Episode 75: Celene Ibrahim - Women in Sharia Law and the Qu'ran
In this week’s episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Celene Ibrahim about how the Qur’an portrays women, the role of interpretation in understanding Islamic scripture, and the misconceptions that shape public perceptions of Islam. Exploring the Qur’an’s teachings on spiritual equality, women’s financial autonomy, and family rights, Celene examines the gap between religious ideals and social realities, explaining how historical context and interpretive traditions influence the application of scripture today. She also unpacks the meaning of Sharia, challenging the ways it has been politicized and associated with oppression and extremism, while highlighting the diversity of Muslim beliefs and practices. Through stories of Mary and the Queen of Sheba, Celene reveals unexpected connections between Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions and invites listeners to approach interfaith relationships with curiosity, generosity, and a willingness to learn from one another without sacrificing their own religious identities.
Mentioned in This Episode
Book: Women and Gender in the Qur’an by Celene Ibrahim
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Jared: [00:00:00] You're listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
Pete: On today's episode, we're talking about women in the Qur'an with Celene Ibrahim.
Jared: Celene has served as a faculty member in religious studies and philosophy at Groton School since 2019 and is known for her award-winning monograph, Women and Gender in the Qur'an.
Pete: Yeah, let's dive in.
Jared: Let's dive in.
Celene: If we did a comparison between rights of women in the 7th century Arabia and, and anywhere else in the world at that time, some of the rulings that I appreciate most in Sharia and in Islamic jurisprudence are things around women's financial autonomy, things that came much later in Europe or the Americas.[00:01:00]
Pete: Celene, welcome to the podcast. It's wonderful to have you.
Celene: Thanks for having me on, Pete and Jared. I’m looking forward to our conversations.
Pete: A conversation about something that, you know, admittedly, Jared, you and I are not by any means expert in or even, uh, you know-
Jared: familiar, to be honest ...
Pete: not super familiar with. Yeah. So it's gonna be great to talk about something and learn a lot of things, and specifically talking about the Qur'an. And women, the portrayal of women, which, uh, in our culture has ... A lot of people have strong opinions about that, and they know nothing about it. So that's pretty clear, usually politicians-
Jared: That defines our culture in general.
Pete: Yeah, pretty much.
Celene: I can give you a few anecdotes if you're, if you need to expound on that.
Pete: Please. I can't wait to hear them. So, but w- how would you describe, i- if it's even a fair question to ask, the overall portrayal of women in the Qur'an?
Celene: So we have a theological portrayal in the Qur'an where women have an exactly spiritually equal state to men, and it is absolutely [00:02:00] explicit.
It's emphatic. There's no questioning that. So whatever type of Muslim you are from whatever type of background, there's no way scripturally speaking that you could be in any type of doubt over the absolute egalitarian nature of the religion when it comes to the essence of a person's spirituality.
And the Qur'an talks about the one soul, like, uh, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, God, the, like, the high, the most great, created one soul, and then from that one soul made male and female and made humankind. And that one soul then has a, brings human beings together in this cosmic unity. So that's basically the starting principle, the cosmological principle, when we talk about what the Qur'an says about the, you know, the beginning, the very beginnings of, of a concept where you could say biological sex or the gendered human being.
Jared: So how do then people get this so ... I mean, I think a lot of people would be very surprised to [00:03:00] hear that because that's not what they've heard about the Qur'an and how it portrays women.
Like, what's the disconnect here? Like, how did we get here?
Celene: Yeah, I, you know, I've worked with Muslims who don't necessarily read the Qur'an. When I show them verses in teaching and they're like, "Wow, that's in there?" That's in there, yeah. "I didn't know that was in there." Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's there.
Um, so I, I think that sometimes if we think about the way religion operates, you have the doctrinal teachings that are there in the scriptures that, that are, are preached by the, the saints and the sages, and then you have what people do in their everyday social lives, and there might be a very big gap between those two.
So you have the idealized, the, this is the, the way people should treat one another. And then you also have the, the social reality which, uh, you know, hey, we all fall short. And, and so that's, I think, where a lot of that gap comes from. When people are looking around the [00:04:00] social world and they, they see horrible things happening to someone, you know, at a Muslim's hand, then they're . . .
