REVISITING THE WOMAN QUESTION:(2)

Bonding and Solidarity: A Communal Ethos

The moral imperative provides the context for apprehending the tawhidi ethos of bonding and solidarity in the community. It might be addressed in the idiom of traditional Islamic scholarship as fiqh al wilayah ie. as the discourse on social allegiance and on the discharging of joint responsibility. It is this principle which undergirds and safeguards the association of the members of a community, whatever the nature and allegiances of that community might be. The community here is an inclusive category, which is distinctly seen in terms of both genders as well as in terms of social roles. In the case of a community of faith and common purpose believers, men and women, are explicitly reminded of their intrinsic affinities. (9:71; 3:195) This invokes in each and all a mutual and shared responsibility for one another and for a compassionate posture of mutuality of oneness of the other best expressed in the Quranic idioms of marhama (mutual compassion and mercy) and ba`dhukum min ba`dh( `intra-connectedness' or, being one of the other). This compassionate innateness invites the one and the other in a stance of joint supportiveness and mutuality, each to fend for the other and with the other, in upholding the good, the moral and the just, and in warding off the evil, the immoral, and the oppressive. The compassion and the righteousness is as much part of the ethos and orientation which comes with the Guidance to believers to promote the moral well-being of society.

The above observation about the Quranic form of addressing gender might be further qualified to accentuate its tenor. When the aggregate or the individuals within the group are being addressed in a general context that emphasizes moral agency and accountability there is more than the cohesion of the group that is at stake. What is at stake there in determining foundational relationships between men and women, as well as between sectors of the group, is the principle of joint responsibility and mutual solidarity: such that in a community, whether it is perverted or righteously oriented in its actions, it is always this principle of bonding and mutuality which embraces and supersedes any more specific gender-role differentiation. (45:19; 9:67; 8:72,73) Nor should it be overlooked that there is ultimately an organic basis for this bonding in the community, the bonding of kith and kin, which should be understood in its concrete extended family connotations, as well as in the more general anthropological conception of the affinity and unity of the Adamite progeny. (33:6; 8:75; and 49:13; 4:1) The emphasis throughout in the tawhidi ethic of community however is clearly not on `congenital' or accidental affinities, nor on any parochiality, but it is on the voluntary and creedal dimensions in human association and moral action. 

Throughout too, in this view, whatever the level of inquiry, or whatever its context, women can only be validly addressed within the perspective of a holistic conception. They are never isolates; they are always part of a field of relationships and integral affinities such that there can be none of the empty subjectivity that is the hallmark of modernity, or even more of post-modernity. Even where they might have gender specific concerns and interests which are clearly legitimate and which are duly acknowledged in valorizing difference where the the need and situation arise, they, women, as much as `men' are part of a whole. This is as much of an ontological precept as an ideological standpoint in the tawhidi episteme: where duality and plurality are part of the order of creation, and `individuality', or absolute oneness and uniqueness, belongs to God alone.

`Say: God is One, Only God is the steadfast and the ever-sought, 

He begets not, nor is He begotten; And naught/none is to be compared unto Him.'

The equal stature in human agency for both men and women thus ascertained, and the principle of shared care and responsiblity between and among them unequivocally established, the parameters are duly laid out for addressing the "Woman Question" in society at large at a given moment of history. With the rule established in its universality, every consequent moment of particularity can only partake of the whole. In no way must the particular contravene a universal in a cosmic order that defers to a principled hierarchy. In this hierarchy the elementary rules set the parameters of the game and these rules are elementary because they pertain to the elements of any social order. Within these parameters, the equality of human stature is a God-given grade/quality and prerogative which neither men nor women owe to one another nor to any segment in humanity. It is not an achievement on the part of the privileged few who manage to procure it and who can thus "earn" their position by virtue of their efforts, or by whatever merits they might claim. Rather, it is a status that needs to be protected against any infringement in the name of perserving and maintaining a God-given/ordained bounty and "degree" of honor which is invested in humanity. This constitutes the practical consequence of a belief in transcendence, and assures the social and historical implications of tawhid in a worldly context.

