Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Religious Leaders

Women, Leadership, and Mosques Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority Edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................. Author Biographies ........................................................................... ix xiii Introduction: Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Religious Leaders ............................................................................... Hilary Kalmbach 1 SECTION I SPACE FOR FEMALE AUTHORITY: MALE INVITATION, STATE INTERVENTION, AND FEMALE INITIATIVE Introduction to Section I .................................................................. 1.1 Sources of Authority: Female Ahong and Qingzhen Nüsi (Women’s Mosques) in China ............................................... Maria Jaschok 1.2 Women Mosque Preachers and Spiritual Guides: Publicizing and Negotiating Women’s Religious Authority in Morocco ............................................................. Margaret J. Rausch 1.3 Reshaping Religious Authority in Contemporary Turkey: State-Sponsored Female Preachers ........................................ Mona Hassan 1.4 From Qur ānic Circles to the Internet: Gender Segregation and the Rise of Female Preachers in Saudi Arabia ............ Amélie Le Renard 1.5 he Life of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in Twentieth-Century Iran .................................. Mirjam Künkler and Roja Fazaeli 1.6 he Qubaysīyyāt: he Growth of an International Muslim Women’s Revivalist Movement from Syria (1960–2008) ............................................................................... Sarah Islam © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 31 37 59 85 105 127 161 vi contents SECTION II ESTABLISHING FEMALE AUTHORITY: LIMITATIONS, SPACES, AND STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING Introduction to Section II ................................................................ 2.1 Leading by Example? Women Madrasah Teachers in Rural North India ................................................................... Patricia Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, and Craig Jeffrey 2.2 hinking for Oneself? Forms and Elements of Religious Authority in Dutch Muslim Women’s Groups ................. Nathal M. Dessing 2.3 Celebrating Miss Muslim Pageants and Opposing Rock Concerts: Contrasting the Religious Authority and Leadership of Two Muslim Women in Kazan .................. N. R. Micinski 2.4 Textual and Ritual Command: Muslim Women as Keepers and Transmitters of Interpretive Domains in Contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina ............................. Catharina Raudvere 2.5 “She is always present”: Female Leadership and Informal Authority in a Swiss Muslim Women’s Association ........ Petra Bleisch Bouzar 2.6 Muslimahs’ Impact on and Acquisition of Islamic Religious Authority in Flanders ........................................... Els Vanderwaeren 2.7 Women, Leadership, and Participation in Mosques and Beyond: Notes from Stuttgart, Germany ............................ Petra Kuppinger 2.8 Remembering Fāṭimah: New Means of Legitimizing Female Authority in Contemporary Shī ī Discourse ........ Matthew Pierce © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 187 195 217 235 259 279 301 323 345 contents vii SECTION III THE IMPACT OF AUTHORITY ON MUSLIM WOMEN, MUSLIM SOCIETIES, AND CONCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC AUTHORITY Introduction to Section III ............................................................... 3.1 Challenging from Within: Youth Associations and Female Leadership in Swedish Mosques .............................. Pia Karlsson Minganti 3.2 Gender Strategy and Authority in Islamic Discourses: Female Preachers in Contemporary Egypt .......................... Hiroko Minesaki 3.3 Translating Text to Context: Muslim Women Activists in Indonesia .............................................................................. Pieternella van Doorn-Harder 3.4 Making Islam Relevant: Female Authority and Representation of Islam in Germany .................................... Riem Spielhaus 3.5 Activism as Embodied Tafsīr: Negotiating Women’s Authority, Leadership, and Space in North America ........ Juliane Hammer 3.6 Women’s Rights to Mosque Space: Access and Participation in Cape Town Mosques .................................. Uta Christina Lehmann 365 371 393 413 437 457 481 Conclusion: Female Leadership in Mosques: An Evolving Narrative ...................................................................... Masooda Bano 507 Glossary ............................................................................................... Index .................................................................................................... 535 557 © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV INTRODUCTION: ISLAMIC AUTHORITY AND THE STUDY OF FEMALE RELIGIOUS LEADERS Hilary Kalmbach Women in many parts of the Islamic world publicly speak for Islam as preachers, teachers, and interpreters of religious texts. hough men have held a near-monopoly over public religious leadership for much of Islamic history, over the past thirty years the ranks of Muslim women active as religious leaders have swelled to include individuals from almost all parts of the globe, including the Middle East; North, East, West, and South Africa; Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia; Europe; and North America. he emergence, re-emergence, and expansion of female religious leadership in a wide variety of Muslim communities is signiicant for a number of reasons. he activities of female leaders represent a major shit in structures of Islamic authority, as they have curtailed male domination of religious leadership and core religious spaces such as the mosque and madrasahs, and have increased female attendance at public prayers and mosque lessons. he religious authority of these women is oten limited due to gendered restrictions or longstanding traditions, but many play a signiicant role in the social and religious lives of their communities regardless. Finally, growth of female religious leadership is inherently linked to larger social, religious, and political changes that have impacted Muslim communities since the early twentieth century. To understand fully these larger trends, these women, their roles, and their impact on society and religion must be taken into consideration. Conversely, the activities of these leaders offer scholars a lens through which to view the nature of change in Muslim social and religious practices. Detailed, nuanced, and comparative examination of the ideas and practices of many of these women is absent from contemporary scholarship; the main focus of scholarship to date has been on those seeking to overturn restrictions on the social and religious activities of women, to the detriment of detailed examination of women active in other, oten more conservative, environments. Even though the dress © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 2 hilary kalmbach and lifestyle choices of Muslim women are frequently seen as barometers of the social and religious attitudes of a given community, the role that conservative female Islamic leaders play in the religious and social leadership of many communities has not been fully unpacked by scholars, the media, or policy makers. his volume rests on belief that the increasing ability of Muslim women to exercise Islamic authority deserves scholarly attention, and that it is crucial to look equally at the full range of women active as religious leaders, from those who are striving to radically change Islamic gender norms, to those who have gained places as teachers in the oldest, most inluential, and most conservative of Islamic religious institutions. It advances the study of Islam and Muslim women by placing detailed case studies of a wide spectrum of female Islamic leadership into a framework that highlights larger themes connecting these varied contexts. It unites authors normally divided by disciplinary, linguistic, and regional barriers, including individuals from Islamic Studies, Women’s Studies, Development Studies, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, and Religious Studies, who work in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Chinese, Bosnian, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, German, and English, and focus on the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Bridging disciplines—and in particular uniting ethnographic and textual approaches—is a crucial part of capturing the full scope and signiicance of contemporary female Islamic leadership. In order to maintain this diversity and maximize the connections between contributions, we avoided dividing the chapters according to factors such as geographic area or whether the Muslim community was of majority or minority status.1 he central focus of the volume is analyzing the dynamics governing the construction and exercise of female Islamic authority in mosque and madrasah space. Each chapter provides a richly contextualized case study of the religious authority of women who lead prayer or interpret Islamic texts, paying particular attention to the spaces—both physical and virtual—in which this leadership takes place. We focus 1 he conference participants writing about Europe were particularly adamant that they remain united with those discussing Muslim communities in the geographic East and South. Seemingly simple distinctions are more complex in practice: while the vast majority of European Muslim communities are minorities, not all are diasporic or recent in origin; also, not all Muslim communities in the East—for instance, in India—live in Muslim-majority state contexts. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 3 particularly on women active in mosques and madrasahs because these spaces have long been central to the establishment and exercise of religious authority, as they are platforms where religious leaders can exert inluence over the religious and social practices of their communities. Each chapter addresses one or more of the overarching themes that structure the volume, yet retains the disciplinary approach and methodology preferred by its author. In the three sections of this volume, we focus on factors governing the emergence, exercise, and impact of female Islamic authority. Numerous chapters link the emergence of female religious authority to state action, male invitation, or female initiative. he exercise of female religious authority is, in almost all instances, limited by gendered norms, interpretations, and practices, yet it is incorrect to assume that these restrictions make it impossible for female leaders to impact the social and religious practices of their communities. Many of the religious leaders proiled in this volume utilize space in creative ways to overcome some of these limitations, while a handful of female leaders vehemently reject these limitations and instead argue for gender equality. Section introductions explain volume-wide themes in more detail, link individual chapters to each theme and each other, and—along with the introduction and conclusion—assess what the chapters say collectively about contemporary Islamic authority, thought, and practice. he introduction lays out major themes in the study of Islamic authority and explains how a study of female Islamic leadership focused on religious authority can contribute signiicantly to scholarship on Islam and Muslim women. Changes in Islamic Authority: Legitimacy, Knowledge, and Performance Religious authority is a key concept in the study of religion, as it dictates who has the right to interpret religious texts and apply them to the lives of followers. In many contexts worldwide, the inluence of Muslim religious leaders and their teachings spreads beyond the religious arena and impacts upon social, political, and economic activities, making it all the more important to understand the dynamics affecting their ability to lead. Islamic authority manifests itself in complex ways, which presents challenges to scholars using it as an analytical focus for the study © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 4 hilary kalmbach of Islam and Muslim societies. Many (though not all) Islamic communities have historically had neither a hierarchical church nor an oficial clergy, unlike more centralized religions such as Christianity. he absence of a central arbiter leads to ‘role uncertainty’ and lack of agreement on the qualiications and experience required of would-be leaders.2 Speciic paths to religious authority exist, but they are more luid and less centrally regulated than in many other faiths. While Islamic leaders provide crucial guidance and instruction, their presence is not necessary for the observance of many religious rituals, such as daily prayers, fasting, and the ḥ ajj pilgrimage. he relatively decentralized nature of Islamic authority, however, does not mean that Islam lacks important religious leadership roles. In the more than 1,400 years since the death of the Prophet Muḥammad, Islamic authority has coalesced into a wide variety of positions and institutions. hese have included the caliph, the ālim (scholar, plural ulamā ), the mutī (legal scholar who issues opinions in the form of fatwás), the qādī ( judge who issues binding rulings), the Sui shaykh (mystical leader), and khaṭīb or imām (mosque preacher). Shī ī leaders initially included infallible religious leaders—called imāms—succeeding Muḥammad, and have more recently developed into a scholarly establishment headed by one or more marāja -i taqlīd (sources of emulation, singular marja ).3 Further complicating scholarly study of Islamic authority is the signiicant expansion of claims to religious authority in the twentieth century due to mass education and literacy, new communication technologies, altered social structures, and new trends in Islamic thought and practice, a development described alternatively as a “fragmentation” of Muslim leadership and a “proliferation of religious knowledge, actors, and normative statements.”4 As Muslim societies modernized— 2 Patrick D. Gaffney, he Prophet’s Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 33–34. 3 Scholarship on Islamic authority in Shī ī communities is expanding signiicantly, in part due to the efforts of the Clerical Authority in Shī ī Islam Project—known as the Hawza Project—directed by Professor Robert Gleave of Exeter University. See http:// www.thehawzaproject.net. 4 For the former, see Dale F. Eickelman and James P. Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 131–35 and Francis Robinson, “Crisis of Authority: Crisis of Islam?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 19 (2009), 350–352. For the latter, see Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke, “Introduction: Religious Authority and Religious Authorities in Muslim © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 5 oten as a result of Western pressure or colonialization—the ulamā lost their near-monopoly over interpreting and teaching Islamic texts. In the early twentieth century, reformist ulamā in India, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia argued that contemporary interpretations should be based primarily on Islamic texts—the Qur ān, sunnah, and ḥ adīth—and not on the centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and schools of interpretation that they had spent decades mastering.5 In doing so, they inadvertently opened the door for literate individuals with little or no exposure to traditional religious learning to claim the right to teach and interpret Islamic texts. hese leaders, dubbed “new religious intellectuals,” are seen as religious authorities due to their pious reputations, commitment, and ability to connect with lay audiences, as well as a capacity to understand and interpret Islamic texts, oten (though not always) gleaned through part-time instruction obtained outside traditional scholarly institutions.6 he challenge to the authority of the ulamā was signiicant, especially as these new leaders and their national and international organizations have since played major roles in the development of Islamic thought and practice throughout the twentieth century. hese new leaders are heterogeneous in terms of both ideology and approach to Islamic texts, and include modernists (some of whom support plural approaches and interpretations, and would like Islam to remain, irst and foremost, an individual practice), and Islamists (who would like their interpretations of Islam to play a central role in modern Muslim social and political organization). When discussing the rise of new religious intellectuals, it is important to remember, however, that many ulamā have successfully met their challenge,7 and continue to play an Societies; A Critical Overview,” in Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 12. 5 he argument was, in essence, that they could exercise ijtihād—independent reasoning—not only on new topics, but also when debating issues on which earlier jurists had come to conclusive rulings. See David Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); David Commins, he Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Muhammad Khalid Masud, “Islamic Modernism,” in Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates, ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore, and Martin van Bruinessen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 6 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 13, 165. 7 Numerous contemporary ulamā have signiicant followings among and can communicate effectively with individuals with modern education, and thereby successfully compete with non- ulamā preachers. See Muhammad Qasim Zaman, he ‘Ulama’ in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 6 hilary kalmbach important role in religious education and leadership in Muslim communities worldwide. Legitimacy Analyzing the authority of Muslim religious leaders is therefore both important and challenging. Many analysts, similar to Weber, distinguish between two related concepts: authority and power.8 Holders of authority are seen as legitimate leaders of their communities, and these communities recognize this legitimacy by choosing to comply with their demands. While one can be coerced into complying with the demands of an individual in a position of power, an authoritative relationship involves followers recognizing the leader as legitimate.9 Much scholarship has therefore focused on the sources from which legitimacy can spring. Weber’s classic framework involves three ways that leaders can establish legitimacy: charismatic, legal-rational, and traditional. Charismatic authority relies on (oten extraordinary levels of ) personal magnetism, while legal-rational depends on oteninstitutionalized rules and practices, and traditional is founded on customary (oten hereditary) ideas, structures, and practices. Patrick Gaffney modiies Weber’s typology to classify Egyptian preaching into three types: the saint, the scholar, and the warrior.10 he typologies used by Weber and Gaffney are useful in so far as they encourage scholars to think about the qualiications, motivation, and structures inherent in different types of leadership roles. Similarly, it has been crucial to document the emergence and resurgence of groups such as the new religious intellectuals and the ulamā , as Press, 2002), 54–56; Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “he Ulama and Contestations of Religious Authority,” in Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates, ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore, and Martin van Bruinessen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 214–26. 8 For instance, see Krämer and Schmidtke, “Introduction,” 1. One of the places where Weber discusses this distinction is in (the translated) Max Weber, Basic Concepts in Sociology (London: Peter Owen, 1962), 71–74, 117–18. 9 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics; Krämer and Schmidtke, “Introduction”; Stanley Benn, “Authority,” in he Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (London: Collier-Macmillian Publishers, 1967), 474; Robert Peabody, “Authority,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillian & Free Press, 1968), 215. 10 Gaffney, he Prophet’s Pulpit, 34–43. For more on Weber in an Islamic context, see Bryan S. Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974). © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 7 Eickelman, Piscatori, and Zaman have expertly done. At the same time, focusing a wide-ranging project such as this volume primarily on typologies and categories increases the risk of underemphasizing or obscuring the extent to which different types of legitimization overlap and change over time.11 It is important to recognize that the boundaries that individuals and groups draw between themselves and others—boundaries that are represented in scholarship by abstractions such as categories and types— are interesting not only because of who they separate, but also because of the meanings that are associated with choosing to cross them.12 Ideally, studies of social groups focus not only on those who conform, but also those who do not, as these individuals can shed important light on interrelationships and change. Along these lines, this project aims to capture the diversity of contemporary female Islamic leadership by focusing on the myriad pathways and processes that would-be leaders follow to obtain and consolidate religious authority. It starts with the assertion that all Islamic authorities must acquire and demonstrate that they have some sort of special knowledge about Islam. he details of this process—the sorts of knowledge they claim, the ways in which they acquired this knowledge, and ways in which they demonstrate it—reveal a signiicant amount about the leader and his or her authority over religious 11 hese scholars do recognize this pitfall. Eickelman, Piscatori, and Zaman accurately point to education as the key factor separating the ulamā from new religious intellectuals, yet also recognize that the picture is more complex (for instance, individuals have attended both Islamic and modern schools). Gaffney recognizes that his three modes of legitimization occur in combination and his richly detailed analysis captures many important dynamics; however, presenting each preacher as a personiication of a single mode de-emphasizes the extent to which overlap occurs. See Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 13, 165; Gaffney, he Prophet’s Pulpit, 36; Zaman, ‘Ulama’, 7–11; Zaman, “Contestations,” 219–26. Zaman notes further that the ulamā are differentiated by their unique “mode of argumentation” which normally depends on “discursive engagement with the history of earlier scholarly debates.” Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Consensus and Religious Authority in Modern Islam,” in Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Soceities, ed. Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 155. 12 Mary Douglas’ work explains how individuals who do not fall neatly into one social category introduce tension that is oten resolved either through removing the individual from the picture, or by shiting boundaries such that the individual its. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 5, 36, 38–40. Also useful are the works of various boundary theorists. For an overview, see Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár, “he Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 167–95. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 8 hilary kalmbach and social matters. Tracing, analyzing, and contrasting the paths to religious leadership emphasizes the process by which authority is obtained, and further demonstrates that commonly-used categories are neither homogenous nor entirely dissimilar from each other. his approach serves to highlight the similarities, differences, and changing relationships between leaders, and the extent to which boundaries are crossed and blurred. First, however, more must be said about Islamic knowledge and how it is acquired and demonstrated. Knowledge he ultimate source of Islamic knowledge are Islam’s principal texts, irst the Qur ān, and then the sunnah, the corpus of transmitted actions and sayings—known individually as ḥ adīth—of the Prophet Muḥammad. A distinction can be drawn between theoretical knowledge, which can be studied, and practical knowledge, which can only be acquired by doing. he former is dominated by scholars and theologians, while the latter includes insight gained through ritual practices as well as the paths followed by Sui masters and their disciples. One of the many Arabic terms for knowledge, ilm, can be used generally for religious knowledge,13 especially knowledge relating to the texts and traditions from the time of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions that have been transmitted—oten in both oral and written form—by generations of specialist experts. he Arabic term used for scholar— ālim, plural ulamā —is derived from the same root, as are verbs meaning to know, to learn, and to teach. he term iqh initially indicated the independent application of transmitted Islamic knowledge to a particular situation,14 and has since come to refer to Islamic jurisprudence. As Islamic scholarship expanded, the ulamā developed methods for the transmission, assessment, analysis, and application of these received texts to social, religious, and legal situations, practices that eventually coalesced into schools of legal practice and interpretation (madhāhib, sing. madhhab). Mastery of source texts as well as the methods and past rulings of one or more schools 13 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ilm.” Accessed online at www.brillonline .nl on May 6, 2010. 14 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Fikh.” Accessed online at www.brillonline .nl on May 6, 2010. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 9 required years of study under the supervision of previous generations of scholars. he respective importance of these forms of scholarly knowledge has shited signiicantly in the modern period, though tradition—or more accurately the appeal to tradition—has remained important. his has been identiied by Krämer and Schmidtke as a ‘legitimizing strategy’ and described as the marked tendency [among “scholars, saints, and ordinary believers”] to refer to the normative and authoritative traditions in order to justify their own thoughts.15 Zaman’s discussion of tradition introduces William Graham’s concept of ‘traditionalism’ which references the belief that connections with idealized histories and individuals are the sole source of legitimacy in any period for attempts to construct and reconstruct society.16 Zaman further reinforces its connection to contemporary change by noting that the traditionalism of which Graham speaks is something broader in scope and signiicance [than ḥ adīth transmission and authentication]: it is the recurrent effort by Muslims to articulate authority and evaluate claims to such authority by positing and reafirming a connectedness to the past.17 he tradition that is appealed to in these instances is neither static nor unchanging, but instead a luid concept that is the focus of signiicant contestation because of the cultural and social capital it provides to those authorities who are seen to be knowledgeable about it. he early twentieth-century reformist arguments that contemporary interpretations of Islam should be based primarily on the original source texts and not past rulings inadvertently, but signiicantly, lowered the amount of material that an individual has to master to produce authoritative interpretations. Past scholarship and practice— or at least what they are perceived to be in the present—remain pivotal in the discourse and legitimization practices of contemporary ulamā , yet are also important to new religious intellectuals,18 as many of those who reject the relevance of the scholarship of the religious schools 15 16 17 18 Krämer and Schmidtke, “Introduction,” 7. Zaman, ‘Ulama’, 3. Ibid., 3–4. For further discussion of this point, see Zaman, ‘Ulama’, 7–10. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 10 hilary kalmbach reference instead what they perceive to be the practices of the irst generations of Muslims. In mystical contexts, the term ma rifah—derived from the same root as the verb ‘to know’—is similar to the most basic meaning of gnosis: cognition of the divine.19 Sui orders, under the leadership of master shaykhs, have developed paths of spiritual exercises of varying types to assist disciples in obtaining this type of knowledge about Islam. While Sui knowledge is generally seen as less connected to texts, as it concerns what is internal, individual, and invisible instead of the laws and practices of the material, visible world, it is important to remember that its practices are also derived from the Qur ān and other central texts.20 Another key concept in mystical circles is that of the barakah, or blessing, that is oten associated with Sui masters, both during their lifetimes and ater their deaths. It can be passed down to their descendents or chosen successors, and contact with it is seen by many to be beneicial. Acquiring and Demonstrating Knowledge Personal connections and space play key roles in the acquisition and demonstration of scholarly and mystical Islamic knowledge, both in the past and today. he importance of personal connections, in particular in the receiving and demonstrating of Islamic knowledge, reinforces the importance of scholarly networks and links Islamic leaders with both their contemporaries and generations of scholars stretching back throughout Islamic history. Person-to-person transfer of Islamic knowledge through a silsilah or isnād—a chain of transmission—has historically played a major role. Students and scholars at all levels received knowledge—oten orally— in this manner, be it verses of the Qur ān from the local madrasah instructor, advanced texts or ḥ adīth from an ālim, or mystical knowledge from a Sui shaykh.21 At the advanced levels, this transmission 19 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ma‘rifa.” Accessed online at www.brillonline.nl on May 6, 2010. 20 For a comprehensive overview of this connection, see Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, 1st ed., s.v. “Ṣūism and the Qur ān.” Accessed online at www.brillonline.nl on May 19, 2010. 21 Historically, mutīs and qādīs in many areas delivered rulings with consideration for a particular individual’s circumstances. For further discussion of this and the role of orality, see Brinkley Morris Messick, he Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 11 was oten accompanied by an ijāzah, or certiication attesting ability to transmit a text or fulill a particular type of role, such as ālim, mutī, qādī, or even Sui shaykh.22 Processes of performance have also long been central to the demonstration of Islamic knowledge. he need for legitimacy means that possession of Islamic knowledge is not suficient; a leader must be seen by others to possess it. Leaders must demonstrate the knowledge and embody the norms that are expected by their peers and audiences, which makes their authority dependent on both performance and relationships.23 Amassing legitimacy requires a multi-dimensional interaction in which the speech, dress, and conduct of the authority both inluence and are inluenced by those witnessing the performance, be they peers, students, or the general public. If the authority’s actions differ greatly from the expectations of this audience, then the leader’s authority in that context diminishes. his process can be self-reinforcing: once an individual has secured a job requiring him or her to teach, preach, or issue interpretations of texts in public, being seen in this position further enhances his or her authority. Eickelman and Piscatori describe this dynamic as “circular,” noting that leaders “draw boundaries because they have authority, and doing so further conirms their authority.”24 Potential leaders are limited by the expectations of their audience and competition from their peers (who are also presumably trying to meet these expectations), but once an individual has authority, he or she has at least some ability to change these expectations. Eickelman and Piscatori state that while authorities must “appear to embody cherished values and represent the symbolic reference points of society, including sacred texts,” as their authority increases, so does their inluence over the ideology of the community: deference or acquiescence . . . is only part of the story. hose bearing authority transform themselves over time into ‘natural’ leaders and, through the manipulation of the symbols of society and the invocation 22 See George Makdisi, he Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 147–52; and he Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Idjaza,” accessed online at www.brillonline.nl. 23 June 2010. 23 his point is reinforced by the work of numerous scholars. Krämer and Schmidtke describe authority as “premised on recognition and acquiescence” and therefore “relational and contingent.” Krämer and Schmidtke, “Introduction,” 2. 24 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 59. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 12 hilary kalmbach of tradition, they make claims of obedience and obligation on others. Authority inheres in those who are considered to have justiiable control over a society’s symbolic production, and with enhanced and routinized elaboration of this control, leaders can compel obedience but usually prefer to encourage it.25 heir analysis hints at the potential for blurring of power and authority— in essence, possessing suficient coercive power to reinforce compliance among followers—once an individual establishes him or herself as a leader within a given community. Public spaces designated for religious activities have long been the premier locations for both performance and person-to-person transfer of knowledge. Mosques and madrasahs provide institutional platforms in which Islamic leaders demonstrate their knowledge and establish their authority in front of lay audiences drawn from the surrounding community. he most prestigious of these spaces—regional and international centers of religious education, such as Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque or the Shī ī seminaries of Najaf—also connect aspiring and established religious authorities, enabling students to obtain and publicly demonstrate—as a lecturer or audience participant—knowledge of key texts in Islamic legal and literary science. his, in turn, increases their standing among the community of scholars and could lead to work as a teacher, mutī or mosque oficial.26 his position at the center of networks of scholarly authority means that the most famous of these places have become more than just physical spaces, but institutions that carry signiicant authority in and of themselves. Expanding use of mass communication technologies such as print, radio, cassette tapes, and television throughout the twentieth century has resulted in signiicant changes in how Islamic authority is legitimized through the acquisition and demonstration of knowledge. Performance and space remain central, though changing audience expectations and the availability of a wider variety of spaces—physical and virtual—have signiicantly aided challenges to the near-monopoly of the ulamā on authoritative performances and platforms. In particular, increasing popular demand for religious instruction has led to the expansion of religious teaching and preaching aimed at individuals 25 26 Ibid., 58. Makdisi, he Rise of Colleges. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 13 studying on a part-time basis, either to increase their basic knowledge or to obtain varying levels of scholarly proiciency. New media have also facilitated the emergence and expansion of alternatives to face-to-face, individualized knowledge transmission. New media enable authorities— ulamā or otherwise—to connect with new, oten global, audiences, and to send out mass-messages and rulings that are not tailored to individual or place. he plethora of information and authorities available also threatens to sever the person-to-person connection between scholar and student, as it increases the ability of individuals to study at a distance, independently or with groups of non-specialists. Finally, individuals in a particular locality are no longer forced to rely solely on the teachings and rulings of local authorities, but have (or can request) access to the instructional material, intellectual output, and advice of scholars around the world. It is important to remember, however, that these new technologies have altered, but not ended, the longstanding inluence and practices of the ulamā .27 As new modes of religious instruction and leadership expanded, so have attempts by various states to increase their control over the instruction and employment of religious leaders. In Egypt, programs supervised by al-Azhar certify men and women to deliver basic Islamic instruction in mosques, madrasahs, and other community spaces (see Minesaki, Chapter 3.2, this volume). he Egyptian state exerts inluence at the highest levels of Islamic authority through the position of Grand Mutī, who heads the Dār al-Itā founded in 1895, and the Shaykh al-Azhar, whose authority over a centralized religious education system was gradually increased.28 In Morocco and Turkey, graduates of state-run programs oten work as oficial state religious functionaries, preaching, lecturing, and providing information about correct Islamic practice (see Rausch, Chapter 1.2, and Hassan, Chapter 1.3, this volume). State efforts to control religious affairs, however, are continually complicated by the need of religious leaders to be seen as legitimate by at least some of their peers or the general public. 27 Zaman’s work concerns the adaptation of many contemporary ulamā to these conditions, by developing the communication skills and technological awareness necessary to preach and write for modern-educated audiences, both locally and globally. Zaman, “Contestations,” 214–20. 28 Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Deining Islam for the Egyptian State: Mutis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ita (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 27–29, 46–47, 100–106. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 14 hilary kalmbach Tracking Similarities, Differences, and Change he utility of focusing on how Islamic authorities acquire and demonstrate religious knowledge is shown in the ease with which not only boundary formation, but also boundary-crossing and change over time, are incorporated into the analysis. his approach is represented in the volume in so far as we have limited categorization and focused instead on the source, construction, and impact of female Islamic authority in particular contexts around the world. he use of this approach, however, is not limited to historically marginal groups such as women, but extends also to analysis of some major igures of modern Islam, many of whom straddle the boundaries customarily drawn between ulamā , Suis and new religious intellectuals. Among the ulamā , prominent boundary-straddlers include Muḥammad Abduh, Aḥmad Kutārū, and Yūsuf Qaraḍāwī. Muḥammad Abduh (d. 1905), the Azhar-trained Egyptian scholar and Grand Mutī, was by education solidly a member of the ulamā , yet he was a staunch advocate of reforming the structure and content of Islamic education, and argued that interpretations could be based on source texts only—a method later used by new religious intellectuals. Kutārū, Syria’s late Grand Mutī (d. 2004), straddled another boundary, that between ālim and Sui shaykh. His case is even more interesting due to his involvement in founding and expanding a private Islamic educational institution, initially known as the Abū Nūr Foundation— renamed the Shaykh Kutārū Foundation ater his death—which he was supposedly permitted to do because of his cooperation with the Syrian state.29 Qaraḍāwī has the depth of knowledge of an ālim who trained at the highest levels of al-Azhar,30 yet—similar to new religious intellectuals—he also has longstanding ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, eschews adherence to a single legal school,31 uses speaking and writing styles that resonate with the general public,32 and was an 29 Annabelle Böttcher, Syrische Religionspolitik Unter Asad (Freiburg im Breisgau: Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, 1998). 30 Krämer provides a detailed biography: see Gudrun Krämer, “Drawing Boundaries: Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Apostasy,” in Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, ed. Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 184–92. On his education see also Zaman, “Contestations,” 220. 31 He instead strives for “moderation.” See Zaman, “Consensus and Authority,” 171; Krämer, “Drawing Boundaries,” 196–97. 32 Krämer, “Drawing Boundaries,” 193. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 15 early adopter of radio and satellite television to spread his teachings worldwide.33 he careers of these individuals—and many of the leaders discussed in this volume—demonstrate how focusing on knowledge acquisition and demonstration can reveal the multiple, diverse, and, at times, unexpected strategies deployed by contemporary Islamic leaders to increase their authority and inluence. his information adds to scholarly perceptions of group composition and interrelationships, and reinforces an image of contemporary Islamic authority as multifaceted: the need to refer to knowledge and practices inherited from past generations of Muslims remains constant, yet perceptions of this inheritance as well as the ways in which leaders obtain and demonstrate connections with it continue to shit. Authority and the Study of Contemporary Female Islamic Leadership he relatively decentralized and multifaceted nature of twentiethcentury Islamic authority presents both opportunities and challenges for women who want to exercise religious leadership. For much of Islamic history, women have not had a signiicant presence in mosques and madrasahs in many Muslim communities, which has hampered their ability to obtain Islamic authority by building public reputations as teachers and transmitters of Islamic knowledge. his does not mean, however, that women have been entirely excluded from the transmission and application of Islamic knowledge in past centuries. A sizable number of female religious authorities appear in Islamic sources, especially biographical dictionaries, prior to the sixteenth century, primarily as Companions of the Prophet, ḥ adīth transmitters and Sui saints,34 but also as scholars, instructors, 33 Ibid., 190–91; Leif Stenberg, “he Global Muti,” in Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity, ed. Birgit Schäbler and Leif Stenberg (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 156. 