It's not necessarily that that Muslim is deriving those ethics from their scripture. They're arguably, you know, acting not in accord with the scripture, which is ... you know, if we talk about virtues and values- I think your listeners would find that reading the Qur'an, they find a very similar ethic around love and forgiveness and kindness to the neighbor that you would find in the Bible, whether it's the Christian Testament or the Hebrew Bible or other holy scriptures for that matter.
Pete: The sense though that I've gotten in terms of where the divide is is that I think unfortunately Anti-Muslim sentiment is used as a political football too. So, uh, people will say ... they'll pick out the worst th- I mean, you can do that about the Christian faith, the Jewish faith. You can pick out the worst [00:05:00] elements or make things up, right?
And, and, um, I think that's part of the big problem here, and frankly, one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on, to talk about that a bit, and to try to disabuse people of misinformation, particularly about women in the Qur'an. So, um-
Jared: Well, maybe I can follow up on that.
Pete: Go ahead. Yeah.
Jared: Because I think I can liken it to Christianity, where we have these multi-layers, and we were joking before about hermeneutics, right?
Like, how we interpret these texts. So, you know, when we talk about, uh, women in the Qur'an, there's these conceptions, there are concepts, and there's misconceptions. And I feel like in Christianity, we get a little mixed up between, like, what's in the text, and some of that's 'cause we wanna protect our Bible to not say some things that are a little bit shady in our current context and culture. And so then we sort of add these layers of interpretation where it's like, "Well, it can't mean that," even though that's what it says. And so we kinda get lost in these worlds of what's the text say, and what's our interpretation of the text? How does that [00:06:00] function in, uh, the Qur'an? Like, what's the text itself say versus what are the later interpretations, and how do we unpack these layers?
Celene: Oh, yeah. That's a great question. So if I were to break it down really simply, I'd say the Qur'an comes in this period of, like, 23 years, and it's tracked in Muslim history quite closely what are the first verses to be revealed, the next ones and so on. And so we have an arc where you can trace the early Muslim community development based on what the Qur'an is talking about.
So the verses that I mentioned before about the egalitarianism and the like, you also find in the Qur'an very specific rulings that relate to how, uh, gender dynamics should operate in a society. If you marry someone, what is the financial transaction involved? If you divorce, et cetera, et cetera.
So we can trace this arc across these 23 [00:07:00] years from core cosmological themes, and then at the end of the Prophet Muhammad's life, so we're talking, in common era terms, we're talking around 623, which would be the end of the Prophet Muhammad's life. We find that because he's actually moving from a radical message to then a functioning polity that needs to have- norms and laws, and, so the arc of Qur'anic verses trace that as well. So that's one of the ways that interpreters understand how to put the theological messages of the Qur'an relating to women and gender themes with the more norms about social practice. And interestingly, the cosmological themes are not things that necessarily change as you go through times and cultures.
The social dimensions of Qur'anic rulings are where it gets a little bit more, [00:08:00] uh, oh, let's say there's, there's more of a range for how people interpret those. So some people are going to say, "Well, this is how it was done in 732, when the early community was putting this faith into practice for the first time in a polity."
And then other people will say, "Well, you can look at that and find a certain spirit behind those rulings, and we live in a radically different world today." And so there is a hermeneutical movement that has to happen between that context and, and today's context and you know, the classic example are things like the Prophet Muhammad wore sandals.
Does that mean, like, everybody has to wear sandals all the time? Or, right, so the Qur'an never has a passage about, you know, specifically, like, what kind of shoes should you wear. But it has passages about how to take a debt contract and who needs to witness that. And in [00:09:00] that context, the Qur'an talks about you can have one man and two women or two men.
And then from that principle, people can take it and say any time you write a contract and you need witnesses, you should get one man and two women or two men. But other times people say, well, in Arabia there were some specific circumstances where there were a few women who were involved in commercial financial transactions certainly, but it was a smaller segment of the population, so they might not have had as much knowledge. People have also said, like, things like, "Oh, well, it, uh, it might be socially easier to try to intimidate a woman not to speak or to say a certain thing if she's a witness in this debt contract. And you know, they just said all kinds of reasons for why the Qur'an would, would give this particular instruction. Um, so what I find is that that's the place where a [00:10:00] lot of my work and a lot of other theologians who are interested in the question of gender comes. Like, what type of social world are we building here? Do we want something that is sort of radically egalitarian?
But we do have different biological functions as men and women, like how do we account for that in legislation that is part of this religious milieu? So just an idea of some of the themes that come up.
