Women justify religious leadership through juristic disagreement, not gender equality

Evidence

Hajja Faiza’s response is striking for a number of reasons. Note that Hajja Faiza does not ground her justifi for leading women in prayer rituals in an argument for gender equality, or women’s equal capacity to perform such a task. Instead, she locates it within the space of disagreement among Muslim jurists about the conditions under which women may lead the prayer ritual. … Her argument exemplifi two trends set into motion by modem Muslim reformers. First, her position on a Muslim’s right to follow the opinion of any ju.. rist fr the four schools of Islamic law is one that has gained ascendancy in the modem period-glossed as ta fiq, it connotes, as I indicated earlier, a de.. emphasis on fi lity to any one school, and the freedom to choose from any of the opinions authorized by Muslim jurists. The second position Hajja Faiza adopts in her argument against her critics is that she, like the shaikh she disagrees with, is within her rightSto adopt even a minority opinion ( shadhdh) from among the jurists. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 619

Categorization

• XREF: This directly complicates the liberal-feminist assumption that women’s claims must be framed as rights/equality demands — connects to Mahmood’s core thesis and the postcolonial cluster on alternate normative frames in the vault. — connects to: Women exerted church power by judging ministerial literacy, not seeking ordination — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 352; Jealousy over power drove ministers to oppose women’s missionary work — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 351; Feminist theology sought to reform religion rather than reject it. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 640 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies talfiq and shadhdh as interpretive principles within Islamic jurisprudence that authorize individual selection across schools.