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ZAHIRA ABDIN CHAIR
Muslim Women and Gender Studies
OVERVIEW
* Foreground
* Goals and Objectives
In the conviction that enlightened knowledge, as much as sound belief, is the premise for responsible and moral action, and that its absence or confusion diminishes the human status and subverts the socio-moral order, the Zahira Abdin Chair sets out to fulfill a conspicuous need and to remedy a precarious social condition. In a global world, this condition knows no boundaries. Accordingly, the scope of its address extends to multiple constituencies. For obvious reasons, those immediately targeted for engaging a discourse, are expected to come from within the Muslim community, the ummah. The nature and parameters of this discourse are a function of its context. Globalization has simply exacerbated conditions in the post-colonial world, and the historical encounter with the West has added its dimensions to the general disorientation, particularly in the Muslim world. The resurgent interest in Women and gender questions, as it spreads from the West to the Rest, aptly epitomizes this double disarray, while the prominence of Islam in global politics is further amplified in the paradoxical visibility attending Muslim women worldwide. The meaning of the Zahira Abdin Chair and the uniqueness of its mission, need to be seen against this background.
To note, this is the first initiative of its kind, a Chair dedicated to Muslim Women Studies in the West, without being of the West. Hosted in a nascent academy equally compelling in its mission and vision, it strives to bridge the historical rift between (an outgrown and mythical) ‘East and West,’ at the same time as it sets out to reform and renew Muslim thought, reclaiming for it its proper role as a light and beacon unto the world. This Chair devotes its efforts and ingenuity to addressing possibly one of the most intractable fields of the age, and it is committed to its pursuit in terms that challenge and transcend the dominant paradigm.
It is notably in this latter sense that we speak of the 'West' when we seek to establish a distance from the West. It is in terms of the historical association of Europa with a complex of misguided and self-serving ideals, ideas, and interests that are transformed into an ideology of domination and subjugation and exploitation. Obviously, it is not in terms of a geography, or a culture, or a tradition that we single out the West, for in this sense, the West is no different from the 'rest' - a player in a world of diversity and plenty, where each brings its tradition to enrich the whole and where, throughout history, each of these traditions intertwines and overlaps as it develops and grows: to affirm and fulfill the beauty of the dictum : 'that (we) may know one another.'
Against the above background, the Chair sees its academic and intellectual agenda in terms of a two pronged strategy of deconstruction and reconstruction, to critique and to edify. This strategy takes for its field and scope the area designated in the prevalent academic curriculum under women and gender studies, a field that subsumes for us here at Muslim Women Studies, community and family as primary and pertinent arenas of related interest and inquiry. We assume the initiative to critique a tradition ‘from within,’ while at the same time, seeking to reform and construct on the basis of an authentically grounded paradigm drawn on the original and originating sources of Islam. (Qur’an and the sunnah as an explanatory source and adjunct to the Qur’an). In affirming the enduring value, validity, and viability of these Sources, it also hopes to articulate a model of thought and action in its field that can contribute positively to the ongoing debates and policies gender related issues, in a global forum. In a more general vein, the goals and objectives of the Chair are conceived within a broader tradition of scholarship that strives to retrieve and appropriate the best in a universal and perennial tradition identified with the divinely revealed sources of human enlightenment and guidance. In doing so, it seeks to align itself with the forces that make for a global cultural renewal.
More About the Chair
Organization & Implementation
Scope of Activity
In
action- Seminar in Cairo: March 2000
Teaching
Research
Seminars
Publications
Encyclopedia on Women in Islam
One of our long term objectives is to produce a 'Concise Cultural Propaedia on Women (Community, Gender, and Family) in Islam.' We hope that our research and publications in the interim, will prepare the way for the realization of this project which is provisionally conceived to fall into two volumes: 1. Foundations and, 2. Historical. Vol. 2 can be further divided into two parts: A. Legacy and B. Modern – including a section on Contemporary Issues.