Pete: Well, you know, this is so reminiscent, you know, Jared, I... We've talked about this before, um, of Christian debates, you know?
Jared: Oh, I know. It's like it, it's so similar.
Pete: It's the same thing. It's so boring. It's the same thing. And you have those, "Well, the Bible says," and that's just it, and we have to keep reproducing this. Although nobody does that consistently. And others just say, "Well, no, we have to adapt these things for our time and place."
And, those two groups typically don't get along very well. So, can you just, before we maybe explore more specifically women, could you talk a little bit about the range of [00:11:00] the spectrum that allows you to stay within the Muslim world? We talk about this as Christian. Like, at what point are you outside of it, and what are the range possibilities?
Of course, I'm sure the conservatives will have a very different opinion about that, but just taking a step back as an academic, how would you answer that question?
Celene: Yeah, that's a lovely question because you have many different kinds of Muslims culturally. You also have kind of philosophically people who are inclined more to the esoteric teachings and people who are a bit more inclined to ritual practice, say, and put their emphasis there. And then you also have, of course, some political differences around leadership, like the Shia-Sunni divide. Uh, and then there's also, for people, there's differences in levels of practice or levels of kinda adherence. So there's all these sorts of, um, varieties of- Mm-hmm ... of Muslims ranging everything from, from culture to levels of [00:12:00] practice to, to schools of interpretation to even, you know, we're a tradition where we, we do have religious law, so even there's different legal schools that certain people follow a specific legal school.
And there, there might be a few differences in methods between those legal schools for how to derive rulings. So it is, um, the common thing that holds all Muslims together is the principle of cosmic divine unity. Uh, so in Arabic we'd say la ilaha illallah, that, that there is only one divine being, Allah, the God.
And by the way, that's the word that Arabic-speaking Christians would use that if you picked up a Bible in Arabic, you'd find the word Allah.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Celene: So there is no nothing worthy of worship, no deity other than the one, the singular. Um, and that's the focal point of everything, essentially.
That's the [00:13:00] heart of it. And then what goes along with that to make someone confessionally Muslim specifically is a commitment to follow the Prophet Muhammad's teachings, which we receive in the Qur'an. But those of you who have read the Qur'an, I think both of you seem to have some familiarity with it, you know that the Qur'an talks about Moses as a prophet and Jesus as a prophet.
And there's a continuity that, at least the q- this is the way the Qur'an talks about it, between traditions that came before Islam and the message of Islam, which is this radical monotheism.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Celene: Uh, so, so, you know, when it, when it comes to questions of women and interpretation around women and gender dynamics- you're looking at a variety of factors.
What culture does someone come from? How closely are they basing their worldview on the Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad? Uh, you're [00:14:00] looking at things like, are, or do they follow a more esoteric practice, or are they more legalistic? People can do both. You can be, you know, a more esoteric thinker and still be pretty rigorous in your application of ritual law and norms of practice.
But that gives you some kind of sense of the whole variety out there.
Jared: Is there a commonality that groups them according to how they, um... Those interpretive methods around the Qur'an? Like, within, you know, Christianity, I think there maybe n- I think the, it's easier to group people together 'cause they sort of tend to...
It's like, well, if you follow this, you sort of start to follow this and this and this and this, and it sort of kind of goes together in these... Again, there's plenty of diversity in between those. But I'm curious, with all those different, 'cause you have, like, both, um, you, like, law, uh, interpretations when it comes to the, the law, the social, um, and political, [00:15:00] and then kind of the religious and the philosophical and all of those.
Celene: Exactly. It's all intertwined.
Jared: Right. Mm-hmm. Are there though, kind of you think about how they apply or think about the Qur'an, do they fit into certain categories, or does everybody kind of do their own within these different spheres? Or is it like, well, even within those, you have people who apply it more this way or more that way?
Kind of what you said, I'm wondering, 'cause in kind of the Christian tradition, there is the, a little bit more of the, of the, um, what it said back then, we need to try and emulate. Mm. And then there is a trajectory that we're trying to follow, less emulate these because of the cultural conditioning that it was or social location, and we're over here.
So that kind of breaks down, again, not to make it a binary, but I do think there's a spectrum there. And I don't know if people who read the Qur'an similarly.
