Islamic Studies

This article aims to critically engage the representation of Sayyid Quṭb as the pioneer of modern Jihadism. It will do so by casting light on his social and economic theories as elaborated in the first half of the 50s, focusing on a pamphlet published in 1951 with the title " The Battle between Islam and Capitalism. " The purpose of this article is to present the content of the pamphlet in the context of the historical and intellectual landscape of its time, as well as showing how it is part of Quṭb's body of thought as a whole. The intention is to show how, in a post-colonial world dominated by the Cold War, Quṭb presents Islam as the " Third Way " that combines the qualities and the advantages of communism and capitalism without sharing their faults. A system that, as this article is meant to demonstrate, shares many similarities with Nasserism, the socialist, anti-imperialist ideology elaborated by Quṭb's archenemy, Ǧamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣer. Keywords Sayyid Quṭb – Islamic socialism – Nasserism – the Third Way – Jihadism – Muslim Brotherhood The vast amount of literature of the last decades which has dealt with the Egyptian writer and educator Sayyid Quṭb (1906-1966) has acknowledged him as one of the most prominent ideologues of Islamic radicalism and has often connected him with contemporary Islamic terrorism. To some analysts this connection is so evident that the word " Qutbism " is considered more proper

This article aims to present an overview of the discursive and political movement known as Islamic feminism, which has received a lot of attention from Western media and academia in recent years, choosing Egypt as a country case study. The purpose of this article is threefold: first, to review the heated debate over the definition of Islamic feminism, its significance, and its legitimacy. Secondly, to present the goals, the methodologies, and the characteristics of this very dynamic and diversified phenomenon in the specific context of Egypt; and finally, to reflect on how, and to which extent, the dramatic and ongoing changes that Egypt has faced since the beginning of the 2011 revolution are influencing the projects of scholars, groups and organizations that can fall under the label of 'Islamic feminism'.

This article aims to critically engage with Nasser regime’s policies toward women, as well as with its ideological stances regarding gender roles in the Egyptian society. It will do so by casting light on the contradictory effects that the modernization projects carried out by the Egyptian state have had on women’s empowerment, in the political, social, cultural and juridical fields. The purpose of this article is to highlight how the goal of the state modernization projects was not women’s liberation per se, but rather the transformation of women in modern political subjects engaged in the task of building a modern, independent nation. A nation-building program that had its roots in earlier colonial and nationalist projects and that, as this article is meant to demonstrate, shares many similarities with the competing – and apparently opposite - project of modernity promoted by political Islam.

This chapter aims to retrace the historical evolution of Muslim marriage, as represented in Islamic legal texts and public discourses, from the advent of Islam to our contemporary age.  To do so, it will provide a short overview of the normative references to marriage in Islamic scriptural texts (the Qur’an and the hadith compilations), covering instructions on who is marriageable to a Muslim, how to contract a valid marriage, and what legal consequences the spousal union entails for both partners. Then it will address the various ways in which pre-modern jurists and exegetes have interpreted the sacred sources. Finally, the chapter will offer an examination of the impact of colonialism and modernity on the conceptualization of marriage and the family in Muslim discourses, a survey of major reforms enacted throughout the twentieth century by the national states that emerged in post-colonial contexts, and an excursus on contemporary debates centering around the need for further reforms, or rather for dismantling the ones previously introduced

Included in the volume 'Islamic political theology', edited by Massimo Campanini and Marco Di Donato (2021), the chapter explores the doctrine of tawhid, as elaborated by the Egyptian scholar Muhammad 'Abduh in his book Risalat al-tawhid (1898). The chapter argues that ‘Abduh’s re-elaboration of tawhid as an agent of social change and the basis for egalitarian ethics represented a marked epistemological break in Islamic exegetical history, one that had an enduring effect on subsequent Islamic political thought.

