It is the contention of this paper that the prevailing climate of perceptions and the general outlook that structures the understanding of an epoch are hardly conducive to resolving many of the questions which fester our generation. Of all the challenging social questions none could be potentially more unsettling for the individual and the social order alike, or for the prospects of a diminished humanity, than that which addresses sex/gender-related issues. Such questions do not merely raise basic existential quandaries for the afflicted individual, but they also affect the family which, regardless of the form it assumes, remains today, much as it has always been throughout recorded history, the core institution of all human society. We have chosen the "woman question" as a defining perspective to locate a nexus of such existential and social questions. This is done in deference to a newly emergent brand of feminist scholarship within academia and, partly too, in compliance with a general mounting interest in women's studies and women's welfare in the broader social and global contexts. Without inquiring whether the Woman Question has emerged in consequence of an intensified and bewildered consciousness which has opened the door to an inconclusive and increasingly confused and confusing discourse, or whether it is the outcome of social forces on the ground, there can be little doubt about an existing consensus, among enthusiasts and skeptics alike, that the Question exists. Its shadows lurk or loom wherever the public debate bears on defining / redefining gender or veers to renegotiating the terms and balance of power and perceptions in society from a gender-conscious perspective. What is new about the debate is its public stature, and the intensity of interest it raises. That the Question itself should be raised at a moment when so much else has been questioned should perhaps come as no surprise. Modernity had started out in the twilight of the Renaissance with a bold and boisterous grip on the human that was man, by the end of the Enlightenment the conscience of a generation was riveted between the deification and the beastification of an illusive thing called man. By the end of the nineteenth century, whatever mysteries seemed to have been resolved behind the unravelling saga of a tale of evolution that seemed to have neither beginning nor end. All forms of life were conceded to be in mutation, evolving from the simplest to the most complex and, given the infinite malleability of a world in perfect mutation, it came to be wondered whether or not gender belonged to such a category of evolving human constructs? A set of propositions supported this assumption. Granted that nothing was given, that everything was open to engineering, that values were relative and open-ended, that essences were in doubt in a world where form and matter had taken over, and that meaning above all was a matter of construction, the wonder was that the Woman Question should have taken so long in imposing its centrality on social understanding. Perhaps it was necessary to wait for forecasts about the end of Man being just round the bend for the logical sequel to follow in the question " ... and what about Woman ?"

From the beginning of time, Woman was indispensable to Man, in much the same way as Woman and Man were one, differentiated in form perhaps, but in essence indivisible and whole. This essence that bonds and the essential ties that bind, may be defined in terms of human nature, the created Self, nafs, which both parties to creation and procreation shared together, and out of which the rest of humankind would multiply forth. It is out of this alterity and this sameness that the miracle of life on this earthly planet is maintained in strict keeping with the divine economy, until, again consistent with the divine will, it will have run its predestined course. The moment an element of doubt creeps in to cast doubt about the naturalness of this affinity between man and woman, the source of the underlying affinity between man and man is also shaken to the detriment of the global moral order. The centrality of woman to the social order is contained in that centrality to the human order.

Doubtless, this affinity among men has been repeatedly put to the test and rarely has it been taken for granted. Yet, while countless divisions have been engendered to rationalize this doubt and to legitimate orders of discrimination, all was not lost, so long as the original pairing which set the premises for the contentious multiplications and divisions remained intact. The moment however the naturalness of that affinity between Man and Woman itself came into doubt the spark of a morbid and consuming fitna or sedition was ignited. Alienation followed alienation. Yet, in the embers of a low burning flame, there is a glimpse of hope that all might not be lost. Just at the moment when the fire threatens to consume the life that sustains the habitable universe of humankind, it promises to cast a light which could wash out the grime which has grown dense over the later centuries and shrouded the globe in something analogous to the Green House effect. Such is the power and the promise of the Woman Question. At the very moment that man was doing away with man and wondering if he would ever be remembered in the not too distant future, the Woman Question was born in a last minute effort to bring man back into the picture, even if that carried with it a price which, as always in the past, would be paid for by Woman.