Celene: Yeah, it, well, it's certainly when you think about the organization of Christian communities, you really do have a [00:16:00] concept of membership to a specific church that is then part of, of this globalized church.
And when it comes to Islam, a lot of times people have a specific scholar or teacher that they would follow, sometimes in a formalized sense, like they belong to a specific community that is known to be the followers of a particular what we would say sheikh or imam. And other times you just find that people take knowledge from a variety of places and then synthesize it for themselves.
And I think in some ways people go through life, and depending on their circumstances or their life phase, they might be seeking different things. And I think you, you might see this in Christian communities too, just people maybe migrating, choosing a different church. But it tends to be, uh, because we don't necessarily have very strict notions of membership. There's not like, [00:17:00] necessarily dues that you would, would pay to be in a certain community. I think there is a lot more flexibility on that.
Pete: Hmm.
Celene: And since ancient times it's always been the practice to travel in search of knowledge. So it's, the, it really is a faith that puts a lot of emphasis on seeking.
And for the ancient peoples, a lot of times that meant, you know, physically going from Damascus to Baghdad to Cairo or, you know, pla- it, those are, those are just the Arab, you know, places in the Arab world, or way, way beyond that. Timbuktu, let's say. Literally Timbuktu.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Celene: And, um, so I think that has informed the Islam that you find even in the present.
And so that idea of finding a teacher and staying with that teacher for maybe a lifetime or maybe a certain amount of years, uh, but then there are Muslim communities, for instance like the Ismaili [00:18:00] Shia, uh, for instance, who probably number somewhere around maybe 15 million in the world, so not a small community by any means.
But they follow a living imam who has a hereditary line going back to the Prophet Mohammed.
Pete: Hmm.
Celene: So that's a slightly different form of leadership. So when they're reading the Qur'an, they're also reading it through the teachings of the imam that's a living source of guidance.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Celene: Um, so it's, it's very...
it's, again, it's, it's very different depending on w- how you've grown up in the Muslim community.
Pete: Right. Yeah.
Celene: Or Muslim communities, right?
Pete: Yes, communities, exactly.
Celene: Like, we think about it as it's one global community, too.
Pete: Well, you have to say that too about Christianity. What do Christians think about...
Are you kidding me? There's no one thing Christians think about anything, so they disagree.
Pete: Okay, so if you're an American [00:19:00] and if you're not Muslim, you know nothing or next to nothing about the Qur'an, except for one word or two words, Sharia law, and we all know that's really bad. So, or is it? So what is it? So pe- th- uh, that's one of these issues that people use as a, uh, s- to score points against an opponent, whether it's a politician or something.
So could ... I think people would be interested in hearing your take, what is it, and how do you interpret that?
Celene: Yeah.
Pete: Right?
Celene: Certainly. Let's just take it back to the beginning. So Sharia, it's the same root that means a road. Uh, so if you go on road signs in Arabic, you're gonna say, they're gonna be like a Sharia something.
Pete: Yeah.
Celene: Um, and the idea is that the Sharia in classical times is this path to the watering hole. This is well-trodden place where you're going to find nourishment. Like, you don't have to bushwhack. [00:20:00] You just follow the road.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Celene: And, that's the idea. So it is a path, and the idea is that it's this straight path.
It's the path that will lead you to morality, to a sense of virtue and the like. So if you open up a classical legal textbook, say, you're gonna start with things like, how do you purify yourself from ... like, in a ritual sense. And then how do you pray, and how do you fast, and how do you do pilgrimage?
And so this is all the foundations of the Sharia. That's the, the beginning, the beginning steps. And so one of the unfortunate things is that when people advocate for sort of anti-Sharia legislation, you can't really do that and still uphold First Amendment rights. It's like this is just basic the way I pray, the way I fast, you know, everything, um, pertaining to, to personal religious practice. [00:21:00] And then the Sharia has dimensions that relate to family law and, and, um, the rights of children and the rights of wives and duties and obligations for, you know, the different members of a household, and all this is part of the jurisprudence that is the Sharia.
And then adding on to that, if you're, um, if you go into the realm of, like, commercial transactions, so you should pay your laborer the wage that you agreed to pay them, or, you know, basic ethics of labor, and that's part of Sharia. And contract negotiations are part of Sharia, and of course, there's a whole branch of Islamic finance and, um, money lending and, and practices and the like.
