden Hälften zerteilen, um nur wieder flott zu werden. Wenig aber
fehlte, und sie hätte mitsamt ihrer Besatzung ein vorschnelles Ende
in den strudelnden Wassern des Euphrat gefunden.
Das war am 18. April, als wir Rakka hinter uns hatten und eine
Strecke weit unterhalb das Dorf Säbcha am Fuße der Kalkwand in
Sicht kam. Säbcha ist eine Poststation auf dem Wege von Aleppo
nach Bagdad.
Der Strom war in den letzten Tagen über einen Meter gestiegen.
Seit einer Weile wehte Ostwind. Die Sonne verschwand hinter
undurchdringlichem Gewölk, und über uns begann der Donner zu
grollen in immer kürzeren Zwischenräumen und immer lauter. Die
Luft war drückend schwül, und alle Anzeichen deuteten daraufhin,
daß eine rasende Entladung bevorstand. Die Arbeiter an den
Schöpfwerken blickten prüfend zum Himmel, spannten die Ochsen
aus und trieben sie zu den Zelten. Schon begann auch der Regen
auf das Dach meiner Hütte und das ölgetränkte grüne Zelt
niederzuprasseln.
Es fehlten gerade noch vier Minuten an ½6. Ich hatte eine neue
Peilung genommen, die zeigte, daß wir S 40 W fuhren. Langsam
glitten wir am rechten Ufer hin und streiften eine kleine,
grasbewachsene Insel, die sich bei niedrigem Wasserstand mit dem
Festland vereinigen mußte. In einer Viertelstunde hoffte ich am Han,
dem Postwirtshaus, von Säbcha zu sein.

Rebellious Wives Neglectful Husbands Controversies in Modern Quranic Commentaries Hadia Mubarak All Chapter

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Rebellious Wives, Neglectful

Husbands: Controversies in Modern

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930916

Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Dates  ix

All translations of the Qurʾanic commentaries are my own, unless otherwise

No expression of gratitude is complete without acknowledging one’s indebt-

the nation-​state and its apparatus, “a complex of economic institutions,” and

developments in twentieth-​century North Africa. I argue that these three

interpretation that is “consistently and monolithically patriarchal,”16 as one

The Indictment against Tafsīr

The scholarly tradition of Qurʾanic interpretation, known as tafsīr, has

to Hidayatullah, because their conclusions “subvert” the sexual hierarchies

It is precisely this understanding of tafsīr as a “rule-​governed activity” that

Bringing Gender and Tafsīr into Conversation

Despite the flourishing of literature on women in the Qurʾan, there re-

voiceless of women’s perspectives. As Shuruq Naguib argues, “[T]‌o hear

to interpretation.”41 Hassan suggests that the Qurʾan’s nondiscriminatory

of the achievements made by Islamic feminism—​a discursive framework

premises for certain interpretations, as Ali and Hidayatullah argue, so too

acknowledged: “[I]‌t . . . is impossible not to bring to one’s reading sensibil-

The medieval exegetical tradition, despite its patriarchal bent, simultane-

My State of “Double Consciousness”

Any discussion of women and gender in Islam, particularly in the West,

three centuries of explicit and implicit racism, yet Du Bois’s articulation

My selection of three modern Qurʾanic commentaries is motivated by

response to a particular critique of Islam by distinct segments of their socie-

remains a dearth of female exegetes who have produced commentaries upon

Outline of the Book

to demonstrate Islam as egalitarian or fair to women is in many ways a re-

nushūz to offset contemporary scholarship’s disproportionate attention to

comparative analysis of modern and premodern interpretations of Q. 2:228.

history.”4 A perpetual tension of ruptures and continuities thus characterizes

muftī. A traditionally trained scholar who outlived Zaytūna scholars’ earlier

How Useful Are Labels?

Muḥammad ʿAbduh: A Biographical Sketch

ʿAbduh’s Political Consciousness

The changes brought forth by rapid modernization, colonialism, and the

The credit given to al-​Afghānī and his influence on Egypt’s reform

Islamic Modernist Thought

Lauzière’s revision of the history of modern Salafism was not accepted by

polygyny in his exegesis on Q. 4:3, ʿAbduh doesn’t reference Western crit-

Sayyid Quṭb: A Biographical Sketch

Quṭb’s significance and influence unquestionably climaxed after his execu-

other languages,57 and figured as the subject of hundreds of works of sec-

Quṭb’s Upbringing and Literary Training

Mardin von Südosten gesehen.

Das Auto wird an Bord einer Fähre geholt.

Bis zu den beiden verunglückten Lastautos blieb der Regen

E in Feldzugsplan im wörtlichen Sinne war es nun eigentlich nicht,

E s war ½6 Uhr nachmittags, als ich mich von meinen deutschen

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Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Dates ix

the nation-state and its apparatus, “a complex of economic institutions,” and

developments in twentieth-century North Africa. I argue that these three

It is precisely this understanding of tafsīr as a “rule-governed activity” that

of the achievements made by Islamic feminism—a discursive framework

The credit given to al-Afghānī and his influence on Egypt’s reform