34 Roded estimates that 10–15% of Companions of the Prophet Muḥammad cited in major biographical dictionaries were women, but that this percentage dropped signiicantly in subsequent generations. Sayeed reines this further, noting a drop in female ḥ adīth transmission starting in the ninth century and ending in the eleventh century, when the number of active female muḥ addithāt increased. Roded and Nadwi note the disappearance of women—both contemporaries and those from earlier generations—from biographical dictionaries starting in the sixteenth century. Muhammad Akram Nadwi, al-Muhaddithat: he Women Scholars in Islam (Oxford: Interface © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 16 hilary kalmbach and patrons of religious endowments.35 Women have also historically been active as Sui leaders, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.36 he barakah of Sui leaders could be passed on to both sons and daughters, and women have historically held prominent and celebrated positions as leaders of religious sisterhoods even when they have been largely excluded from centers of religious scholarship. hese historical examples—from both Sunnī and Shī ī communities— provide contemporary female leaders with historical precedents to cite when their ability to lead as a woman is challenged, as in the case of Bint al-Hudá’s use of (shiting) historical memories of Fāṭimah al-Zahrā (see Pierce, Chapter 2.8, this volume).37 In the twentieth and twenty-irst centuries, female Islamic leadership has dramatically expanded—in directions old and new—in part because of the structural changes in Islamic authority described earlier, as well as shits in the roles and activities of women in many Muslim communities. he chapters in this volume demonstrate that, as Publications, 2007); Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Saád to Who’s Who (London: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Asma Sayeed, “Shiting Fortunes: Women and Ḥ adīth Transmission in Islamic History (First to Eighth Centuries),” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2005); Jonathan P. Berkey, “Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shiting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 35 Discussion of these female leadership activities is increasing. See Nadwi, alMuhaddithat, 273–90; Mona Hassan, “Relations, Narrations, and Judgements: he Scholarly Networks and Contributions of an Early Female Muslim Jurist” (under review); Mirjam Künkler, “Of ‘Alimahs, Wa’izahs, and Mujtahidahs: Forgotten Histories and New State Initiatives” (manuscript). 36 For instance, see Niyazi Mustafa, “Rābi‘ah al-‘Adawīyah” (Cairo: Alam Hilmi Rala, 1963); Fatima Mernissi, “he Story of a Contemporary Woman Mystic,” in Women in Islam and the Middle East: A Reader, ed. Ruth Roded (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); Catharina Raudvere, “Female Dervishes in Contemporary Istanbul: Between Tradition and Modernity,” in Women and Islamization: Contemporary Dimensions of Discourse on Gender Relations, ed. Karen Ask and Marit Tjomsland (Oxford: Berg, 1998); Annemarie Schimmel, “Women in Mystical Islam,” in Women and Islam, ed. Azizah al-Hibri (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982); Shemeem Burney Abbas, he Female Voice in Sui Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India, 1st ed. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002); Annabelle Böttcher, “Islamic Teaching among Sunni Women in Syria,” in Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Donna Lee Bowen and Evelyn A. Early (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 37 Another example is Hudá al-Ḥ abash’s citation of Umm al-Darda’ as a precedent for female mosque preaching and instruction. Hilary Kalmbach, “Social and Religious Change in Damascus: One Case of Female Islamic Authority,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 1 (2008). Despite the use of female historical igures in contemporary legitimization debates, scholars must be careful not to read the agendas and awareness of the present onto the historical records of the past. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 17 literate, publicly active members of society, women have been able to claim exoteric, scholarly religious authority based on at least some— and occasionally a signiicant amount of—formal learning, mixed with reputation, teaching experience, charisma, a pious image, commitment to religious and charitable causes, and family ties. Women have taken up space in mosques and madrasahs to teach and lead prayer for other women, solidly establishing, re-establishing, or expanding female leadership in public religious spaces. Women also have played a major role in many twentieth-century Islamic revivalist movements, spreading new or reinvented forms of religious practice, dress, and interpretation among Muslim women. Female Leadership Roles, New and Old Contemporary female leaders ill a wide range of roles in a variety of spaces, including those long held by traditional scholars—that of ālim, mujtahidah, and imām—and those that have signiicantly expanded during the late twentieth century—that of revivalist instructor, speaker, and advisor. he varying contexts in which these women exercise religious authority make it clear that assuming religious women in conservative Muslim communities are not actors, but are passively acted upon, falls far short of capturing the complexity of their activities.38 Women with signiicant formal religious education have been able to access some of the career paths and public spaces that have long been open to male scholars, even occasionally those open to the higher ranks of male scholars, such as a mujtahidah, or an individual entitled to independently interpret texts (see Künkler and Fazaeli, Chapter 1.5, this volume). Expansion of educational opportunities for women alone has not been enough for signiicant change, however, as expansion of places for women at the highest levels of Islamic education—such as the women’s section of Egypt’s al-Azhar—has not resulted in a parallel increase in women occupying high-level positions.39 38 his point is addressed further by Saba Mahmood, who frames her study of the Egyptian mosque movement in opposition to the assumption that conservative Muslim women who adhere to the values and constraints associated with mosque movements are acting in an illogical manner that betrays their best interests. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: he Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–2, 5, 37–38. 39 One example, highlighted in Veiled Voices, is the inability of Dr. Su ād Sāliḥ to become a member of Egypt’s Islamic Research Council (Majma al-Buḥūth al-Islāmīyah)—despite the assurances of the late Shaykh al-Azhar (and former Grand © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 18 hilary kalmbach Opportunities have also arisen for women in states that have incorporated mosque oficials into the state bureaucracy, such as Morocco and Turkey, to serve as mosque preachers, teachers, and issuers of statesanctioned fatwás (see Rausch, Chapter 1.2, and Hassan, Chapter 1.3, this volume). Women in Hui communities in China have institutionalized and expanded their longstanding role as instructors by opening women-only mosques with entirely female ritual and communal leadership (see Jaschok, Chapter 1.1, this volume). Female activists based primarily in North America have attempted to link reinterpretations of the Qur ān promoting gender equity with female leadership of mixed-gender communal prayer, efforts that have attracted signiicant attention worldwide (see Hammer, Chapter 3.5, and Lehmann, Chapter 3.6, this volume). Other women have chosen to limit their activities to expanding their public instruction and leadership of women (see Spielhaus, Chapter 3.4, this volume). he number of positions available to women as teachers providing instruction to women and girls in mosques and madrasahs has expanded signiicantly in parallel with late-twentieth-century Islamic revival movements that ‘call’ Muslims back to Islam in many parts of the world. Some of these female leaders have a formal Islamic education—oten in smaller schools or government certiicate programs—but, similar to new religious intellectuals, a crucial part of their authority is based on informal training, family ties (see Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey, Chapter 2.1, this volume), volunteer work within the movements, teaching experience, and a reputation for personal piety and commitment to activist work (see Le Renard, Chapter 1.4, this volume). Women in various contexts locate their revivalist work in mosques and madrasahs (see Minesaki, Chapter 3.2, and Spielhaus, Chapter 3.4, this volume),40 in the virtual spaces created by television Muti), Shaykh Ṭ anṭāwī, that qualiied women can become mutīs—because only one man voted for her. A piece by Margot Badran in the American Research Centre in Egypt Bulletin, (183, Fall–Winter 2002–2003) presents Su ād Sāliḥ in the context of Islamic feminism. It goes into detail about her background and qualiications, explaining how she came to work as a professor and department chair at al-Azhar’s Women’s College and to apply for the status of mutī, which would give oficial recognition to the fatwás she issues on television and lectures. Interestingly, while Sāliḥ notes that Islam allows women to issue fatwás, presumably on a general basis, she argues for female representation within the oficial mutīate in gendered terms, saying that many women feel most comfortable asking for fatwás from a woman, and that many male mutīs are not qualiied to answer their questions. 