And then you get to a part of Sharia which everybody, uh, if they don't know much about it is kind of what's in their mind is the statecraft business. But that doesn't necessarily impact- an everyday practicing Muslim [00:22:00] unless they're in a situation where they're engaging in statecraft as a representative of the Muslim community. So it's, um... You don't necessarily need to have, like, anti-sharia legislation in the US because we're not in a Muslim polity. We're not trying to make it a Muslim polity. So it's, it's not, it... It's just so, so deeply misguided and-
Pete: But it's communicated on, on the lay level, again, very motivated by, you know, I think racist intentions.
Um, this is against women and treat women poorly. By the way, America's, like, the last country in the world who can sort of stand up and champion women, but anyway, that's not the point. The, uh -
Celene: If we did a comparison between rights of women in the 7th century Arabia and anywhere else in the world at that time or, um, you know, even now, I'm just thinking some of the, the rulings that I appreciate most in sharia, and in Islamic [00:23:00] jurisprudence are things around, that, that protect, um, women's financial status, that protect the way the family is structured. There's already this kind of built-in expectation that a father needs to financially support any of his biological children and-
Pete: Mm-hmm
Celene: and, and things that came, maybe we could say, um, especially women's financial autonomy, things that came much later in Europe or the Americas.
Pete: Clearly what bad people say when they bring up sharia law is it's the worst thing that can happen to America. It has to do specifically with the treatment of women.
So is there something... I mean, you know, our sacred texts have problems. I mean, the Hebrew Bible and New Testament have some problems. We all know that. Are there things in the Qur'an that would lead people if they wanna sort of pick and choose passages that they could look at and could exploit for purposes, which is [00:24:00] a very ungenerous reading of any tradition, let alone a tradition you don't like?
Celene: Yeah. One passage in particular that can be a little twisted is the Qur'an talks about what to do in the case of a divorce, and there's a specific amount of a waiting period that a woman is still due financial compensation and, and what we would say, like a, um, alimony essentially.
Jared: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Celene: And, uh, interestingly, Islamic jurisprudence allows in that period, the couple can reconcile, and then the divorce still counts as a divorce, but they don't need to recontract the marriage essentially. So it, it, it's like a cooling off period to make sure that the divorce is certain.
Pete: Okay.
Celene: And if the divorce is certain, if the woman in the marriage arrangements has a deferred dowry, so the dowry payment in Islam goes from the man to the [00:25:00] woman. It's her personal property. And a lot of times marriage contracts are structured so that a certain amount is paid upfront, and then in the case of a divorce, another amount would be owed.
And this is part of the other social security apparatus that gives women a bit of more, uh, social security, literally like social security. And, um, in one verse regarding this arrangement, it talks about men having a degree, like a, some kind of advantage over women, like a, some kind of preference.
It's all ... The verse is specifically in this, talking about these divorce proceedings and, and what should happen. And interestingly, some people, if they want to make an argument for male supremacy, they're gonna have to play with that little phrase of that verse. Of course, they have to read it completely out of context, [00:26:00] but that's one thing. That's, that's a place where I have seen.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Celene: Um, yeah.
Pete: Is there, is there, um- Uh, okay. Just help us out here, all right? So if somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about starts talking about the evils of Sharia law, what can people say to them? How, how could people respond to them when they say something like that?
Celene: Yeah. I think people have been trained to associate Sharia with jihad, with this kind of killing of innocent people, which is not what obviously jihad is or what Islam condones or the like. And so I think that's the crux of it what people are really afraid of. And of course, all these gender issues get tacked onto that.
Pete: Yeah.
Celene: But in people's lived experience, they might not know too many Muslims, and so they might not... They might just have [00:27:00] this image of this fanatical Muslim who is trying to impose their religion by violence. I think what we have to break down is the idea that there's the religion, the norms of conduct in everyday relations, and then there's the fact that because Muslims were in charge of polities, nation-states, empires, then they tried at various points to govern warfare by referring to religious principles.
And by and large you see that these are pretty sophisticated principles. Don't harm innocent people, don't poison water. You know, at a certain point in history you weren't allowed to use fire. Well, that kind of went out the window when everybody started using fire-powered weapons and the like.
