Books by Sadiyya Shaikh
The Women's Khutbah Book, 2022
A first-ever collection of contemporary Muslim women’s khutbahs (sermons) drawing on their social... more A first-ever collection of contemporary Muslim women’s khutbahs (sermons) drawing on their social, religious, and spiritual experiences and framed by original reflections on an emerging Muslim feminist ethics
Within the Muslim world, there is a dynamic and exciting social change afoot: a number of communities across the globe have embraced more gender-inclusive and representative ideas of religious authority. Within some spaces, women have taken on the role of preacher at the Jumu’ah (Friday) communal prayers. In other communities, women have been leading the prayers, officiating at marriage and funeral ceremonies, or participating on mosque boards or executive committees. These new developments signify a transformation in contemporary positions on gender and religious authority.
This pioneering book makes an innovative contribution to Muslim feminist ethics. It is grounded in a collection of religious sermons (khutbahs) by contemporary Muslim women in a variety of new and emerging contexts, in South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi gave deep and ... more Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi gave deep and sustained attention to gender as integral to questions of human existence and moral personhood. Reading his works through a critical feminist lens, Sa'diyya Shaikh opens fertile spaces in which new and creative encounters with gender justice in Islam can take place. Grounding her work in Islamic epistemology, Shaikh attends to the ways in which Sufi metaphysics and theology might allow for fundamental shifts in Islamic gender ethics and legal formulations, addressing wide-ranging contemporary challenges including questions of women's rights in marriage and divorce, the politics of veiling, and women's leadership of ritual prayer.
Shaikh deftly deconstructs traditional binaries between the spiritual and the political, private conceptions of spiritual development and public notions of social justice, and the realms of inner refinement and those of communal virtue. Drawing on the treasured works of Sufism, Shaikh raises a number of critical questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, spirituality, and society to contribute richly to the prospects of Islamic feminism as well as feminist ethics more broadly.
Articles by Sadiyya Shaikh
RELIGIONS, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2022
Drawing on the work of thirteenth-century Andalusian Sufi Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), this article expl... more Drawing on the work of thirteenth-century Andalusian Sufi Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), this article explores the ways in which mystical ideas present a radically destabilizing view of human nature. Bringing Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas into a contemporary feminist conversation on gender, I theorize gender, arguing that his mystical method pushes the reader to the limits of a binary and patriarchal rationality, resulting in a productive entanglement of normative gender categories. Paradox, ambivalence, and contradiction—organic elements of Ibn ʿArabī’s Sufi epistemology—facilitate generative spaces of tension that creatively interrupt fixed conceptions of gender. I argue that within this Sufi cosmology, apophatic modes of being demand an existential mode of receptivity, fluidity, and constant movement—all of which can be applied to critiquing gender hierarchies and heteronormativities within Muslim traditions while reimagining more capacious alternatives. The article contributes to a larger Islamic feminist project of retrieving a creative, expansive, and inclusive Muslim archive while making connections to broader feminist theories in contemporary scholarship, including the ideas of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Catherine Keller.
Journal for Islamic Studies, Vol. 39 (1): 28-48, 2021
Scholarly research on Muslim ethics is attentive to the
ways that contemporary Muslim subjectivit... more Scholarly research on Muslim ethics is attentive to the
ways that contemporary Muslim subjectivities and ethical
concerns are informed by multiple sources and complex
relationalities. These include relationships to what is
thought of as tradition or the Muslim archive in all its
diversity, as well as other prevailing intellectual and political
traditions of virtue and justice. Muslim ways of being and
becoming in the contemporary world are often derived in
relation to cosmopolitan imaginaries, and this is in fact no
different from other significant eras in Muslim history.
Islamic feminism in its scholarly and activist iterations
represents one such development among Muslims in the
contemporary period, focused as it is on fostering ever more
comprehensive forms of gender and social justice within
their communities, and on expanding the ethical archive. In
this paper, I trace key animating sources and developments
in my scholarly trajectory focusing on Islamic feminism
over the last 20 years by exploring metaphors of journeying
and of in-betweenness (the barzakh) as a theoretically and
epistemologically helpful posture. I conclude with some
reflections on my current theorising on Islamic feminism.