40 See also Mahmood, Politics of Piety; Kalmbach, “Social and Religious Change.” © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 19 (see Karlsson Minganti, Chapter 3.1, this volume) and the Internet (see Le Renard, Chapter 1.4, this volume),41 in public or semi-public non-mosque spaces (see Bleisch Bouzar, Chapter 2.5, and Kuppinger, Chapter 2.7, this volume), and domestically (see Vanderwaeren, Chapter 2.6, and Minesaki, Chapter 3.2, this volume). Decisions surrounding spaces are inluenced by external constraints introduced by state or male religious authority (see chapters in parts 1 and 2, this volume), and affect the authority of the individuals concerned (see especially Micinski, Chapter 2.3, this volume). In this volume, religious authority is linked only with those activities that require explicitly Islamic knowledge, speciically teaching, preaching, interpreting (or reinterpreting) texts, leading worship, and providing guidance on religious matters. However, attempts to expand religious authority are linked, in many contexts, to women occupying (or trying to occupy) communal leadership positions, for instance as organizers of lessons and events or representatives on mosque or communal administrative bodies (see Kuppinger, Chapter 2.7, Hammer, Chapter 3.5, Jaschok, Chapter 1.1, and Karlsson Minganti, Chapter 3.1, this volume). A major question addressed by these chapters is whether expansion in female communal leadership can be linked to the increasing number of women in explicitly religious leadership roles. Why Focus on Islamic Authority? Careful examination of the sources and dynamics of female religious authority contributes to the study of female Islamic leaders in a number of ways. First, it allows us to place the seemingly contrasting activities of various female Islamic leaders on the same continuum, uniting a body of scholarship that has hitherto been divided between studies of women who have explicitly set out to challenge Islamic sanctioning of gender inequality, and women from revivalist movements whose challenge to norms is subtle or nonexistent. he irst body of scholarship is signiicantly larger and focuses on women from North America, Europe, and Malaysia who reinterpret texts, engage in activist work, or otherwise push the boundaries with regard to what is permissible for female religious leaders to do. Leaders who feature prominently include the North Americans Amina 41 Dr. Su ād Sāliḥ, discussed above and below, is an example of a female Islamic leader with a television program. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 20 hilary kalmbach Wadud, Asma Barlas, and Kecia Ali, and the German Rabeya Müller, and organizations of note include Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian group founded to promote interpretations of the Qur ān that protect women’s rights.42 he ideas, practices, and impact of the second set of women— comprising the majority of mosque and madrasah instructors—are rarely examined in a similar amount of detail, perhaps because many either do not engage with or openly oppose many (though not necessarily all) of the gender norms prevalent in Western societies. Prior work on this topic consists primarily of in-depth studies of single contexts. Several of these studies engage extensively with the terminology used in feminist theory and Women’s Studies. Maria Jaschok and Shui Jingjun’s he History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam details the struggle of Hui Muslim women—doubly marginalized by their religion and gender—to obtain space for religious practice and leadership, most notably women-led mosques, and its into a growing literature on minority routes to women’s liberation in China.43 In Women Shaping Islam, Nelly van Doorn-Harder argues that the leaders of the women’s branches of major Indonesian Muslim organizations use their Islamic knowledge—oten gained through formal education—to resist the expansion of foreign-inluenced extremist groups and their misogynistic interpretations of Islamic texts, though the quest for emancipation of these oten-conservative women frequently takes a decidedly nonWestern path.44 Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety uses a detailed ethnography of the Egyptian women’s mosque movement to argue that the terminology used in feminist theories of agency is not suficient to explain fully the complexities of the place of female mosque leadership in wider social and religious contexts.45 Catharina Raudvere’s ethnography he Book of the Roses approaches the topic from a different direction. It focuses on the structure, activities—ritual, educational, and charitable—and leadership of a Turkish 42 For a concise overview of scholarship on these leaders, see Margot Badran, Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 280–85; and Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, 1st ed., s.v. “Qur ān: Modern Interpretations.” 43 Maria Jaschok and Jingjun Shui, he History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: A Mosque of heir Own (Richmond: Curzon, 2000). 44 Pieternella van Doorn-Harder, Women Shaping Islam: Reading the Qur’an in Indonesia (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 45 Mahmood, Politics of Piety. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 21 women’s group that has much in common with both Suism and Islamism, and where women without formal afiliation to a Sui group— instead only loose ties to an absent male Sui leader—independently lead Sui rituals. Complementing these monographs are two ilms focusing on female mosque instruction. Brigid Maher’s Veiled Voices weaves together proiles of three religious leaders and their families: Ghiná Ḥ ammūd, a Lebanese religious leader working to overcome the stigma of divorce, Dr. Su ād Sāliḥ, a prominent Egyptian religious scholar who teaches at al-Azhar and issues fatwás on her television shows, and Hudá al-Ḥ abash, a Syrian instructor with extensive family support.46 Julia Meltzer and Laura Nix’s he Light in Her Eyes focuses on Hudá al-Ḥ abash and her efforts to educate women and girls, bringing out the rites of passage through which her students move.47 In short, focusing this project on religious authority and space—and otherwise giving authors free reign methodologically—enabled us to consider collectively contexts that were not only geographically and methodologically diverse, but also represent an unprecedented range of female leadership activities. his range stretches from North American gender activist Wadud and members of various European Islamic women’s associations, to moderately and extremely conservative mosque and madrasah instructors from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Furthermore, the project as a whole makes it clear that female Islamic leadership in ostensibly conservative contexts is complex and signiicant, and as worthy of study as leadership in more documented contexts. Structuring our examination of female religious leadership in terms of authority also allows us to document the role of women in its reemergence and development, without overstating their impact or making assumptions about their underlying motives.48 Many of the chapters in this volume show how female leaders use or develop alternative 46 Brigid Maher and Karen Bauer, Veiled Voices, DVD (Seattle, WA: Typecast Releasing, 2009). Further resources are available on the ilm’s website, http://www .veiledvoices.com/. 47 Hudá al-Ḥ abash’s authority as an Islamic leader is speciically discussed in Kalmbach, “Social and Religious Change.” For the ilm, see Julia Melzer and Laura Nix, he Light in Her Eyes, DVD (Clockshop: forthcoming), and http://thelightinhereyesmovie .com/. 48 his tendency in scholarship on Muslim women is discussed further by Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 8. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 22 hilary kalmbach structures and institutions to create spaces in parallel with (or occasionally in opposition to) existing religious social and political institutions, as well as how female initiative interacts with and exists alongside established (and oten male-dominated) religious and political institutions. For instance, while female leadership in Chinese Hui communities has historically been linked to the invitation of male religious leaders and state policies promoting gender equality, the female leaders of women-only mosques in these communities stress their role in expanding and institutionalizing previous leadership roles to enable female-led mosques (see Jaschok, Chapter 1.1, this volume). Volume chapters on Russian Tartaristan and Turkey show how female leaders appointed by the state interact with those who rose to leadership positions without state assistance (see Micinski, Chapter 2.3, and Hassan, Chapter 1.3, this volume).49 Female initiative—and its interaction with other routes to authority—also appears in volume chapters on Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany (see van Doorn-Harder, Chapter 3.3, Le Renard, Chapter 1.4, Bleisch Bouzar, Chapter 2.5, Karlsson Minganti, Chapter 3.1, and Kuppinger, Chapter 2.7, this volume). In short, it is clear that while space for female religious leadership has been created for women by governments or maledominated religious establishments, it has also emerged as a result of women creating or expanding space for female teaching, preaching, or other leadership activities. he major expansion of teaching positions for women in mosques and madrasahs documented by many of the chapters in this volume is not only linked to twentieth-century religious revivals (and related increases in female demand for religious knowledge), but also to increases in the public activities and standing of women since the early twentieth century, increases that involved initiative on the part of both men and women. In Egypt, this link is more than temporal, but embodied in the link between feminist organizer Hudá Sha rāwī and Egypt’s irst eminent female mosque preacher, Zaynab al-Ghazālī. In the 1930s, al-Ghazālī let Sha rāwī’s Egyptian Feminist Union to promote an alternative, ostensibly more ‘Islamic,’ path for women’s 49 Micinski (Chapter 2.3, this volume) focuses on this aspect and assesses its impact on each woman’s authority. He uses Faranak Miratab’s notion of invited and invented spaces, where the former emerges with the support of well-established governmental and non-governmental institutions, and the latter arises outside of (and oten in opposition to) these established authorities. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 23 public activism.50 he leading role that al-Ghazālī played in Egyptian religious, social, and political affairs from the 1930s through to the 1990s set a signiicant precedent that has undoubtedly inluenced the religious leadership roles that contemporary Muslim women are able to hold.51 Finally, focusing on the authority of female leaders emphasizes both the possibilities and limitations of the wide range of leadership roles illed by women, which enables us to explain differences in inluence and impact between leaders. In many Muslim communities, the authority of female religious leaders is subordinate to and dependent on male authority and the traditions of the male-dominated religious establishment (see Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey, Chapter 2.1, and Dessing, Chapter 2.2, this volume). his is in part because the behavior and teachings of both male and female religious leaders must appear to conform to the religious norms of their communities, norms that oten include more restrictions on the dress and behavior of women. Another contributing factor is the previously discussed importance of past examples and practices in the structure of Islamic authority. he inluence of present perceptions of the social and religious ideas of the past restricts the parameters of female leadership and interpretation in many communities. Further complicating the situation is the increasing politicization of women’s status in many Muslim communities and the related rejection of concepts such as feminism and gender equality because of their portrayal as foreign and hegemonic, and therefore inauthentic, intrusions into local culture.52 hese limitations make it dificult, even impossible, for female religious leaders in many contexts to alter the gendered structure of society (in so far as they wish to do this) without losing their authority as religious igures. Widespread support for some degree of gender segregation in many Muslim communities is a double-edged sword for these women: while it enables them to expand their public role as instructors of women and girls, it also limits their ability to expand 50 Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (London: Routledge, 2001), 86–87; Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 67–70; Badran, Feminism in Islam, 26–27. 51 Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 70–72. 52 Deniz Kandiyoti, “Introduction,” in Women, Islam and the State, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 7; Badran, Feminism in Islam, 243. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV 24 hilary kalmbach signiicantly their leadership activities, in some instances into mosque spaces and in others to mixed-gender audiences. Context-speciic limitations related to socio-religious norms and the inluence of different interpretations of tradition assist efforts to explain why certain women—primarily those willing to support the status quo with respect to gendered norms—have been able to rise to positions of considerable inluence within Muslim communities worldwide, and why the inluence of other groups of women—for instance, those who seek to change gender norms—is limited to communities who already welcome this message. Female leaders who wish to change socio-religious practices in their community—either subtly or radically—while maintaining their legitimacy as religious leaders must make dificult choices. Even though some female Islamic instructors promote female education and public involvement, provide students with tools to take greater control over their daily lives (see Minesaki, Chapter 3.2, and Spielhaus, Chapter 3.4, this volume), resist the spread of more conservative organizations, interpretations, and practices (see van Doorn-Harder, Chapter 3.3, this volume), and actively inluence the image of Muslim women in nonMuslim societies (see Karlsson Minganti, Chapter 3.1, and Spielhaus, Chapter 3.4, this volume), the dynamics surrounding legitimization mean that they are more likely to spread and reinforce existing social and religious practices than go against them. he controversy surrounding female leadership of the communal Friday prayer, an activity that has remained male-dominated due to dominant interpretive traditions and practices, provides a perfect example of these dynamics. he 2005 North American Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour that included Amina Wadud’s highly publicized leading of Friday prayers represents an attempt to signiicantly change existing thought and practice (see Hammer, Chapter 3.5, this volume). While it sparked discussion around the world, the negative reaction it received in many communities demonstrates how the claims to authority of women who aim to radically change existing social and religious practices are most likely to be recognized fully only in communities whose norms are similar to those they advocate. Other leaders have chosen a less overt path. For instance, German leader Halima Krausen has chosen consciously to avoid leadership of prayers so that she can instead expand her inluence, impact, and authority within communities who reject female leadership of prayers (see Spielhaus, Chapter 3.4, this volume). © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV islamic authority and the study of female leaders 25 hese factors explain why this collaborative project focuses on Islamic authority, and further reinforces the notion that female mosque and madrasah leadership—in all contexts—is a topic deserving of further documentation and analysis, as well as underlining the utility of authority as a concept around which to structure studies of contemporary Muslim activity. Analyzing, contextualizing, and comparing how and where would-be Muslim leaders acquire and demonstrate religious authority enables analysis of similarities, differences, and changes in the activities of leaders. his focus and approach is especially useful given the multiplicity of contemporary Islamic paths to Islamic authority and the corresponding diversity of individuals and organizations claiming to speak for and act on behalf of Islam and Muslims. It enables full consideration of the role of women in its reemergence and development. It assists in explaining the possibilities and limitations implicit in particular female leadership roles, clearly showing that, while the relative lack of centralized authority in Islam can present opportunities to women, the importance of audience expectations in processes of legitimation can also place signiicant barriers in front of women seeking religious authority. Finally, focusing this volume on the authority of female leaders has made it possible to unite bodies of scholarship—as well as groups of scholars—who have hitherto been divided by disciplinary and ideological boundaries. Bibliography Abbas, Shemeem Burney. he Female Voice in Sui Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India. 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002. Badran, Margot. Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. Benn, Stanley I. “Authority.” In he Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, 215–18. London: Collier-Macmillian Publishers, 1967. Berkey, Jonathan P. “Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period.” In Women in Middle Eastern History: Shiting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, edited by Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, 143–60. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. 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