Let us briefly recap on the meaning of tawhid and spell out the essentials of its implications for our concerns. Its threshold and nexus is the shahadah: la-ilaha illa allah muhammadun rasul allah! At the same moment that the article of faith divests divinity of all things created and consecrates it exclusively to the One God, the Almighty and Beneficent Sovereign, the Creator, Sustainer and ultimate Arbiter and Arbitrator of all things, it engages  the conscience of a responsible individuality and sets the bounds for legitimacy in society.  For those women contesting within this framework  an oppressive order, the question would  hardly be one of a redistribution of power or of  renegotiating  the terms of justice in foundational terms.  Rather,  they would be contesting an abuse in an order of delegation, and pressing for the implementation and re-instatement of a common order of equity which was binding on all.   The "emancipation"  sought would be from manipulative egocentric interests and from the weight of an inertia that clogged and obscured the practices and perceptions within society at any given moment.  

"Equality," too, as a cultural and social norm finds its roots in a matrix of absolute values that both ground and transcend the social and the cultural. As such it exacts its demands on the individual and society alike in a manner that can not be adequately translated in the terms of a world of moral relativism. 

Owed neither to men nor women,  this essential and constituent equality in worth becomes a sacred duty to preserve and a common responsibility to honor by all.  Created beings of the self-same stuff, beholden in their very privileges, in their createdness and  their sustenance,  Men and Women bonded in community come to see themselves in this register as equally involved in the prescribed social order and, consequently,  jointly responsible for its inequities. Any  transgression against this pre-ordained equality of human stature becomes more than an act of oppression perpetuated by one segment of humanity against another: it constitutes a mortal self-infliction and infringement that activates the bane of  zulm alnafs. Further compounded by dimensions of the sacrilege ,  any such violation impinges on the  "bounds" set on life and the dignity of life by God, and as such the transgression is compounded.  These are the bounds referred to in Islamic jurisprudence as hudud allah - a concept that is juridically incorporated from the Quran.  In this sense then, gender is not so much an irrelevant factor in determining the patterns of group association and personal commitment, as it is one relevant variable among others in ascertaining the measure of adherence to the proclaimed hudud as parameters and the frontiers that assure the social order its contingent threshold of morality. The sociology and psychology of the just order is embedded in a metaphysics of a moral transcendence. A Muslim feminism, to the extent that it stops short of being an oxymoron, can only find its validation in these grounds.

The Feminist Non-Question?

In an Islamic perspective on justice and moral agency there may be every justification for a `righteous anger' and for its sequel, in the activism on the part of particular women.  Such anger and activism need not, however, be exclusively interpreted, regurgitated, and `enghettoed'.   It is a qualified endorsement that questions the rampant modern day "feminism"  when this entails the mobilization of one  sector of humanity against the other, females against males.  Such rallying strategies are all the more dubious in view of both the underlying conflictual ethos informing the feminist movement and the growing confusion about the ends it has in view.  A revisited perspectives would take in its stride the politics of contesting wrongs that is just as much at fault as the misperceived conceptions in which it is embedded.   Rather, there is a collective stance among all believers, men and women, in a given social situation, to remove the stigma of oppression, repression, or committed excesses (tughian) once the moral order has been tainted through denying or neglecting the divinely ordained matrix of equity/reciprocity. This becomes a cause which takes off from the individual/personal conscience of each member of the now diminished because violated community and reaches out to trigger off a disenfranchised and offended social ethic. The instance of treating women condescendingly as the underling and the weaker half that is the buffetted underdog of any given society, or whatever the instances of abuse might be, become an affront to the moral conscience in that very society and cannot simply be relegated to a gendered contingent to deprecate it.  To the extent that Islam has contributed to shaping the social/cultural consciousness in Muslim societies, or in the Islamicate, this kind of solidarity or communal sociability has been, and remains potentially pervasive - even where the issue at stake is not articulated in conspicuously religious terms or even consciously experienced as such.