Celene: But, there's an ethos. If a war has to take place, then there are [00:28:00] rulings that come directly out of the religious ethos for how the conduct of that war should, should, uh, should proceed, including the treatment of prisoners, and don't mutilate bodies, and, and et cetera, et cetera. This i- this is not my particular specialty.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Celene: But it's... Y- you, y- you would have to understand that, that we could say the, the ethics of just warfare have been a part of Muslim religious discourse. Mm-hmm. Now, that doesn't mean that e- every Muslim sitting around their house is thinking about waging war. No, certainly not. We're not. Uh, um, do you know, but this, this is something that has been considered in religious writings like, l- like any other globalized religion whose people have had to figure out how to be a sociopolitical entity.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that, uh, you know, for me raises a question. I know we're getting a little bit afield of, of how the Qur'an, uh, talks about women and, and how that's played out over the [00:29:00] centuries, but I do think this idea, you, you mentioned, if you're a Muslim who lives in a polity that's not Islamic, that is...
That's not, you know, in America that's not the polity that was really... I mean, I do think there's a little bit of a fear amongst kind of the First Amendment of, like, separation of Church and state. I feel like there's a lot of people in our country, Christian nationalists and other, are kind of afraid of that 'cause it's like, "Well, somebody's gonna take control, and is it gonna be the Christians or is it gonna be the Muslims?"
I mean, it's so simplistic, but I, I guess the, the... How does that w- w- work in terms of, like, for us we would call that, like, Christian nationalism. That is we're... There are a group of Christians who think that it should be run. Ironically, they're the ones who are most against- Islam because they feel like that is the religion that's gonna try to do the very thing that they're gonna try to do, which is completely ironic.
But what, how does that break down in terms of, um, in terms of the [00:30:00] Muslim religion? Is that a small sect of people? Is that a larger contingent? Because you said, like, there are countries, and I'm probably too ignorant of this, I'm guessing have there, in recent memory, been countries that have tried to run, like, a Christian polity, but that that is part of the Muslim tradition too, that there are cultures and societies that try to run in this way.
Um, so yeah, what part does that play within Islam?
Celene: Yeah. I, that question is so live. Like, if you went in debates with Muslim intellectuals, that would be a question where you'd be drinking tea until, like, 3:00 AM and-
Jared: Ah, I see ...
Celene: right? Because it's, um ... The, the Qur'an will hold general things like, uh, advice for how to run a polity, a just polity, where the rights of people are recognized. And so [00:31:00] Muslims would say, I think generally, that there, there's religious values, and that they'd like a, a polity that's not corrupt, and a polity where the poor are taken care of in part by the state and in part by people who have means.
And, so there's ways in which religious values inform the conception of what is an ideal polity and what is statecraft. There's certainly some Muslims who would endorse the idea that it is the state's responsibility to ensure that be custodians of Islamic jurisprudence and ensure people abide. Um, and that could be things like prohibiting the sale of alcohol. Right. Except at the Hilton and the Hyatt and places where you can get good tourist dollars.
Jared: Uh-huh.
Celene: Mm. But, but I think in all seriousness, it's a really live [00:32:00] question. Uh, but on the other hand, Muslim polities have always had non-Muslims in their midst, and have a very robust and diversified tradition of how to think about letting religious norms inform statecraft, while also leaving space for religious minorities.
And in places, that's gone seemingly pretty decently, and in other places, it's gone horribly. And, um, you know, it's a very varied situation. It's something a lot of people, you know, study with a fine grain.
Jared: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Celene: Uh, yeah, you know, again, I will always think, give you kind of this generalized picture, but that's because you find-
Jared: Right
Celene: depending on where you go, it's gonna be very, very unique. Um, so it's hard to talk about these overarching trends without- Yeah.
Jared: Well, maybe let's, maybe taking that and applying it to this topic of women in the Qur'an, is there debate... I guess I'm trying to think of it, 'cause all we have [00:33:00] is tying it to what we know in, kind of the Christian tradition. But we, there are a, a number of Christian traditions that would put that at the forefront of things they're fighting for, is making sure that women have the same rights and, and looking at patriarchy and how that has, um, you know, oppressed women over centuries, and how even their own tradition has perpetuated that.
And so how do we rectify and remedy that? Is that... Are, are, are there groups like that in Islam, and how does that, how does that manifest kind of inter, uh, religiously? Like, are there- Mm-hmm ... you're kind of fighting against these patriarchal sects, and we're kind of working toward this liberationist ideal, and how does that work in, in Islam?