How can we venture upon such an optimistic interpretation despite the signs to the contrary? I will contend that this is possible in more ways than one. In my contention I will uphold my reading of the text from a Muslim perspective as the one most conducive to defending such a proposition. This perspective will be taken up on two fronts: first to question the congeniality of the existing paradigm of knowledge as a suitable framework for apprehending the Woman Question. Next, it will be taken up to suggest an alternative framework designed to promote a more proportioned apprehension. But even before the one postulate and the other, I should like to preface the debate with an account of the centrality and vitality of the Woman factor to the understanding which shall follow.

 The conceptual framework of our times is determined by two grand philosophies: Humanism and Naturalism. Both philosophies are rooted in the inversion of values and beliefs that happened when man first denied God and then misappropriated that role for himself. This process is behind the hubris of modernity, or the modern temptation of an inflated ego to deify the self and commit the Nietzschean folly.  The two philosophies are integrally related and flow from one another, although they may ostensibly clash in the battlefield of competing loyalties and rival worldviews. Yet ultimately both converge on the denial of man and life itself. Their impact may be expressed in terms analogous to what eighteenth century English philosopher David Hume expressed when in deliberating on rationalism and (?) naturalism he invoked the image of "two conflicting and deadly monstrosities" which encircled modern civilization. Are we justified in taking this analogy seriously in our present context? A look at how some self-proclaimed advocates of these philosophies may bear eloquent testimony on this matter.

By way of example, we may ponder upon the utterances of a contemporary influential figure in the liberal American tradition to see the potentially dehumanizing implications of an attitudes bred in naturalism. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes was admittedly in a position of influence to have qualified for the highest court of the land. In his learned frame of mind he sought to bring his knowledge to his profession and apply the principles of evolution to his understanding of what man was all about, and how in consequence the law ought to be applied.

"I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand. I believe that our personality is a cosmic ganglion, just as when certain rays meet and cross there is a white light at the meeting point; but the rays go on after the meeting as they did before, so when certain other streams of energy cost at the meeting point, the cosmic ganglion can form a syllogism or wag its tail."

Again, we need to remember that the "Nature" of antiquity is not quite the same as the Nature of modernity - thanks to the radical review of perceptions which has been induced by the discoveries of Evolution. (cf. Roscoe Pound). The resulting cognitive breakthroughs in the basis of our modern naturalism have assured a momentous degeneracy into a pervasive moral nihilism. Again in the course of another Supreme Court decision in the early fifties, a senior civil servant brought to bear the wisdom of his times to his magisterial office when he maintained that,

"Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes, that a name, a philosophy, a standard has meaning only when associated with the considerations which give birth to nomenclature. To those who would paralyze our government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a sensitive straitjacket we must reply that all concepts are relative." (Chief Justice Fred Vinson, 1951)

Coming as it does from a Chief Justice and not from a plebian politician, the statement has its value. It shows where moral relativism leads and how it can be used to justify all manner and deeds. The worst totalitarianism, and the most tyrannical political order, can then be induced to contemplate its own morality with an unperturbed complacency. In so doing it can also take its cue from the Machiavellian debut. The political, being potentially the most conspicuous and the most repressive and total expression of a given social order particularly in our own times, can also become the paramount embodiment of a prevailing morality. The conflation of ends and means finds a ready soil in the resulting disarray of moral relativism. The Woman Question too, we should recall, though it founders on the creeks of morality, is not without its political dimensions either. In fact, the slogan of present feminist scholarship as much as that of the feminist movement for which such scholarship might be taken as the academic wing, is precisely this: the personal is the political. Yet, this conflated and not unrealistic reading is itself grown out of the same hotbed of a foundering morality.

