QURAN AND POLYGYNY: LEGISLATIVE AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF WOMEN RIGHTS IN ISLAM

Abstract

(Neo)Orientalist interpretations of the status of women "in Islam", as can be seen in some older and newer Western theoretical works, are staying ignorant of dynamics of reformist tendencies in modern Islamic law theory – active since the end of the nineteenth century – whose goal is to recover the social position of Muslim women, in Islamic frame of reference. In this sense, reconceptualizations of traditional Islamic norms tend to make a strong distinction between sharia (Islamic law established in the Quranic text) and fiqh (human interpretations of that law). This distinction provides to the Muslim authors an access to the primal flexibility of sharia law on the one hand, and the possibility of reinterpretation of fiqh in Islamic feminist key on the other. Following this particular line of argumentation, this paper attempts to show how the fight for women’s emancipation can be also led in the frames of meaning different from those dominant on the West.