Celene: Oh, e- exactly. So we have a really strong basis on which just general Muslims can agree on things, so it becomes more, um... The, the aspects are more in the implementation of what we actually already have in front of us. Interesting. A- and that's what I, what [00:34:00] I think would surprise people if they started to dig in a little bit, is exactly how many rights women have that are right there, plain and simple.
So many of the, uh, we would say, like, feminist organizations or just organizations that don't want to call themselves feminist but that work towards women's causes are building off the religious foundation that is the undisputed foundation. Now, where we get interesting questions are something like the age of marriage because, again, the age of marriage was much lower in the ancient world pretty much across the ancient world. And so if we're going to say, um... Which is basically if we're going to put 16, 18, you know, what- what- whatever modern, modern norms say. Well, then, okay, well, how do we justify that from a religious standpoint? Well, then you have to go to more the spirit of the law and the like because there's, there wouldn't be something that you could peg 16 or 18 onto per se. [00:35:00]
Jared: Right.
Celene: Um, except maybe the tradition that the Prophet Muhammad married his own daughter when she was around the age of 18. So, you know, you can kind of there are things that you could pull from to advocate for a social platform that resonates today but that still has a religious sensibility to it.
A- and what... There's... When we, when we think about feminists that come from Muslim countries, some of them are very much secularists and, like, just, like, just let's get the religion out and then we'll start kind of fresh. And then there's groups that are, "Well, there's some useful things that we could actually build a social platform and convince people to follow it because th- they subscribe to religious ethics." And it's a, it's a little bit of a difference of strategy that-
Jared: Right ...
Celene: it just depends on what's going to get you traction when you're actually thinking about the on-the-ground needs of, of, uh-
Jared: But what you would say, though, that the Muslim tradition has it a little bit more spelled out [00:36:00] explicitly what those rights are.
So you're really building on a pretty solid foundation for women's causes and feminism.
Celene: I think so. Yeah.
Pete: And not an Iron Age one either.
Jared: Right. Well, that's what I was kinda thinking- is it, it, you know, in talking of our, our Hebrew Bible-
Pete: Right ...
Jared: it's just older. Yeah. I mean, it's of a different culture than the s- you know, sixth, seventh century,
you know, seventh century and, and beyond. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's curious.
Pete: Well, um, I'm wondering, um, Celene, if we can just talk for a moment about- Uh, maybe similar traditions or even stories that are found in, let's say, the Hebrew Bible and in the Qur'an, and h- how they're handled maybe differently or the same, and maybe you can surprise us with some thoughts that, uh, you know, Christians aren't expecting to hear from the Qur'an, so, um-
Celene: Yeah.
Uh, so I teach at an Episcopal school, and there's students from all different backgrounds, not just, uh, Episcopalians. But I was working with a- an Episcopal student in [00:37:00] one of my classes and, uh, we were reading, it was a class on Arabic and the Qur'an, and I handed her the chapter of the Qur'an that's called Mary, Mariam.
And she just, like, looked at me and was like- ... "Wait, this is the Qur'an?" And, and she's flipping, she was, like, literally flipping to the cover and, like, like just... 'Cause it sounds so much l- you know, like another gospel or
Jared: something. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Celene: Um, and interestingly, like the Annunciation scene, it, it comes in a place that's kinda easy to remember in the Qur'an.
It's chapter 19 verse 19, uh, in the surah that's called Mariam. And so, and I say that just because if your listeners want to go look it up or if you wanna link it in the show notes or something. Uh, and, and so Mariam is one of, if we're talking about female figures, she is the, one of the central female figures of, of the Qur'an.
And, uh, we don't just have Mariam birthing Jesus in the Qur'an. Uh, we also have Mariam's mother [00:38:00] birthing Mariam uh, as a story that's, that's related, uh, in the Qur'an. So you might see Muslims, uh, there was a, a trend to wear an I love Jesus shirt. Just because we are very much a part of this kind of sacred lineage. And so that might surprise a lot of your listeners.
Jared: Right. Mm-hmm.
Celene: Um, I think too when we get to female figures, one of my favorites is the Queen of Sheba, who i- is of, of course, a figure that's mentioned in, um, the Jewish and Christian, uh, Bible, uh, the Hebrew Bible specifically. And she's given a much more, uh, let's say- Oh, how would I characterize it?
