Women and Leadership in Islamic Law ─ A Critical Analysis of Classical Legal Texts

Women’s status in Islam is one of immense interest and much has been written on the subject, with women’s leadership, particularly for prayer, as a matter of especial concern.

This book examines the post-formative Islamic legal literature surrounding the question of women’s leadership to gauge whether and to what extent the development of Islamic legislation pertaining to women was determined by gender attitudes prevalent in Muslim society. It focuses on three main theories; firstly, the traditional view that these rulings are best explained by the application of the theoretical and hermeneutical approaches of classical Islamic legal theory to the Islamic source texts, the Qur’an and Sunnah. The second is that the rulings are the consequence of the widespread gender attitudes in early Near Eastern society. The third is that legal inertia is explains the existing post-formative Islamic legal corpus and little can be determined from it regarding the origin and early perpetuation of the laws. These theories are explored through a broad survey of 29 Islamic legal texts from the four canonical schools of law, with passages elaborating rulings about women’s leadership presented in translation (as an appendix).

This is the first time that works of all four schools of law have been analysed in order to determine how gender attitudes have influenced the rulings. As such, it will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic studies and gender studies.

David Jalajel, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia