Islam and Gender: From Islamic Feminism to Queer Islamic Studies

Abstract

The revival of religions in the second half of the twentieth century and the changing geopolitics of the period have led to new readings of the experiences of believing women and their gendered lives. This interest in the lives of religious women forms part of a continuum which comprises black feminism and various other forms of feminisms and it also brings to fore the experiences of those women who were hitherto considered outside the feminist discourse. This complex theoretical turn, with its interdisciplinarity, is an outcome of various influences. Euro- American feminism’s disregard for the experiences of the dalits, blacks and Middle East women, and its thrust on a universal feminist discourse make it a rather incompatible methodological tool to analyse religion as a category that genders women’s lives in myriad ways. The gender turn taken by Islamic studies and the interest in religion by feminists now borders on a broader theoretical paradigm that includes the sexual minorities and their engagement with religion. This has its twin focus on how the LGBTQ communities experience religion and the Islamic reading of queerness.  This paper attempts to trace this shift in the critical approaches to the study of religion and gender.