The corrosive impact of a nihilistic morality is clear. Here in the United States, which strives to project itself as the role model for the modernmost global order, this morality has come to prevail and its consequences are there for all to gauge. It is undermining the foundations of a society and a culture which were originally grounded in the constitutional principles of the "Founding Fathers". These principles had postulated a core of eternal/inalienable rights of "man and citizen" which were typically inspired from theistic wellsprings expressed in such mottos as "In God we trust" and cherished in a belief in "One nation united under God". Yet in the twentieth century, rationalism, positivism and materialism developed in opposition to religion and ended up destroying the memory of this absolute source of human rights. In the process,

"The unconditional equality of persons before God was replaced by the conditional equality of human individuals before the law. Deprived of divine authority, the concept of human personality could now be defined conditionally and therefore inevitably arbitrarily. The concrete person became a judicial metaphor, a contentless abstraction, the subject of legal freedom and restrictions."

The above observation in fact points to the limitations which inhere in all systems of positive law, and by the same token, it underlines the unique dimensions of the Shari'ah. Shari`ah refers to the Islamic jurisprudential framework which is grounded in a morally compelling system and is predicated on and structured by a unifying and integrating matrix secured by the belief-system enjoined in tawhid. From this matrix the Law draws its moral force and fulfills its social purpose. Its scope does not end with its letter and its compulsion does not stop with its physical sanctions. This observation is significant when we come to apply it to the Woman Question. The issue is raised here to suggest that in the present setting, which is primarily defined by the Western and Westernizing segments of humanity, not only is the conceptual framework for addressing the Woman Question intrinsically wanting. But the very system of morality and the system of legality which shape the prevailing order and give it its rationale and its legitimacy are inherently flawed. This is the order and such is the framework which are contingent on the dominant naturalist/humanist philosophies of our age.

This point reiterates our initial assumptions and convictions on the nature of the question at stake. The "Woman Question" can best be understood as an incisive expression of the Social Question of which it is an integral part, while the the problematic dimension at hand must be attributed to the prevailing matrix of beliefs and values which condition our perceptions and our actions. This matrix cloaks and feeds a pervasive sense of moral anarchy which is most typically represented in the dilemmas which beset the Woman Question.

The moral anarchy however inheres in an order and finds its way into a disintegrating momentum which punctuates our modern societies. For various reasons, which will be explored at some length elsewhere, we consider the Woman Question to be a critical index of the moral and social crisis of our times. To this extent the "Woman Question" reflects the "Generic Man Question" and encapsulates the structure/ of the "Social Question."

The upshot of the contemporary situation of social and moral disintegration is the growing moral outcry it has engendered within society. This is in strict consistence with the principle of "moral repulsion" - daf` and dafi`iya - expounded in Qur'anic cosmology. Because God has created the World with purpose and intent, and because He intended for life to carry on to its pre-ordained destination, and above all, because He has ingrained morality into the human order, the excess of abuse and wrong which reigns at any given moment in time breeds its own mechanisms of resistance. So that, ultimately, life fends for survival and for betterment.

[CITE RELEVANT AYAHS]

The current defensive unloosened in the modern ordeal can only come from traditional sources, i.e. by recourse to some presumably "pre-modern" tradition which is perceived by its members as containing the truths and values badly wanting in modernity. The recourse to the past takes the form of invoking the traditions of antiquity or of harking back to the sources of Divine Revelation which are historically enshrined and passed down the generation in the form of Scripture in the literary cultures and in oral tradition otherwise. Given the encumbrances of modernity, it is clearly in the former version that the incentives for a moral order are invoked.

The anxieties evoked by some contemporary philosophers and theologians in the West when they ponder the gains of their civilization can well resonate beyond. One such line of reflection traces the root of perversions to some basic concepts about human beings and human life that seem to have been lost along the way:

"What do we and our children face? The biological bomb, genetic engineering, chemical engineering, electrical stimulation of the brain, the bahavioristic manipulation of man." (These are all here in the technological breakthroughs of our time and it is urgent for the Church to take a firm and courageous stand.)...What has happened to men? We must see him as one who has torn himself away . . . from the infinite personal God who created him finite but in his image. Man was made to be great, . . . beautiful, . . . creative in life and art. But his rebellion has led him into making himself into nothing but a machine.