Um, so she becomes in essence the model of a female political leader in the Qur'an. And she's a diplomatic figure and kind of knows how to negotiate and how to avoid war. And she's, at the [00:39:00] same time, she's a model for this process of religious awakening because you see, over the course of her story, you see her
She's already wise, and then she kind of becomes theologically wise by the end- of her story. So she's an interesting one. And we have the stories that come right out of the Hebrew Bible around Moses as, and, and the women around his early life and, later life, too. And so yeah, there's so many figures in there that would be familiar to people who read Hebrew Bible or Christian Testament.
Jared: Well, it looks like we're actually already coming to the end of our time. The time has flown. Yeah. But I, I wanted to ask as we go, for people who are saying, "Man, I really need to look into this a little bit more. I need to read some of these things," what, [00:40:00] you know, how might this shape kind of interfaith relationships?
Like, can you paint a picture of what it looks like for us to be, you know, part of our traditions and to be rooted in our traditions, but also to have this generosity to reach across the aisle, reach across religious traditions. Because it... Just talking to you, like, some of the stuff you're talking about, it's like, "Oh my gosh, the..."
In some ways, I expected there to be this unique formulation and set of relationships. And, and a lot of it is like, oh man, you get... dealing with the same stuff we're dealing with over here- Yeah, we're humans ... in the Christian world. We're humans. Exactly. We're, we're asking the same existential questions and- So, but I think, I think there's a little bit of a, um, a reticence to talk about we're humans because it feels like I'm giving up my Christianity, or I'm giving up my Muslim identity in this transhuman, we're all human kind of way. So how do you maybe give us a vision for how we balance we are all human, but we also are rooted in our own traditions, and that's okay?
Celene: Mm-hmm. I [00:41:00] really enjoy, um, learning from people who are deeply immersed in Hebrew Bible or Christian Testament because learning from them, it gives me a new perspective on the stories that are in my scripture. And then in this exchange, just asking questions back and forth, or you might notice somebody might ask you about a particular detail and then like, wow, I, I had never thought about that before, and then I go read about it, and it's really inspiring and clarifies the story in this new way.
So it's almost like coming to it allows you to come to your scripture with, like, a beginner's mind again and just see a new dimension of a story that maybe you've been exposed to your whole life. So that's one thing. And then I think it's just really rich to get to know people across cultures and, and backgrounds because you do discover similarities, but then you can also appreciate the things that are unique and different.
And so a lot of times after I do a particular engagement, I come back and I'm like, "I'm really, I'm really happy with my, my tradition. I really like the way that [00:42:00] it does this certain thing." Yeah. And I got a new perspective, but, but it can actually make a person interestingly more grounded in their own identity and also better informed 'cause you had to do that work to explain it to someone.
Jared: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I would imagine, I was thinking of this emphasis you mentioned in Islam of travel, that there's also that being around other people also that fear of the difference can melt away and you realize the difference, while true and real, isn't necessarily that scary.
It actually can be a beautiful thing instead of a scary thing. So.
Celene: Oh, let's hold that thought. Mm-hmm. Let's just let that resonate a little bit. Yeah, totally. Totally.
Pete: That’s a good place to end.
Jared: Good. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and educating us on some of this.
Celene: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, and I appreciate if your listeners have gotten this far, I really appreciate them too.
And, uh, and thank you for doing the work that you do.
Pete: Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Hey, before you go, we [00:43:00] hear from a lot of listeners that sitting with questions that you can't take to your pastor, parents, or friends can be a lonely experience.
Jared: And if that's you, we built a place for that.
It's called the Society of Normal People. It's a community of people who are in exactly that spot; curious, maybe a little displaced, but definitely not done thinking about God and the Bible.
Pete: We're not promising it'll answer your questions. Alas, even we can't answer all the questions, but it's a lot less lonely when you're asking them with people who get it.
Jared: Head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join to learn more, or just head to the link in the show notes. We'd love to see you there.
Pete: We're not worth listening to anyway, so you'd be fine without those, I think. Although you probably wanna hear the questions.
Celene: Oh, I was enjoying a little bit, and I actually was thinking, like, uh, how, the moment you knew, like, it was a God-ordained podcast. I mean, that must have been, like, really [00:44:00] special.
Jared: It, it really was. It really was. You know, that memory will stick forever when we heard the thunder from the mountaintop. Um-
Celene: A mic descended.
Yes.
