Gender Justice in Muslim-Christian Readings ― Christian and Muslim Women in Norway Making Meaning of Texts from the Bible, the Koran, and the Hadith

In recent decades women in the Christian and Islamic traditions have been negotiating what it means to be participate as a woman in religious practice within the two traditions, including the interpretation of canonical scripture. This book builds a shared space for Muslim and Christian women with diverse cultural and denominational backgrounds together making meaning of texts from the Bible, the Koran, and the Hadith. The Hagar narratives in the two traditions, and the texts 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and Sura 4:34 from the New Testament and the Koran respectively are read and discussed in six meetings. Interpretative strategies and contextual analyses emerge from the hermeneutical analysis of the women’s discussions on the ambiguous contributions from the texts mentioned above to the traditions’ views on women. This book shows how intertextual dialogue between the Christian and Islamic traditions need to establish an interpretative community through the encounter of Christian and Muslim readers. The negotiation between a search for gender justice and the Christian and Islamic traditions as lived religions is extended into a quest for gender justice through the co-reading of texts. In times when gender and the status of women are played into the field of religious identity politics, this book shows that bringing women readers together to explore the canonical texts in the two traditions provides new insights about the texts, the context, and how Muslim-Christian dialogue can provide and establish complex and promising hermeneutical space where important questions can be posed and shared strategies found.

Anne Hege Grung (1965) is Associate Professor in Practical Theology at the Practical-Theological Seminary, Oslo. She has been engaging with Muslim-Christian encounters and dialogue through participation and research since the early 1990s in Norway and beyond.