Asma Barlas: CAIS Lecture Series Spring 2026

Dr. Asma Barlas, Ithaca College

Un-gendering the Qur'an: Men's Authority over Women

Muslims universally read the Qur’an as affirming that a male God prefers men, has made them superior to women, and given them unilateral authority over their wives. Indeed, popular texts even call husbands “earthly gods” whom their wives must serve and obey as they would God “Himself.” It is obvious enough from Muslim history that such ideas have served to “Islamize” all manner of tyranny and violence against girls and women but, as I will argue, reading the Qur’an as the male-privileging word of a male God who is partial to men is both theologically indefensible and methodologically unsound. It is theologically inexcusable in that it imputes a (male) gender to God by taking the Qur’an’s male pronouns for God literally; in other words, it collapses the signifier and signified. However, the Qur’an affirms that God is inimitable and even forbids Muslims to use comparisons for God. Moreover, it does not define the concept of gender itself, which then also raises the question as to how the Qur’an can mandate gender inequalities or hierarchies between women and men. I will substantiate these claims by comparing three approaches to the Qur’an: the dominant, or, patriarchal, my own, which emphasizes its anti-patriarchalism and, the secular/ feminist, which takes the Qur’an’s patriarchal exegesis as the basis for questioning if it is God’s word.

Organized and Moderated by Souad T. Ali, CAIS Founding Chair