This thesis provides a critique of Nawal El Saadawi’s writings regarding the issue of women’s rights in Islam. The study’s goal is twofold: 1) to examine how Muslim women’s rights are viewed by Nawal El Saadawi, who is a prominent feminist scholar in the Middle East and is widely known for her fierce campaigns demanding equal gender rights in what she calls a male-dominated society, and 2) to discuss her arguments within an Islamic framework that includes two strands of interpretations of gender-specific verses of the Qur’an: traditional and modern. To this end, I use a content analysis approach to explore how the Arab feminist, Nawal El Saadawi, perceives five controversial issues -i.e., marriage, polygamy, and divorce, inheritance rights, and veiling- as opposed to the Islamic faith as presented by classical scholars (i.e., Muhammad ibn Jarir Al Tabari (839-923 CE) and Ismail ibn Umar Ibn Kathir (C 1300-1373) as well as contemporary Muslim feminists including Amina Wadud and Azizah Al Hibri.
Findings display that Nawal El Saadawi's arguments contradict the classical readings of the Qur'an as demonstrated by Al Tabari and Ibn Kathir on the one hand, and the views of contemporary Muslim feminists on the other hand. While El Saadawi considers marriage in Islam, for example, as an oppressive institution that denies a woman's right to choose her partner and turns her life into a servant, traditional and modern scholars' interpretations of the Qur'an disagree with her and assert the opposite. Findings also show that El-Saadawi's claims not only contradict the views of classical and contemporary scholars, but also contradict each other. For instance, El Saadawi (2002) criticizes Islam for several issues such as marriage and divorce and accuses it of being behind the backwardness of Muslim women. However, she praises the era of the Prophet Muhammad and his early successors, which she described as the best era in which Muslim women were treated fairly.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/42937 |
| Date | 19 November 2021 |
| Creators | Shehata, Asmaa |
| Contributors | Goldenberg, Naomi |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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