their weakness, their imperfection, in other words due to their humanity.
It was the first human experience of freedom ….
The first human uncertainty, the very first doubt, the first lesson in humility also … despite their superiority in relation to the angels who prostrate before their knowledge, they are not infallible.
The Qur’an thus offers us a beautiful depiction of the human experience within the couple. Humanity’s first couple will experience this first test in perfect communion. First man and first woman together, intimately connected, taken up the challenge of life ….
The Qur’an retraces in a harmonious fashion their fears and their joys, then their disobedience and their hopes, without ever distinguishing one from the other, and certainly not by denigrating one in relation to the other. Together they transgress and it is together that they repented. It is also together that they began a new destiny ….
A beautiful example of tribulations, patience, repentance and hope, whereby the return to God is always liberating.
A story of human experience which is both eternal and continuously renewed.
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1. Translation by Muhammed Asad.
2. The term ‘zawj’ is used in the Qur’an to refer to both the masculine (al-Baqarah 2: 230, al-Mujadilah 58: 1) and the feminine (al-Nisā’ 4: 20, al-Baqarah 2: 102)
3. Lamrabet prefers ‘pairs’ here to Asad’s ‘opposites’ for zawj (Editor).
4. Translation by Muhammed Asad.
5. Translation by Muhammed Asad; parenthesis notes by Asma Lamrabet.
6. Hadith reported by Abu Hurayra in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
7. Rachid al-Ghannoushi, Al-Mar’a Bayna al-Qur’an wa Waqi’ al-Muslimīn, (London, Maghreb Center for Research and Translations, 2000), 15.
8. Fakhr ar-Rāzī, Tafsīr al-Kabīr, Mafatih al-Ghayb, pp. 11–13.
9. Ibn Kathir says in his Tafsīr that a number of scholars which he refers to draw on ancient monotheistic sources [‘Isra‘iliyaat’] the story of the snake and of Satan, see p. 80.
10. Al-Qurṭubi, Al-Jami’ li-Ahkam al-Qur’an, Vol. I, p.408.
11. Tariq Ramadan, Les musulmans D’Occident et l’avenir de l’Islam, (Paris: Sinbad-Actes Sud, 2003), p. 36.
12. The term khalīfa is often translated as vicegerent or curator
13. Ali Shariati, ‘Man’s creation from the Islamic viewpoint’. See, http://www.shariati.com/english/human.html
WHEN THE QUR’AN SPEAKS OF WOMEN
The Qur’anic text often cites, and at different points in the history of humanity, characters, male or female, with the constant objective of erecting them as living models for those who ‘believe’.
These women and men are sometimes models of virtue to ponder upon and follow, sometimes models of vicissitude to recognize in order to know to avoid … .
At times idealized characters, but never dehumanized, whom God cites all through His message not with the objective of distracting us but in order for us to extract a teaching, a route, a path to follow … . .
Each woman and each man cited in the Qur’an have a singular history, a particular spiritual struggle, a different path, which distinguishes them from one another. God made things this way so that each of us, whoever we may be, can recognize ourselves one way or another, in their journey.
Their struggles, challenges, defeats or their victories are in a little way our own, if we know how to read them, if we know how to interpret them, how to translate them into the language of daily life.
Whatever the context, the location or the era, these beings chosen by God are signs all through the sacred book designed to remind us that we might advance in this life, slowly, patiently, inescapably towards His light … . Adam, Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Yusuf (Joseph), Musa (Moses), ‘Isa (Jesus), Muhammad … . But also Asiah, Sarah, Umm Musa, Maryam, Balkis … . and so many others whose names were sometimes deliberately omitted because the example is not so much in the name as in the path and the moral conduct. It is also in the example set. And as believers, they are all, male and female, eternal models for us to return meaning to our history and our present … .
God, through their respective tales, calls on our understanding, our reasoning and our capacity for discernment as human beings:
Indeed, in their stories […] there is a lesson for those who are endowed with insight.1 (Yusuf 12: 111)
In addition, it is interesting to note that in the history of the great Prophets of humanity the particular presence, even crucial presence, of women as mothers in the paths and lives of these Prophets.
In fact, Isma’il (Ismael), Musa, ‘Isa and Muhammad (peace be upon them) were all under the particular protection of their respective mothers, whereas history rarely reports a significant role for the father who is often absent or even inexistent, as in the story of ‘Isa … . .
These women who, in addition to their natural maternal role, have accompanied and protected God’s emissaries on Earth. We, therefore, note throughout the history of these Prophets the pre-eminence of women – mothers – in the education, the protection and the diffusion of the Prophetic message. Women who have been veritable intermediaries of the sacred … . .
And who would be surprised of this very feminine capacity to endure, resist and suffer all the contingencies of revelation? Their influence and involvement in the success of the transmission of the Divine message is evident and oft related in the sacred text.
But, far from enclosing women singularly in her natural – and no less important – role of mother, as many seem to do, the Qur’an on the contrary outlines a variety of women’s profiles, from the female governor represented by Balkis, to Zulaykha, the passionate woman, via the spiritual woman such as Maryam or the woman symbolising sacrifice, such as Asiah … .
Ultimately, the Qur’anic vision refutes the traditional Muslim view which only recognizes and praises women as mothers first and foremost and which makes abstraction of her femininity.
In very many Islamic publications, women are only valued through their role as mothers, sisters or spouses. Never simply as women … .
It is a concept which remains at odds with Islamic religious culture, despite the fact the Qur’an never ceases to underline the other dimensions of the feminine personality through the different representations of women cited in the text.
We too often forget that before being mothers, sisters or spouses, a woman is first and foremost a woman and that her femininity is an integral part of her personality as a human being.
Thus, through the different female characters described in the Qur’an, who transcend the share of humanity common with men, it is first and foremost the female side which is exalted through her abilities, her values, her abnegation, but also her faults and weaknesses … .
And on this topic