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Welcome to our
Forum!
Muslim Women Studies is a site that is sponsored
by the Zahira Abdin Chair for the Study of Women
and Gender. Its
objective is to stimulate, inform, and enlighten in the general area of
women's studies with a focus on Islam and Muslim societies and cultures.
It targets a community of lifelong learners who share an interest in these
fields and invites them to join with us in rethinking their areas of
interest from a perspective that is
informed by an Islamic world view and
epistemology.
We are fortunate to be launching our site at a time when
literally dozens of others with similar interests have come to the fore.
Many institutional and personal sites have emerged to promote different
aspects of a common concern, whether in the field of gender scholarship
and networking, or simply in areas pertaining to interest in and about
Muslim women. There is much that can be learned from some, and we have
shared affinities with others. [See Links] But at the end of
the day, we hope to bring to the field something new that complements
existing efforts and extends horizons.
Our site reflects our priorities, as well as our vision,
mission, and objectives.
A Word about Muslim Women Studies!
While Women's Studies has developed over the past two or three decades as a thriving interdisciplinary field, we believe that Muslim
Women's Studies, in contrast, lags behind. This may need some explaining in
view of the equally thriving rate at which the literature on women in
Islam and women in the Muslim world has grown over roughly the same period. To
explain this anomaly we need to briefly identify our premises.
We distinguish between two basic approaches to studying
women in the Muslim world. The one takes its point of departure from the
theoretical assumptions in mainstream (Western) academy. These evolved out of the European intellectual tradition that reached its
apogee in the 18th century model of Enlightenment. This
approach is admirably competent on many counts, beginning with its
methodological rigor and systematic applications, its institutional set
up, the magnitude of its resources as well as its sheer scale and scope.
Yet, it is not at all certain that methodological competence can be
equated with reliable or relevant inquiry in a particular field of study,
especially in cultural and social studies. Nor can the prevalence of a
dominant academy foreclose the field to alternative scholarship or
intellectual initiatives.
Knowledge
is an open quest ever challenging its adepts to tap alternative sources
and question established assumptions in search of new ways to understand
and grapple with the complexity of social questions and moral issues. It
is this critical posture that informs the quest for an alternative
approach to studying women in Islam and the Muslim world. That alternative
approach is not only a possibility, but a necessity.
The reason why we
consider this to be a pressing need at this point in the development of
the scholarship in the field is twofold. First, there is a need to
streamline the growing volume of research and writing over the past two
decades and we do not believe this to be possible on the basis of the
prevailing paradigm. [‘Streamline’ suggests among other things a
framework for critical evaluation and discourse.) The fact that recent
empirical and theoretical work has produced some valuable elements that
could be taken up to advantage in rethinking the grounds for an
alternative academy enhances the possibilities of going beyond the
constraints of the dominant paradigm.
Conversely, it is inconceivable for
the modern academy to remain impervious to the increased self-awareness in
Muslim societies that reflects on both events and consciousness. It is
this pressure coming from below that provides an impetus to reconsider the
structure and fundaments of that academy if it is to survive as a relevant
and meaningful enterprise.
Indeed, the growing rift between a
wealth of output and an inadequacy in the conceptual framework and
tools to deal with the material at hand, underlies the anomaly that
casts its shadows on the scholarship in the field of Muslim women studies.
Notwithstanding the sustained effort and superb quality of some of the
research and writing in recent years, we are convinced that the
breakthrough can only come from a paradigm shift that moves
the field beyond the constraints of the current dominant paradigm that
divests much of this effort of its potential.
Our self-mandated mission is to address
this need and to overcome the current anomaly. We propose to do
so through exploring and cultivating an alternative perspective on
knowledge and life through which it may be possible to gain insight and
understanding that are more consistent and compatible with the reality of
the subject of our research and observation. This reality is much richer
and more complex than a one-dimensional naturalistic or
materialistic paradigm supposes. We believe that an openness to Islamic
sources, experience, and precedent, can help us go beyond the
prevailing reductionist fallacy that impoverishes our humanity, as much as
it undermines the potentials of all genuine scholarship.
By approaching Muslim Women('s) Studies
as an autonomous and integrated field of inquiry, instead of pursuing it
as a 'subfield' within one or the other disciplines or of the area/
culture studies under the dominant academy, we also aspire to pave the way for an
alternative paradigm and model of scholarship. We refer to the mode of
knowledge that informs this paradigm by the terminology of the 'tawhidi
episteme.' Tawhid refers to the central tenet of Islam, that
takes the Oneness of God for the foundation of human cognition and values
and the source of their coherence. While the cognitive values
that ground our knowledge are contingent on our belief-system, one
does not have to be a confessed Muslim to adopt and apply the resulting
holistic approach to knowledge of the world. This is as much as to
say that the alternative perspective is not exclusive to Muslims or to the
study of Muslim societies and cultures, but is of universal
import. What is prescribed in the tawhidi episteme is an outlook, a Weltanschauung
or world view, but not a particular faith, even though a preliminary faith
in the transcendent and the Unseen may be a logical corollary to the
adoption of this view.
In this new scholarship we hope to
benefit from existing methodologies and research, without burdening
or constraining this benefit with the limitations of a flawed
paradigm. We may then be in a position to contribute positively and
constructively, not only to the specific area of Muslim Women
Studies, but to the interdisciplinary fields of Women and Gender (and
Family) studies more generally, as well as to the constituent
and varied disciplines that impinge on these studies.
[ What' New? ] [ ACADEMIC CHAIR ] [ OUTREACH ] [ ACTIVITIES ] [ PERSPECTIVES ] [ ESSAYS ] [ RESOURCES ] [ CURRICULUM ] [ ARBORIUM ] [ GALLERIA ] [ ARCHIVES ] [ LINKS ] [ FEEDBACK ]
Copyright
© 1999 The Abdin Waqf- Endowment-M.A.F.]. All rights reserved.
Revised: April 17, 2007
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