A Muslim perspective would be inclined to concur in the basic line of linkage between the achievements of a culture and its basic concepts about life and the human that is its main architect and supposed benefactor. However, an Islamic semantics expressing the self-inflicted afflictions of modern men and women would obviously draw on a Quranic conception and articulate its nuances on the human condition accordingly. In anticipation of interpreting the Woman Question, here is a synopsis of that version of human creation, its purpose, its perversion, and its recourse. Created in the best of forms for a known purpose by an infinitely Powerful, Compassionate and Just God and, endowed with the capacities and the resources to fulfill the mission assigned to him by his Creator, and guided further in the bearings which assure him of the compass and rudder in navigating his direction and fructifying his efforts; generic man/ insan/ has in practice fallen short of his calling. In the process of neglecting his calling and overlooking the terms of a covenanted mission the pathway has been warped. Not quite lost, for wherever there is faith there is hope and with hope a new resolve. In the meantime however, instead of inhabiting the universe and husbanding its resources as they have been put at his disposal by God, he has deflected his creative and constructive energies against his own well-being and to the detriment of his social and physical environment. By denying this relationship to God in an ordained status of absolute devotion and commitment to his calling, in `ubudiyyah, and by turning instead to a destructive egoism in the cult of self-worship, man has ended up in his misconceived inversions subverting the Just order. Without knowing it, he has become the victim of his own machinations. Morally speaking, what man was capable of, so too was woman.

Human perversion notwithstanding, and for all the cynical presumptions to the contrary, there does exist a moral order which is periodically invoked by all men and women of good will. It is a ubiquitous and persistent order which is observed and safeguarded through an element of intactness innately subsumed in human createdness and imprinted within the pristine Self, the nafs. This is designated as the fitrah, or created disposition, which persists even where it does not prevail, ever ready for recall given the appropriate conditions and human will or resolve. Wherever it may be temporarily lost to individuals taken singly in their worldly being, it surfaces to leave its imprint and echo in the aggregate of human individuals that constitute the different historical communities of a pluralistic world. It is this presence and invocation which provokes the periodic impulse to social reform and regeneration and imposes its factuality/ urgency on men and women despite their own ambivalences. It is this inborn reality, inherent in every individual and surfacing periodically in the human aggregate, which thus triggers off the defense mechanisms in moral beings when they are not arbitrarily reduced to their biological constitutions and dimmed of their consciousness. Generating the innate forces of moral resistance within a given society, then becomes an observable historical recurrence whenever that society reaches the bottom line to spark a reverse urge to survive and to assert its humanity. This urge is perhaps more commonly taken as the will to survive which is frequently identified with a biological instinct and shorn of its moral dimension. It might more appropriately be identified to a will to reclaim one's humanity.

The Woman Question defined in terms of an Islamic perspective would need to be seen against this broad system of generics, encompassing a basic understanding as to human creation and social existence. The purpose of this redefinition would not be simply to add another formulation of a problematique to those already suggested, but it would be to do something about it. This bias in favor of action is clearly part of the Islamic perspective and ethos as well which, as we shall duly see below, more than a framework for rehabilitating consciousness, provides the foundations for instituting policies that can assure a measure as well as a modicum of means to implement that measure. In short, in formulating the Woman Question against an Islamic perspective we shall be supplementing a sense of direction with the ingredients necessary for its effective pursuit.

In referring to modern social problems and the quandaries they evoke and in looking for a way out, the Woman Question has been taken by some writers in the past as an index to this turmoil and a key to its resolution. We go beyond this position however to cast doubt on the possibility of such a resolution as long as we remain prisoners to the logic of an age that might provoke a moral outcry among its baffled observers, but continues to impose its logic and its sway by its very hold on the keys to their conscience by controlling the accesses to the ways we think. By resorting to an Islamic perspective, we seek a point from which we can break this monopoly on our perceptions and opt for a space that preempts our destitution. Two qualifications need to be made at the outset to guard against any reductionist propensity. One is about Islam and the other is about the "Woman Question".