This article intends to offer a historical review of the Cape Muslim community in South Africa from the landing of the first Dutch settlers  (1652) to the abolition of slavery (1834). This review is mainly based on the "historiography of liberation" written by South African Muslim historians, starting in the 1980s, in order to deconstruct the supremacist narrative of the country's history and provide the intellectual context for a political struggle for liberation. After a theoretical introduction that discusses the potential and limits inherent in the writing of subaltern history, the article retraces the history of the formation of the Muslim community of the Cape and the transformations it went through during the first two centuries of colonial rule

The Arabic word tafsir (literally meaning “to clarify,” “to explain”) most commonly refers to the process of interpreting the Qurʾan, and to the vast literary genre of Qurʾanic exegesis (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies article “Tafsir”). Throughout the premodern era, written Qurʾanic tafsir production was an endeavor and a privilege reserved to major Muslim theologians and jurists—in other words, it was largely a male prerogative. Although the female Companions of Muhammad had a relevant role in the transmission of Traditions of the Prophet (hadith), a fundamental tool for Qurʾanic exegesis, women’s participation in the production of religious knowledge dramatically decreased during the classical era of Islam, although the extent of this marginalization is still debated among scholars (see Women and Religious Authority in the Premodern Era). This marginalization, and more generally the patriarchal context in which classical Qurʾanic commentaries were written, prompted Muslim scholars to understand the Qurʾan as sanctioning a hierarchical view of gender relations in which men are superior to women and hold authority over them. Tafsir by women made its appearance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the first feminist wave emerged in Muslim contexts. Activists in women’s rights movements—secular as well as religiously oriented—started using religious arguments to promote their claims; however, these women did not have access to formal religious training and mostly relied on arguments elaborated by modernist (male) scholars, rarely producing systematic rereadings of religious texts themselves—with a few remarkable exceptions (see Emergence of Women’s Tafsir: 19th and Early 20th Centuries). An identifiable field of gender-egalitarian Qurʾanic interpretation started emerging in the last quarter of the 20th century, and became visible in the 1990s in various locations across the globe. This phenomenon has generally been defined with the label “Islamic feminism,” although this term is highly contested and even explicitly rejected by some activists and scholars (see Feminist Tafsir and Scholarly Examinations of Feminist Tafsir). “Islamic feminism” emerged in the context of—and in explicit reaction to—the rise of Salafism and political Islam at a global level, and the affirmation of Islamic regimes in Sudan and Iran (see Islamic Revival and the Emergence of Islamic Feminism: 1970s–1980s). It is worth noting that women have also been active participants in Salafist and Islamist organizations, in some cases producing autonomous readings of the Qurʾan that offer a perspective of complementary, rather than egalitarian, gender roles. (see Islamic Revival and Women’s Tafsir). For those interested in the study of women in Islamic contexts in a broader sense, see the Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies article “Women and Islam.”

This article aims to retrace the history of the emergence of the 'gender jihad' in South Africa in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, within the broader context of the anti-apartheid struggle. Special attention will be devoted to the figure of Shamima Shaikh (1960-1998) and her crucial role, as National Coordinator of the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa (MYM)'s Gender Desk, in campaigning for women's equal access to mosque spaces. The impact of the historic sermon delivered by amina wadud at Cape Town's Claremont Main Road Mosque on August 12th 1994 will also be discussed. By casting light on the intellectual references, socio-political concerns and strategies of actions of the South African gender jihad, this article aims to provide the reader with an example of the complex interaction between the local and the global, the 'margins' and the 'center', in the construction of modern Islamic discourses.

This chapter explores Qurʾanic exegesis (tafsīr) performed in Friday sermons (khuṭba, khuṭab) delivered from the pulpit (minbar) of Cape Town's Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM) between 2011 and 2020. After a theoretical introduction highlighting the potential and limits of the study of the khuṭba as a form of Qurʾanic exegesis, the chapter retraces the historical background and features of CMRM's "community tafsīr." It then examines the exegetical framework used in six selected sermons to support the struggle against gender-based violence, an issue that has received a great deal of attention in the last decade, in this mosque and beyond.