It is only this awareness in relocating the "Woman Question" at the crux of the societal/collective Muslim conscience which can account for what might otherwise be seen as an anomaly. Namely, the role assumed by male reformers in general and reform-minded religious scholars in particular in leading the movement for defending "Women's Rights" in modern Muslim societies - a `courtesy' which most Muslim feminists duly acknowledge. This is hardly to be wondered at in a society where the majority of its members are spared the traumas of an existential Angst. Islam as faith and doctrine (`aqida) has fostered this moral conscience by affirming women's place in the complex web of gender relations. In the kith and kin network where blood and other cognate relationships are secured in a base of equity and reciprocity, the spiritual and material needs, as well as the personal and the social needs of woman as an integral person are met. 

In sum, the precept that "women are the twin-mates of men" encapsulates the gist of an ethic of gender relations where the cognitive, the affective, and the symbolic dimensions are met to the advantage of a variety of complementary kinship roles that are rendered meaningful and value-laden in its light. Beyond the Prophet's dictum regarding the integrality of the gender bond, we thus see the personal and social ties in the family setting and in its attendant roles: starting with the "mother", "wife", "daughter", "sister", "aunt", and "cousin" up and down and across the lines of descent or ascent and inheritance. Such as in the account that comes through the eyes of a perceptive author, a Muslim woman's world can never be a dull, lonely, depopulated, or alienated world but, we may add, that it ideally radiates warmth and beneath the vibrant clutter, it retains an impregnable structure. In fact, if we wished to track down the links which structure an extensive and inclusive spectrum of allegiances and affinities, we could find a most reliable guide to that in the mandatory shari`ah injunctions prescribing the distribution of the property of the deceased among his/her heirs.

Observing the Boundaries: Transgression and Oppression

To go back to the basic concept of "zulm" which is at the root of all oppression, injustice and immorality, transgressing on the rights of kinship is an injustice which is doubly perpetuated: it is a transgression against the "natural" order of social relations ie. against "convention" and it is a transgression against oneself and one's own. In both cases, the rights upheld against each other by the members of the kinship group, as well as the obligations owed to one another have their origins in a God ordained order of justice. This order includes limits and bounds for interaction as well as rules to be observed. Rules of mutuality reciprocity which transcends the constituent units and their members to the Creator and the Supreme Legislator. It is in this sense that the moral code in the tawhidi episteme is part of an immutable order of justice and truth and is not a historical contingency. How the web of human relationships may be ordered and evaluated at any given moment, or the form social organization assumes, may vary; but the principle of essential and mandatory duties and rights owed to others, varying in degree of proximity and expectation, remains in effect and becomes, moreover, a precept for an inclusive solidarity within the community at large. Again here we could take our cue from the specific Quranic injunctions on infaq, which institute an ethics of spending of one's possessions and wealth in the way of good and God. This occurs through a mandatory context (zakat) as well as through the wide-ranging voluntary framework of charity (sadaqa) enjoined on those who believe and do good to invest in the way of the Beautiful Loan in this world which Allah will repay many times over on the Day of ultimate Recompense. 

Historically, wherever this ethic was observed, it has had far-reaching implications for women's status and role in society, whether this is assessed against an individualist yardstick of autonomy and choice, or whether it is viewed from the standpoint of the collectivity. Reinforcing an ecology of moral compassion, as we shall see below, comes an ethic of practical responsibilities which assures an order in which woman is a prime beneficiary, as well as a potential benefactress. Our emphasis here however is on the parameters of an inclusive and extensive network of relations within which women are located, rather than on the qualities of an equitable order.