 

First. Islam is not to be conflated with Muslims or reduced to the history of Muslim societies. Islam refers to a divinely revealed religion which has been preserved intact in its original sources which are equally accessible to all human beings in the exact form and content in which they were first revealed (historically). Muslims are those followers of this revelation who have in the course of time developed into a historical community with its distinctive expressions and variations which nevertheless maintain their affinity within their founding sources.

This means that Islam as a revealed religion through its intact sources and Islam as a comprehensive socio-culture system / way of life of a community through time is available to Muslims and non-Muslims alike as a heritage and a resource to turn to and consult in changing situations /contexts. The nature of its source and the type of historical documents and historical traditions associated with it as Religion are such as to establish its relevance beyond its immediate historical context.

 

Second. The "Woman Question" in contrast needs to be seen within its historical context and its expression would understandably be expected to vary from one socio-cultural setting to another. In the most general context we might distinguish between its historical expression and consequences in the modern West and its counterpart in modern Muslim societies. It is a distinction of relevance for the conceptual framework that is used to understand and resolve each version.

At one level we need a different format to understand what each variant is all about. This is crucial to avoid the distortions which result from imposing one system of reference on another - as is currently the practice in the discipline. On the other hand, because of the nature of Islam as a divinely revealed religion, the confirmation of all Revelation that went before, and its perfected consummation and seal, it is not time-bound. Its very historicity however, i.e. the manner and the context in which its content was actualized, makes for its continued relevance to the historical situation per se, ie. wherever events intersect in space and time. The challenge is to relate its historically relevant propositions, which are inherently timeless in their content or provisions, to the changing contexts and situations "in time". In Islamic jurisprudence this process has its own terminology evoking a specialized discipline of relating the general to the particular, the timeless instruction to the concrete situation. This is designated as fiqh altanzil. An Islamic perspective on the Woman Question as an integral and comprehensive has its jurisprudential parameters, without being reduced to an arena of legality. In outlining its major parameters the dynamics of fiqh al tanzil can inform the spirit of a venture without confining it to any one of its dimensions. They can be as broad or as narrow as the conceptual and sociological reading of the Woman Question might call for.

In this way too the conceptual and sociological framework for addressing and resolving the Woman Question is intrinsically relevant to the problems assumed in this Social Question in both historical Muslim and contemporary Western Societies. How or in what way exactly the lines are drawn in each complex of situations is the test for the social scientists and social reformers on the spot. This leads back to our main proposition that sees Islam a potentially efficacious framework for resolving the problematics identified with the Woman Question in this day and age.   More specifically, how can the activation of a fiqh tanzil prompt a more radical and competent reading in this field? To recap on the observations made at the outset we shall sum up our assumptions about Islam and its relevance to the question at issue.

Essentially,  Islam provides a congenial, realistic, holistic and integrated conceptual matrix for addressing the Woman Question which is duly supplemented by a viable sociological grounding to assure its actualization. It is congenial because it accords with the human temperament and teleology, it is realistic because it accords with the historical evidence of human society and mortality, while it is holistic and integrated because in its approach to woman as a human in the aggregate which is society, it neither reduces nor divides but sees the part in relation to the whole and treats of the various dimensions in due proportion. In this sense an Islamic perspective does more than either philosophy or sociology in its capacity to simultaneously comprehend the arenas of knowing and being in their integrality. The conceptual matrix assures the basic questions of human identity, purpose, being, and destiny, while the sociological grounding provides for the optimum actualization of that human identity as social being in time. In their absence, the Woman Question is pulverized, fractured, fragmented and polarized. At one extreme it might be reduced to an existential question which calls for an answer in kind. At the other extreme, it might be conflated and identified with the social question in a given context and exact its resolution accordingly. 

In articulating an Islamic perspective and bringing it to bear on the social conditions of our times,, the Woman Question is spared the anguish of the extremes to which it has for long been ransomed.  Instead,  it comes to inhabit a pivotal terrain that encompasses the existential and the social in a balanced compound that comprehends more than the sum of either. Instead of marginalizing woman, she is re-centered to her own benefit and that of the social organism to which she is integral.

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