I attended a session where Dr. Amina Wadud presented a paper titled Islam: Beyond Patriarchy through a Gender Inclusive Quranic Analysis .The session was fully subscribed and it was chaired by Dr Margot Badran a Senior Fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for Muslim Christian Understanding. Dr Amina Wadud began her paper with a recitation of suratul fatiha. She told the audience that she has been doing research on Islam for 36 years with tauhid as an area of focus. The central message of her paper is that men and women are khalifah of Allah and must challenge patriarchy and create justice and equality. That is part of tauhid.

I will reproduce her paper as summarised by the organisers for the benefit of those who have no access to her book The Quran and Women: Re reading the Sacred Text. The few copies that were available for sale sold out before many of the participants could even buy. Amina Wadud raised eyebrows when she led a mixed congregation as the imam at a Friday prayer in South Africa a few years back so it was not surprising that people wanted to listen to her presentation and what she had to say in her book.

Below is the summary:

Amina Wadudu's paper presents an interpretation of Islam that offers a vision of an active partnership of equals between women and men. This partnership will move human society towards equality and justice, which are the twin intentions of the Revelation. The interpretation examines Islam's two primary sources, namely the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The paper focuses on the ethical principles established by these two sources regarding the relationship between Allah and individual human beings, and between human beings.

Arguing for gender equality and justice from within the framework of the religion, the paper takes as given "that the Qur'an is the word of Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad". It quotes extensively from Qur'anic verses and Islamic ethics, and first establishes the Qur'anic vision of equality between women and men in all three stages of human life as revealed by the Qur'an: creation, the hereafter and 'the life in between' ('aalam al-shahadah). The paper discusses the impact of patriarchy on interpretation of the Qur'an and the practices of Muslims. It proposes the use of constructive Islamic ethical tools to end this negative influence, which restricts realisation of the Qur'anic message of equality and justice. Finally, the paper shows how this discussion relates to Muslim family law reform.

The main points of the paper are:

*Equality in creation has important consequences for our daily lives. The Qur'an's repeated emphasis of creation in pairs-"the male and the female"-indicates that both must be equal beneficiaries of the justice inherent in the laws and policies arising out of interpretations of the Qur'an, and both must be considered responsible for the formulation of these laws and policies.

*The Qur'an also establishes equality in the hereafter, with equal reward or punishment for women and men.

*Plurality is part of the Divine design. The significance of one human life clearly affects other human lives. Therefore, we must think and act in ways that indicate our awareness of the interrelationship between all human life and creation as a whole.

*Human beings are created to be moral agents (khilafa). There is no distinction made between male and female in terms of this divine mandate.

*As responsible human agents, we have the free will to choose between what is good and what is evil. Judgement of how we choose to act on this free will lies with Allah, the ultimate judge. Allah sees and knows all things, whether in the public arena or in the home.

*The ultimate criterion for making judgements between human beings is on the basis of taqwa, or their moral excellence. Yet a common imbalance or injustice today is that Muslim women are considered morally respon-sible subjects of the law without being considered equally as creators of the law.

*Islam was revealed into a context dominated by patriarchy but it also provides a route beyond patriarchy. It is the duty of Muslims to follow this route and challenge patriarchy within our societies. It is also our duty to challenge the notion from outside Muslim culture that Islam does not have the tools to move beyond patriarchy. Patriarchy is not just about men, it is about presuming one way of doing things, one way of being and one way of knowing is superior and should dominate.

*The answer to patriarchy is through mu'awadhah, or reciprocity. Women should not rule over men, nor must women do what men have been doing; instead, we move from domination to partnership. Islam provides many sources and examples on the ethic of reciprocity. The paper expands the term from its use in Islamic financial transactions, and applies it to relationships between individuals. It consists of knowing and of supporting the other person.

