Gender-Sensitive Approaches to Islamic Law

Abstract

This thesis examines how gender-sensitive scholarship engages the classical Islamic legal tradition when inherited doctrines become objects of interpretive contestation. It argues that debates over gender in Islamic law involve deep disagreements over the nature of Islamic law, the location of interpretive authority, and the conditions under which reform can remain continuous with tradition. Using a comparative framework, the thesis analyzes the work of Kecia Ali, Mohammad Fadel, and Ayesha Chaudhry through three lenses: intellectual location and normative commitments, methodological and hermeneutical strategies, and descriptive and normative interventions. The thesis shows that each scholar offers a different model of engaging the tradition. Ali reconstructs the conceptual architecture of classical marriage law to show how gender hierarchy was structurally embedded within the doctrinal grammar of fiqh, while insisting that interpreters bear ethical responsibility for confronting that inheritance. Fadel approaches Sunni jurisprudence as a governance-centered practice concerned with regulating coercive authority and argues that internal juristic resources can generate constraints on domination under modern constitutional conditions without presupposing egalitarian moral commitments. Chaudhry, by contrast, foregrounds the role of moral “cosmologies” in shaping interpretation and argues that Muslims committed to gender equality face an “egalitarian-authoritative dilemma” when patriarchal readings dominate the inherited tradition. By placing these approaches in sustained conversation, the thesis argues that debates on gender in Islamic law turn on competing conceptions of law. More broadly, the study shows that questions of gender illuminate wider issues of authority, continuity, and legal change in the modern study of Islamic law.

Date of Award	2026
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Islamic Studies