The objective of such an opus is not to substitute for similar resources and sources of information, nor is it to provide another informative ‘compendium.’ - with its own range of perspectives. But its purpose is essentially to provide a distinct perspective and (what we hope to be ) an authoritative frame of reference to understand and research, as the information and events in the area of women and gender are processed. The focus of our work leading up to this project will be on developing an interpretative framework of inquiry and understanding, together with a range of relevant/ operational concepts... as tools of research..
In the meantime, our publications policy will be contingent on the gradual implementation of an integrated and comprehensive workplan that subsumes research, curriculum development, public educational, cultural and promotional activity. An introductory brochure outlining the essentials of this workplan, as a beginning to a systematic work agenda may, in part, be reviewed in the Arabic section of our website, under Riwaq Zahra. (We hope to be updating the web version of this brochure, the published version of which may be obtained from our postal address at GSISS- [Go to www.siss.edu)
A Note on the Languages of the Chair:
Given its objectives, constituency, and the nature of the original and founding sources, the Chair in principle operates on a bi-lingual basis, with Arabic as a requisite, in addition to English. After all, for nearly a millennium, Arabic was the lingua franca of the ummah, as well as for many of the cultured circles in the world of learning and scientific knowledge ! We hope, through the original and creative efforts we put into our initiatives, to rekindle the curiosity and will to learn Arabic, and include it in the 'live circuit' of the modern university, wherever that might be located.
Depending on the researchers and constituencies involved, we hope to make our work accessible in other languages as well - besides Arabic and English - as the need and opportunity arise.
Scholarships, Grants, Fellowship
As soon as the basic endowed waqf fund of the Chair is consolidated, we hope to be able to gradually expand our activities to include some allocations for in house training and research. Initially, the Chair will periodically offer short term scholarships for graduate female candidates to enroll in the School’s Women’s Studies Program. Depending on resources, a research grant, or a one year ( or quarterly) research fellowship will be made available for a suitable pre- /or post-doctoral candidate to work in a designated field to promote the objectives of the Chair. The aim is to train new cadres in the field and to cultivate a congenial and stimulating academic environment for developing and generating potential interest and resources. In principle, logistic support and modest financial assistance for research and learning purposes will be considered separately in conjunction with other activities of the Chair/ Program and incorporated into a policy platform.
Intellectual Forum
One of the most conspicuous absences that the Chair strives to fill is that of providing a hospitable setting for reflection and dialogue. There is a dire need for scholarly and public exchange and interaction on 'Women in Islam' and on Islamic perspectives on women and gender-related issues. The objective would be to evolve a consensual threshhold of reasoned and Islamically grounded perspectives, together with a cogent framework from which it would be possible to launch an alternative scholarship. On a practical plane, this would give direction to policy-making options and counter the one-dimensional variants that command the field. This kind of reflexive dialogue and exchange needs to be clearly distinguished from the conventional da'wa among Muslims which amounts to preaching to the converted, or preaching to convert - or, to clarify and explicate (bayan). These no doubt may be valued ends in themselves, but it is not what we have in mind.
While there is a growing body of informed knowledge that is becoming available to an interested public, and to which we hope to contribute and further build, we wish to reinforce and supplement knowledge production with a community of networking. We need to form a nucleus for well grounded, coherent, and sustained discourses in the field, discourses that are open and open-minded, engaged and committed, and that go beyond the controversies and stereotypes that confound and obscure. We are equally intent on avoiding and transcending the self-righteous and dogmatic, as well as the random, arbitrary, and irresponsible opinions that have long held a community at ransom, and divested it of its potential. The 'community' in question refers to both the educated elements in the ummah, as well as the specialized academics whose interests impinge on the general fields of the humanities, social sciences, and religious studies, venues through which one comes to treat with women and gender-related issues.
With this end in view, we hope to explore and selectively invest in a variety of media and opportunities that pave the way for its realization. This includes teaching, holding seminars, promoting workshops alongside our ongoing research and publication projects. It covers the gamut of our objectives and activities that are ultimately designed to lay the enabling ground-work and enduring foundations for that alternative scholarship and community.
