The Dichotomy of Women in History and Metaphysics within Islamic Thought
Abstract
The perception of the female presence in modern times and a shift of women’s rights has brought the position of women in society a new impetus. These developments has caused a new trend of apologetic and rational thinking concerning the status and the problems of woman in Islam. The existence of woman and their rights have been mostly considered within the category of ‘woman regarding man’ and ‘ideal, moral profile of woman’ in classical Islamic thought. Religious, moral, and philosophical texts on the Qur’an have accounted woman for being responsible for some duties within the family household and shaped and educated according to the ideal profile of a woman. However, in modern times in the West, the existence of woman and their rights have been considered within the category of ‘woman as woman’. Moreover, women have been declared as an individual who is equal to man in fields of intellectual, political, social and economic matters. This development has caused some revisions within the classical approaches to Islam regarding the narratives on woman. In this period, a good number of macro-narratives of the rights of women in Islam were organized in specific references to the Qur’an and hadiths within the form of apologetic thinking. Nevertheless, this form of apologetic thinking on idealized ‘religious woman’ in reference to Qur’an and hadiths is in need of being questioned, analyzed, and criticized from metaphysical, historical, religious viewpoints.
This paper will
discuss the problems posed by the idealized profile of woman with respect to
historical existence of woman and their rights in the classical thought on
Islam. It will affirm that the idealized profile of woman is basically a
metaphysical construction which disregards historical dimensions of woman’s
existence in the world.
Keywords
References
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Details
Primary Language
Turkish
Subjects
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Journal Section
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Authors
Publication Date
November 24, 2016
Submission Date
September 23, 2016
Acceptance Date
November 21, 2016
Published in Issue
Year 2016 Volume: 19 Number: 49