Justice·and·· Beauty·in·· Muslim·Marriage, 2022
AFRICAN JOURNAL OF GENDER AND RELIGION, 2018
This article aims to explicate the tensions on issues of gender and sexuality that arise at the i... more This article aims to explicate the tensions on issues of gender and sexuality that arise at the intersection of lived reality and the inherited Islamic tradition, primarily regarding but not limited to Islamic law. We do three things in this paper: we first explore the notion of an in-between space that serves as a conduit between an inherited religious tradition and the plethora of lived realities of being Muslim. Second, we provide examples of how Islam as a religious identity and faith and the prescriptions set out in Islamic law operate through this in-between space. Third, based on the above, we conclude that the pedagogy of Islam, gender, and sexuality stands to be enriched if this in-between experiential space is acknowledged as an epistemological portal to Islam. This article aims to expand the epistemological category of experience and lived realities of Muslims as constitutive of Islam and Muslim ethics. 3 Such an exploration is critical in light of an increasing sense of the incommensurability between dominant clerical and textual articulations of the inherited tradition on the one hand, and the real lives of everyday Muslims, on the other. More precisely, the central question it seeks to answer is how Islam is produced, constructed, and assembled by Muslims in relation to their experience of gender and sexuality. Both the Qur'an, as the word of the divine transcendent made material through rhetoric and the Hadith, as the corpus of narrations that provide details of the life, sentiments, and instructions of the Prophet Muhammad and the nascent community of believers, are in the contemporary period, increasingly viewed through the regulatory framework engendered by Islamic law. These discourses often, but not entirely or consistently, centre narrow
Watermeyer, B, McKenzie, J, and Swartz, L (eds). The Palgrave handbook of disability and citizenship in the global south, 2018
This essay seeks to explore the intersection of disability and religion within our South African ... more This essay seeks to explore the intersection of disability and religion within our South African context. All the authors are South Africans concerned with human rights and social inclusion issues. Swartz was born into a Jewish family but identifies as atheist, and has a long history of academic and personal engagement with emancipatory disability politics in southern Africa. Claassens is a Christian theologian who as part of her work on human dignity, religion and social inclusion has over the past few years become more concerned with disability issues and with questions of how a disability studies lens may enrich theological scholarship. Shaikh is a Muslim religious studies scholar who has worked on issues of gender justice and Sufism, and has more recently become interested in disability issues. We have formed a group to explore religion and disability issues in our context, and to use various forms of engagement (including engagement with academic and faith communities) to work towards greater social inclusion and human rights for persons with disabilities. We recognise and value our differences but also believe that engagement across divides is essential for emancipatory practices. The next two sections of this chapter, the first of which was formulated chiefly by Claassens and the second by Shaikh, explore issues at the intersection between Christianity and Islam respectively. The final section of the chapter, formulated chiefly by Swartz, considers the implications of these views for practice in the global south. Despite our obvious differences, we share common questions. How can we explore issues of religion and existential meaning in a manner which takes account of legitimate concerns about the potentially oppressive role of religion? How do we reread important religious texts in the context of disability activism? What is an engaged scholarship of disability and religion which allows for contestation, difference and debate, and which is inclusive enough to honour what at surface level may appear to be contesting views of the world, but which, we believe, may have underlying commonalities?
AFRICAN JOURNAL OF GENDER AND RELIGION, 2017
The research aims to provide accurate scientific perceptions on the nature of the role played by ... more The research aims to provide accurate scientific perceptions on the nature of the role played by the declaration as a means of globalization implement its entitlements and transmit information to the public. The researcher adopted the survey methodology to study the subject of globalization in the international TV advertising through MBC1 channel. It is concluded that the channel, through broadcasting advertisements that promote foreign goods and commodities, has contributed to the consolidation of ways and lifestyles by showing foreign products consumed by foreigners to achieve the desire of the Arab public to reincarnate in foreign life.
Watermeyer, B, McKenzie, J, and Swartz, L (eds). The Palgrave handbook of disability and citizenship in the global south, 2018
This essay seeks to explore the intersection of disability and religion within our South African ... more This essay seeks to explore the intersection of disability and religion within our South African context. All the authors are South Africans concerned with human rights and social inclusion issues. Swartz was born into a Jewish family but identifies as atheist, and has a long history of academic and personal engagement with emancipatory disability politics in southern Africa. Claassens is a Christian theologian who as part of her work on human dignity, religion and social inclusion has over the past few years become more concerned with disability issues and with questions of how a disability studies lens may enrich theological scholarship. Shaikh is a Muslim religious studies scholar who has worked on issues of gender justice and Sufism, and has more recently become interested in disability issues. We have formed a group to explore religion and disability issues in our context, and to use various forms of engagement (including engagement with academic and faith communities) to work towards greater social inclusion and human rights for persons with disabilities. We recognise and value our differences but also believe that engagement across divides is essential for emancipatory practices. The next two sections of this chapter, the first of which was formulated chiefly by Claassens and the second by Shaikh, explore issues at the intersection between Christianity and Islam respectively. The final section of the chapter, formulated chiefly by Swartz, considers the implications of these views for practice in the global south. Despite our obvious differences, we share common questions. How can we explore issues of religion and existential meaning in a manner which takes account of legitimate concerns about the potentially oppressive role of religion? How do we reread important religious texts in the context of disability activism? What is an engaged scholarship of disability and religion which allows for contestation, difference and debate, and which is inclusive enough to honour what at surface level may appear to be contesting views of the world, but which, we believe, may have underlying commonalities?