In taking our cue from the scope of infaq, we need to remember that this community begins with al-aqrabun, those closest to oneself, and extends progressively to include various degrees of neighbors distinctively identified in ever-widening circles/variants of al-jar, in what comes to assume a seamless communal and intercommunal web of human solidarity rather than a particularly spatial projection. In this bonding of mutuality and responsibility, there is enough human space to secure the wayfarer, ibn al sabil, against the hazards of a physical space so as to assure for all a compassionate ecology: anchored in a complex but integrated 'communology.'  The Muslim community to which binding moral dues, or "duties" are owed starts off from an immediate nucleus of cognate, or a concrete and knowable locus of kith and kin, or blood relatives and affinates, and it extends to include practically everyone a person is likely to come into contact with in the course of his sedentary (or mobile) life-cycle. Therein lies the essence of an Islamic urbanism: or the premise of the "civic culture" in the "Muslim City". The spatial layout is a function of the community, not the reverse, and the institutions which develop in that urban conglomeration are as much a function of communal solidarity as their premise.

In the above, we have seen how the "Woman Question" may be intrinsically re-interpreted and relocated, in so far as it addresses women as a subject of human agency and accountability in the divine economy of mortal relations. This is the locus of the immutability of women's personhood and identity with its bearing on the issue of women's basic status in any society. We have also referred to the principle of group solidarity and bonding in the community where gender differentiation is a source for mobilizing the group to greater cohesion and mutuality rendering it more competent for its `civilizational mandate'. One does not have to go back to the `great chain of being' to arrive at the premise of human-bondedness and to rediscover the principle of (male-female) pairing that inheres in creation. It would seem that once the principle of women's intrinsic status as an individual/ moral being on a par with every other - and accordingly worthy of dignity, freedom, challenge and responsibility - has been embedded in the moral conscience, the soundness of the grounds of social organization at the level of the group in a given historical setting follows. Furthermore, if gender is taken as a point of demarcating groups in any situation, then it is clear that women and men are collectively bonded agents and that any attempt to split society on the basis of gender ie. to institutionalize gender in a group allegiance spelling reductionism and exclusivism is ruled out. Beyond these general parameters regulating the moral conscience at an individual and group level, the specific allocation of social roles in any historical situation becomes broadly a matter of convention ie there is a wide latitude of flexibility in assigning active roles in the human and social agency at stake in fending the moral order to which the community with all its members, men and women, are bound.

Institutional Parameters: The Family

Beyond the generalities designating the "Woman Question" , one could turn to the more concrete social question in a given society by briefly addressing the fundamental unit there, ie. the "family". Here again defining the family unit in any given situation might be a matter of convention and contingent on the prevailing socio-historical conditions much like any other social institution. Yet, because of its core function to any society - modern, traditional, industrial or underdeveloped - the family unlike other mutable or transient institutions retains a special position. It calls for definite stipulations and definitive orientations. Here clearly the gender factor is at the root of the family institution for it is in the pairing of creation and in the dual sex society that the reproductive faculties of the human species are secured. And because unlike reproduction in the rest of creation, human reproduction has its special prerequisite and conditions, the guidance afforded to humanity in this sphere falls within the range of assuring this field its anchors in the "moral" rather than the "natural" order. Beyond fluctuating human tastes and desires, or matters of opinion and expediece, "instinct" and "convention", from an Islamic perspective, there is the need and necessity for set of guidelines to be observed, if the well-being of individuals, members of the aggregate is to be secured and if the morality of the founding social unit is to be such as to warrant it a pivotal role in promoting the general moral order.

