However variously understood-as the word of Allah, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad for the purpose of guidance to all humanity. It was easy to designate the Qur’an as the ultimate criteria available within the Islamic intellectual legacy, as well as its most authoritative reference point, because it enjoys an overwhelming consensus among Muslims. One objective behind my research was to establish a definitive criterion for evaluating the extent to which the position of women in Muslim cultures accurately portrays the intention of Islam for women in society. However, in these times of post-modernist critique when the very foundations of knowledge are challenged to move beyond certain value laden tendencies, such a method can be viewed as part of a larger area of discourse by feminists who have constructed a valuable critique of the tendency in many disciplines to build the notion of the normative human from the experiences and perspectives of the male person. I was also unaware of how to develop such a reading.Īlthough interest in the question of woman in Islam was not unique, attempting to pursue an answer to that question exclusively by examining the notion of woman in the Qur’an turned out to be nearly unprecedented throughout fourteen centuries of Islamic thought.

At L that time, I was quite naive about how significant it would be to pursue a female inclusive reading of the Qur’an.

Research for Quran and Woman started as early as 1986.

Qur'an and Woman by Amina Wadud