Journal of Islamic Studies, 2013
Like many feminist initiatives, this special issue has its origins in long and nourishing convers... more Like many feminist initiatives, this special issue has its origins in long and nourishing conversations about abundance and absence, convergences and missed connections and the possibilities we dreamed of amid the complex terrain of feminist debates and Religious Studies in South Africa. In 2010-2011, the three co-editors of this issue were colleagues in a space that was most hospitable to such discussions, the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town. In the course of the year, our talks often centred on the rich history of gender theory in our disciplines of African literature and Religious Studies, yet we also noted the absence of a truly fertile exchange between two areas in which the country had produced much-lauded and influential scholarship: feminist theorising and Islamic Studies. In our discussions, we imagined a space that could generate such an exchange and thus emerged a collaborative feminist research project on "Theorising Experience, Subjec...
Social Dynamics, 2013
"Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi gav... more "Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi gave deep and sustained attention to gender as integral to questions of human existence and moral personhood. Reading his works through a critical feminist lens, Sa'diyya Shaikh opens fertile spaces in which new and creative encounters with gender justice in Islam can take place. Grounding her work in Islamic epistemology, Shaikh attends to the ways in which Sufi metaphysics and theology might allow for fundamental shifts in Islamic gender ethics and legal formulations, addressing wide-ranging contemporary challenges including questions of women's rights in marriage and divorce, the politics of veiling, and women's leadership of ritual prayer. Shaikh deftly deconstructs traditional binaries between the spiritual and the political, private conceptions of spiritual development and public notions of social justice, and the realms of inner refinement and those of communal virtue. Drawing on the treasured works of Sufism, Shaikh raises a number of critical questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, spirituality, and society to contribute richly to the prospects of Islamic feminism as well as feminist ethics more broadly."
Religion is enormously important for many disabled people, their families, and communities, espec... more Religion is enormously important for many disabled people, their families, and communities, especially in the Global South, but it is not given a great deal of attention. This chapter is a collaboration between religious studies scholars from different faith traditions (Christian and Muslim) and an atheist disability studies scholar. We explore the central role of religion in many disabled people’s lives, and we suggest that a new theology taking clearer account of disability may be productive in understanding the central role of faith in people’s lives. We acknowledge the historical and contemporary nexus between religion and oppression but suggest that there are far more productive ways of engaging with religion than seeing it unidimensionally and solely as an instrument of oppression.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2013
The African Journal of Gender and Religion 24(2) pp120-138, 2018
This article aims to explicate the tensions on issues of gender and sexuality that arise at the i... more This article aims to explicate the tensions on issues of gender and sexuality that arise at the intersection of lived reality and the inherited Islamic tradition, primarily regarding but not limited to Islamic law. We do three things in this paper: we first explore the notion of an in-between space that serves as a conduit between an inherited religious tradition and the plethora of lived realities of being Muslim. Second, we provide examples of how Islam as a religious identity and faith and the prescriptions set out in Islamic law operate through this in-between space. Third, based on the above, we conclude that the pedagogy of Islam, gender, and sexuality stands to be enriched if this in-between experiential space is acknowledged as an epistemological portal to Islam. This article aims to expand the epistemological category of experience and lived realities of Muslims as constitutive of Islam and Muslim ethics. 3 Such an exploration is critical in light of an increasing sense of the incommensurability between dominant clerical and textual articulations of the inherited tradition on the one hand, and the real lives of everyday Muslims, on the other. More precisely, the central question it seeks to answer is how Islam is produced, constructed, and assembled by Muslims in relation to their experience of gender and sexuality. Both the Qur'an, as the word of the divine transcendent made material through rhetoric and the Hadith, as the corpus of narrations that provide details of the life, sentiments, and instructions of the Prophet Muhammad and the nascent community of believers, are in the contemporary period, increasingly viewed through the regulatory framework engendered by Islamic law. These discourses often, but not entirely or consistently, centre narrow
For many queer Muslims, there is an intense struggle between sexual identity and religious affili... more For many queer Muslims, there is an intense struggle between sexual identity and religious affiliation, exacerbated by broader global discourses of Islamophobia in the 'Global North' and queerphobia within Muslim communities. Based on this intersectional location, we critically examine queerphobia debates in relation to the context of Muslims in South Africa. Our approach is informed by Jasbir K. Puar's (2007), critique of the prevailing " Queer as Regulatory " formation, where a liberated queerness is defined by resistance to religious norms, rather than a reformation or a broader set of engagements with these norms. In this regard, we examine modalities of being queer that reside outside of such regulatory frameworks, as reflected in the activities and work of The Inner Circle (TIC), a South African queer Muslim community. A core objective of the TIC is social and spiritual transformation that includes faith-based reflections on the lives of queer Muslims situated at the complex intersections of Islam, sexual orientation and gender identity. We examine TIC's approach of presenting progressive interpretations of the Qur'an as a primary source of religious identity, making a claim to the deepest spiritual and authoritative source of Islam, and the ways in which they challenge gender and sexual discrimination within the broader Muslim community.