This is the perspective for understanding the various detailed stipulations regulating the diverse aspects of a gender-based relationship between men and women, and of seeing their relevance to the soundness of the whole. Above all, it explains why this specific domain of human interrelations was singled out for relatively extensive and precise divine instruction. Taking our cue from the overall position on human agency and human accountability, and from the principle of bonding and allegiance in the community, we may go a step further and suggest that in an Islamic perspective, the burden of responsibility for the welfare of the family assumes a more stringent apportionment among the men and women involved in that intimate relationship. In this sense, we are no longer looking at the human and communal domain of this relationship, but we are looking at the web of "domestic" relationships in a context of specific and designated roles and functions or mutual responsibilities in this web of intimacy women becomes mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt she is no longer simply conceived in her "innate individuality" an isolate in a complex network of relationships. The same applies to men where they are not conceived in the apportionment of duties and responsibilities and in the relegation of rights and prerogatives as individually privileged status-bearers, but rather as willful or duty-bound ethical agents ascribed to certain roles in a joint enterprise which is at the roots of the stability and well being in the community.

The constituent act instituting this "web of domesticity" in society is the marriage contract which is inspired more by a culture of piety than legality. "What is probably most characteristic of the Islamic position is that marriage ... is regarded first and foremost as an act of piety. Sexual control may be a moral triumph, reproduction a social necessity or service, and sound health a gratifying state of mind. Yet, these values take on a special meaning and are reinforced if they are intertwined with the idea of Allah, conceived of as religious commitments, and internalized as divine blessings." It is the idea of contract which institutionalizes the principle of reciprocity, mutuality and equity in this relationship between the sexes on the eve of their foundational act which is the entry into the multi-faceted bond that lays the grounds for the nucleus of society. Here we think in terms of a variety of roles and assignments which are all centered on the idea of contract - an idea which Islamically perceived has little affinity with its counterpart in the liberal utilitarian tradition. These include the ideals of personhood, consent, founding, maintenance, duration, dissolution, continuity, leadership, direction, guardianship, etc. While both parties to the contract are responsible for the institution to which this contract gives rise ie. for the well being and soundness of the relationships which ensue; yet the roles within this partnership are essentially assumed within a framework of "complementarity" not "identity". The role of one partner takes off where that of the other ends, or so it would seem, and the sequence and flow of roles and interdependencies in a close knit bonded relationship such as is instituted by the marriage contract can only be understood and assessed in this context of interconnectedness. This too is the context and background which renders the concept of a contract in marriage more than a mechanical and legal construct structuring mutual obligations and privileges between disparate individuals as charged by the feminist and communitarian critics in current political theory. Only an anthropology / sociology that is paradigmatically congenial to a holistic cognition can provide an adequate framework for addressing the gender-related dimension.

At the same time, marriage is a relationship which is founded on the idea of stability, or duration and continuity, as well as equity. This confronts us with the temporal dimension. As of all temporality one is involved in the process of evolution or growth and this supposes "sequence" and "phases" or the idea of life-cycles. Of the essence of temporality too, is the idea of dissolution and that of renewal or reproduction and regeneration. Hence, the "contract" instituting this cycle of the primal social unit must be conceived with provisions which encounter the various options embedded in the temporal human condition. To note, the many sided aspects of a complex human/social institution have been provided for in principle through the comprehensive scope of the precepts of the Shari`ah, (as distinct from fiqh); since the inception of the first ummatic community in the Madina polity and across a flux of generations in the Muslim Orient and Occident, this consensually sanctified Code has provided the blueprint for many of the socio-legal developments there, both in a positive and negative sense. In this sense, God's Guidance to men and women in this lifeworld in the here-and-now, - that shorthand for temporality - goes beyond utopia to history. It is aimed at providing them with the essentials which assure them against the rigors of a journey where, in a tawhidic episteme that underlies and unites an Abrahamic worldview, the life-world is but the passage to immortality and the testing ground of man/insan's mettle and morality. This points us to a critical, if implicit, category in the Islamic perception of a compassionate ecology that qualifies the health of the community.

"AIDS": Inversing a Syndrome?

The conditions for maintaining or activating the human auto-immune defense system (AIDS) which underlies the moral order, in this fateful contest may be defined along two axes: one of "interiority" and the other of "exteriority". The former defines man/insan in terms of his relationship with his Creator as "devotee" vis-a-vis the object of his devotion and spiritual servitude, while the latter defines woman/insan in terms of her relationship to others. Within society, the "family" lies at this intersection between both realms and becomes a microcosm of the social world as it prepares its members as agents of the social order for their divinely assigned mandate and agency in their passage to eternity. It is the first testing ground and lasting arena for the production and reproduction, the generation and regeneration of generations upon generations of devotees and mor(t)al agents. Conversely put the axis of "interiority" is predicated on human consciousness of a relationship with a Creator and Sustainer and on an ultimate Return. This is seen by the Muslim/ Muslima as the primordial and enduring bond which transcends the confines of temporality. It is a relationship which is as intrinsic and as basic to human life as only a reformed idea of a primordial and immutable human nature could be.

As we touch on interiority, and evoke a condition of distorted alteriority, we are also tempted to shift gears and move our discourse to another plane. Instead of a reified or abstracted discourse about the woman question and the Islamic perspective, we may assume the role of narrator and leave her to lead the foray from `within'. `She' ofcourse is the Muslim scholar turned participant in a stream of reflexive self-consciousness. One of the merits of a `re-modulated' feminist discourse is its liberating potential and a nuanced subjectivity is one of its privileged accesses. Subjectivity here is not only a rediscovered dimension of human integrality; more than necessity turned to virtue, it can contribute to the recovery and reappropriation of a method for enlightenment as it pushes out the frontiers for human/cosmic inter-connectedness as well as for a more holistic self-understanding. In this mood we proceed to recap on a synthesis.

A `piety-minded' Muslim woman (who in a reconstituted tawhidi episteme is by no means antithetical to her shari`ah-minded sister) will thus rethink her world past the "woman question" from the perspective of a re-discovered tawhidic sensibility. In such an episteme she will see that generic humanity resides in that relationship of devotion to God. This is the "`ubudiyyah" which connotes her acknowledgment of her createdness as a moral being (insan) and accordingly her indebtedness in gratitude and unalloyed allegiance to her Creator. Since the origin of her creation, the ultimate destination on her return, and the course of her after-life are all matters of the unseen ghayb, they are beyond the bounds of her immediate life-world experience. She will concede in good faith and not without reason, that one can only learn about these extra-mundane and extemporaneous experiences from the knowledge revealed through prophets before whom God has removed the veil of the Unseen. By informing his Messengers explicitly of the essentials that the human needs to know in that domain, God has freed mortals from the grips of anxiety, spared them the vanity of empty speculation, and given them an opportunity to live the here-and-now in the knowledge of these certitudes. So, in the tawhidi episteme in so far as the relationship goes between herself as devotee and her Creator as Lord and Provider, guidance constitutes the `conveyor belt' and the vital cord that seals the devotional bond. This she takes as the essential covenant and pledge that sets the stage for the life-world. Simultaneously, it assures that the proper distance is always maintained between the divine uluhiyah and the mortal (bashariyya/insaniyya). The integrity of the one and the other is predicated on this distance which beyond the existential level must be assured and secured at the conceptual/cognitive level as well. She comes to understand the rigor of the provision against shirk: ie. against pantheism, or any form of association in some aspect of divinity or overlordship with God. She will point out the pertinence of such a caution in an age where matters have gone beyond sheer association to plain self-apotheosization in divinity. Where the Guidance is the vital connection between mortal insan and Allah, she remonstrates, it is at the same time both a token of the compassion and the merciful justice which is ingrained in creation and a testament to the existential plight of created man. In this way, the guidance which serves to inform of the "unseen" in so far as it affects our attitudes and perceptions and our conduct in our life world, also serves to lay the basis of our "religious devotions" - in the strict sense of the term - and to further show us how we are expected to lead our lives in the more general sense as only the `homo-religioso' in the fitric insan should.