Men in Charge? ? Rethinking Authority in the Muslim Legal Tradition.
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Books by Sadiyya Shaikh
Within the Muslim world, there is a dynamic and exciting social change afoot: a number of communities across the globe have embraced more gender-inclusive and representative ideas of religious authority. Within some spaces, women have taken on the role of preacher at the Jumu’ah (Friday) communal prayers. In other communities, women have been leading the prayers, officiating at marriage and funeral ceremonies, or participating on mosque boards or executive committees. These new developments signify a transformation in contemporary positions on gender and religious authority.
This pioneering book makes an innovative contribution to Muslim feminist ethics. It is grounded in a collection of religious sermons (khutbahs) by contemporary Muslim women in a variety of new and emerging contexts, in South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Shaikh deftly deconstructs traditional binaries between the spiritual and the political, private conceptions of spiritual development and public notions of social justice, and the realms of inner refinement and those of communal virtue. Drawing on the treasured works of Sufism, Shaikh raises a number of critical questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, spirituality, and society to contribute richly to the prospects of Islamic feminism as well as feminist ethics more broadly.
Articles by Sadiyya Shaikh
ways that contemporary Muslim subjectivities and ethical
concerns are informed by multiple sources and complex
relationalities. These include relationships to what is
thought of as tradition or the Muslim archive in all its
diversity, as well as other prevailing intellectual and political
traditions of virtue and justice. Muslim ways of being and
becoming in the contemporary world are often derived in
relation to cosmopolitan imaginaries, and this is in fact no
different from other significant eras in Muslim history.
Islamic feminism in its scholarly and activist iterations
represents one such development among Muslims in the
contemporary period, focused as it is on fostering ever more
comprehensive forms of gender and social justice within
their communities, and on expanding the ethical archive. In
this paper, I trace key animating sources and developments
in my scholarly trajectory focusing on Islamic feminism
over the last 20 years by exploring metaphors of journeying
and of in-betweenness (the barzakh) as a theoretically and
epistemologically helpful posture. I conclude with some
reflections on my current theorising on Islamic feminism.
Within the Muslim world, there is a dynamic and exciting social change afoot: a number of communities across the globe have embraced more gender-inclusive and representative ideas of religious authority. Within some spaces, women have taken on the role of preacher at the Jumu’ah (Friday) communal prayers. In other communities, women have been leading the prayers, officiating at marriage and funeral ceremonies, or participating on mosque boards or executive committees. These new developments signify a transformation in contemporary positions on gender and religious authority.
This pioneering book makes an innovative contribution to Muslim feminist ethics. It is grounded in a collection of religious sermons (khutbahs) by contemporary Muslim women in a variety of new and emerging contexts, in South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Shaikh deftly deconstructs traditional binaries between the spiritual and the political, private conceptions of spiritual development and public notions of social justice, and the realms of inner refinement and those of communal virtue. Drawing on the treasured works of Sufism, Shaikh raises a number of critical questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, spirituality, and society to contribute richly to the prospects of Islamic feminism as well as feminist ethics more broadly.
ways that contemporary Muslim subjectivities and ethical
concerns are informed by multiple sources and complex
relationalities. These include relationships to what is
thought of as tradition or the Muslim archive in all its
diversity, as well as other prevailing intellectual and political
traditions of virtue and justice. Muslim ways of being and
becoming in the contemporary world are often derived in
relation to cosmopolitan imaginaries, and this is in fact no
different from other significant eras in Muslim history.
Islamic feminism in its scholarly and activist iterations
represents one such development among Muslims in the
contemporary period, focused as it is on fostering ever more
comprehensive forms of gender and social justice within
their communities, and on expanding the ethical archive. In
this paper, I trace key animating sources and developments
in my scholarly trajectory focusing on Islamic feminism
over the last 20 years by exploring metaphors of journeying
and of in-betweenness (the barzakh) as a theoretically and
epistemologically helpful posture. I conclude with some
reflections on my current theorising on Islamic feminism.