Guidance and Concentricity

Creation and the here-and-now in the life-world may be seen to lie within the parameters of the divine economy as essentially good and serving a purpose, she concedes. It follows that the prescriptions for morality are also designed as part of the guidance given humans in this world. The closer the area of this moral order to the generic human condition the more detailed are its provisions. The general conception of the "generic" she reasons, must surely lie in its independence of "temporality" which, by definition, can only spell a condition of mutability and change. The wonder of the God-given code of guidance then, must lie in its ability to balance between the "permanent" in the human condition and the ever-changing. The flexibility of the moral code in Islam she concludes, is the logical function of this enduring and just balance which can only ensue from the wisdom of an All-Knowing, All-Encompassing divine Providence. Other inferences follow.

Just as the rituals of the devotions instituted by God for insan to observe as devotee in his relationship to his Lord are independent of place and time; so, too, the principal stipulations organizing the domestic relationship in the family enjoy a similar autonomy. They are applicable to the man/woman condition and to the family regardless of the form or the stage of development of a given society and regardless of the proclivities or a certain race or people. In this way, a comprehensive and detailed moral code is provided to secure inter-human relationships at the foundational level of society: ie. the family. At the same time it provides for the generalities of a moral code that addresses the human organization at its most extended and inclusive level. The principles organizing the latter are only maintained at an unambiguous generality and the details are left to the temporal setting or the stage of development of the particular society in question. This is unlike the regulations in the sphere of domesticity, ie. in the family or the household, which sphere provides the enduring nucleus for every conceivable human society whatever the level of sophistication or level of prosperity.

She will point out that it is important to keep in mind the contrast between the generality of the stipulations of the Quran on the "Ummah", which constitutes the global political community regardless of its level, scope or formal organization, and the detailed provisions on the family as the core institution of any society. It is this balance between the general and the specific and the clarity in demarcating the spheres of `juristic competence' which assures the universality and the continued and renewed relevance of the socio-ethical code in Islam. However, she also recalls that while there might be a distinction between the possible spheres of human /collective organization and though the contrast between the categories of address may differ from the more specific to the more general, there remains a fundamental unity in the socio-ethical matrix which makes the family and the political community in the tawhidic global order both of a piece. In that cosmone, or communology there is no dichotomy or conceivable antinomy between the "private" and the "public" any more than there might be a discontinuity between society and polity. Justice, equity, reciprocity, as much as caring and sharing are all of the ethics of purposeful human aggregation, whatever its plane of organization. The rules for ordering the primal unit in the collectivity or the group, ( the jama`ah ) are the same rules which sanction the ultimate unit of faith and allegiance and human solidarity.

One has only to remember, she observes, that in the Qur'an, consultation, deliberation and arriving at joint decisions (shura) also converge with the the injunctions on mutuality, reciprocity, care, and consent, specifically in a man-wife and family related context. (2:233) The ethics of practical conduct in concrete life-situations too, such as may be found in the living traditions of the Prophet as social (and spiritual) leader and role model, reinforce these injunctions. "The best among you, the worthiest and most noble, are those who are the best, the kindest and most considerate to their folk" (khairukum khairukum li ahlihi) is an exhortation that is as valid today as it was to a seventh century Arabia on the brink of its transition then to an egoistic materialism. The pathos of modernity may be seen to lie in a bare and simple truth. In substituting (`reciprocating'?) one egoism for another in one more devastating version of a materialistic age that has dispensed with the vertical axis of the knowledge of the Transcendent, women like men, would seem to have lost their sense of community that would enable them to relate to one another or to any regenerative tradition. The latter could only come from a unitary point, the center of a circumference and its numinous core.

As if to confirm the unitary conception of social life, over and beyond any of its contingent binary fissures, she touches base with the Quranic discourse once more. Not only is an organizing principle of public life nurtured in the hearth, but even more, one of the exemplary moments in the conduct of public life is captured and projected through that discourse by a woman - not unlike herself, who is held up as an exemplar for all, including men. This is the lesson learned in the encounter with a public (female) figure who is shown to outmatch in wit, wisdom, common-sense and judgement as well as in sheer   (male) peers. Such is the example of the Queen of Sheba - Saba'.(27: 32, 15-44). To some, it might come as a surprise to find that an opportunity to effectively break with some outmoded conventions in society, as much as in  scholarship,  may ultimately lie in revisiting the sources of a transcendental and divine discourse.

A Recap

It is evident that our redefinition of the Woman Question and its relocation in a more inclusive framework has exposed it as a question that involves more than women:  its  ramifications embrace  the community. A practical place to start taking stock was suggested in the family. Whatever the stipulations on women's role within that `nuclear' social unit however extended or retrenched, needed to be understood in the course of a rethinking of its ethos-context implicit in the exigencies of mutuality, reciprocity, and continuity. As against androgynous speculation, the `traditional' family remains the initial joint concern for both men and women as morally responsible social beings and provides them with the primary arena of exercising their moral agency. Only if this elementary bit of wisdom is conceded, or rather, remembered and re-acknowledged, does it become possible to address the various provisions invoking the multiple facets of a complex relationship centered on a much maligned, spurned, misconceived and ill-understood "domesticity". Outside a matrix of interdependent and binding reciprocity, responsible morality, and witting and conscientious agency any contentions about "equality", "antinomy", or "sexuality" have little meaning. Indulging in incriminating subjectivities might have a therapeutic value for its practitioners, but may be as irrelevant to the real issues at stake as it is irresponsible. It means fragmenting issues and reducing them to narrow and exclusivist concerns; it denies a valid point of reference beyond a mute, mutating, and often a self-mutilated self and it verges on an abrasive exercise in multiplying and perpetuating perceived injustices and grievances in society at large and among its individual members. The noose is then drawn tighter still and a new cycle of oppression is initiated to the detriment of all.   The plight of women becomes the affliction of a generation, the malaise of a culture and the downfall of a civilization. Seen from a humanistic (=feminist is whole) tawhidi perspective, it may be justly stated that the Woman Question is ultimately the Social Question of modernity.

One of the enduring merits of a contemporary feminist scholarship is its sense of engagement and unflinching commitment to a cause. Revisiting the woman question from a soul-searching tawhidi perspective would undoubtedly share that sense of commitment at the same time as it ventures to redefine and relocate the cause. In doing so, the above presentation merely points out a direction, rather than fulfilling a conception. It does so against the background of an ongoing debate in interested circles in western academy and public discourse about the issue/issue-area of Women in Islam proffering insights for its general re-appraisal and redress. More generally, its observations could be meaningful for reconsidering the Woman Question in a modern setting, regardless of which societies are at issue. In suggesting possibilities for an alternative construction of norms of social inquiry and social action, it sees an Islamic perspective as having a universal intellectual and social relevance. It points up the significance of a critical reflection, deflection, and restitution of the underlying matrix of inquiry into a subject which has continued to generate much heat and sensation at the expense of a far more needed concord and sensibility.

Unlike any other `objective inquiry' the Woman Question cannot be reified except at the peril of undermining the very source of life and every vestige of human civility. In the absence of a more concordant (as opposed to the `combative') sensibility, women's studies and feminist scholarship are denied a potentially significant resource in alimenting and rectifying current perspectives, while an equally promising dynamic and vital field of contemporary study in the department of Islamics wallows in a crippling and imposed parochiality. The observations made above are intended to promote a more attentive and critical attitude to prevailing concepts in the relevant literature. They also point to possibilities of an alternative framework which appropriates non-conventional categories and includes some potentially radical and constructive concepts in ploughing a field which has hitherto received scant attention. In reconsidering the language of such an inquiry too, even the "nuts and bolts" of social science may stand to benefit from an openness in deploying its metaphors - even where these may seem to liberals and advocates of a new age consciousness to evoke a less evolved and more primordial stage in the ascension of humanity.