*"Patriarchy is a kind of shirk (ultimate violation of divine unity)" because it denies the equality of all Allah's creation. Patriarchy rests on the Satanic notion of istikbar (thinking of oneself as better than another).Satan refused to bow before Adam Saying he is better than him. That was the source of his downfall. So istikbar contradicts the spirit of Islam. It contradicts the Qur'anic vision of the equal and reciprocal moral relationships and responsibilities of women and men, as laid out in verse Al-Ahzab 33:35. It also contradicts the vision of the relationship between husband and wife, as reflected in verse Al-Room 30:21, which talks not of domination and competition but partnership, cooperation and affection.

*The major inspiration for this alternative vision of the relationship between women and men comes from the concept of tawhid. This concept begins from its root word, the verb wahhada, "a dynamic term emphasising the divine power to bring all things into unity or harmony". The paper suggests that harmony means "mu'awadhah or mutual reciprocity, cooperation and interdependence."

*According to tawhid, two persons will always be in a relationship of horizontal reciprocity. This logically derives from two aspects of tawhid:

*Islam understands Allah as supreme, the greatest; Allahu akbar. Therefore nothing else can be superior to any one individual;

*Added to this, the Qur'an makes it clear that whenever two persons are together, Allah makes the third, or when three are together, Allah makes the fourth and so on (Al-Mujadalah 58:7). Since Allah is always present, and always the greatest, then no one can hold the upper level without violating tawhid. Patriarchy on the other hand places men as superior to women and violates the requirement that only Allah is supreme.

*One of the simplest ways to reform the law in accordance with these ethics of the Qur'an and move societies beyond patriarchy may be to encourage active and equal public participation by both women and men, especially in legal and policy reform, so they are equally able to express their taqwa.

The paper generated interesting comments. There were references made to verses in the Quran that allows husbands to refrain from sharing the bed with a wife as punishment if she offends him and also the verse that allows a husband to beat his wife!! A participant said these verses are being used to rationalise violence against women and to prevent them from speaking out against it. Women are told that since the Quran permits the beating of wives no woman should speak against it and if they oppose any aspect of the Quran they lose their faith. Another participant said some imams promote these verses to shut women up and make them helpless and vulnerable. Such imams also have a website where they promote this!

Another participant asked Amina a question. 'If refusal to share a bed with a wife is domestic violence, then can we say the Prophet practiced domestic violence when he withdrew from his wives for one month when they offended him? Amina responded. 'No comments, thanks for sharing. Yes we must believe in the whole of the Quran. I also believe in using the lived reality in the interpretation of the text. These 45 minutes of presentation is inadequate for me to present 35 years of work I have done. However we must insist on defending our right to also interpret the Quran and we must also examine our relationship with these male jurists, muftis etc who claim they have the last word on the Quran. We also have a right as human beings, as concerned and pious Muslims to interpret the Quran. No one has a last word on it because that will be an exhibition of authoritarianism."

The Chair of the session Dr. Margot Badran said an imam in Spain who preached that husbands can beat their wives was prosecuted and jailed for promoting violence in the family and his book was banned and removed from the shelf.

A lady from Turkey said abuse is not only physical but can also be mental. She said there is need to train imams to refrain from preaching violence in their sermons because it distorts family life, alienates family members and creates problems for the society. There are two organisations that undertake such training for imams.

On the issue of equality between men and women, a leader of the Association of Muslim Youth from Niger Republic Zahara Aboubacar Nassirou said Muslim women's approach must emphasise complementarity in the relationship between men and women, the husband and wife because we need each other. If the man is the head, of what use is the head without a body? He needs the body to live and work. She also drew attention to the fact that Allah created the day and the night and He mentioned this several times in the Quran. Night is not better than day and the day is not better than the night. One would have to live in both and can not throw away either of them. On violence against women she said it is unIslamic because the Prophet SAW never beat his wives nor any woman. It is his life which is the Sunnah that explains the Quran. So all of us Muslim men and women should follow the Prophet's example. Amina responded that complemen-tarity and equity concept makes women the handkerchief which you can add to a suit to make it nice and the handkerchief can also be discarded! She said 'am very careful with the usage of the complementarity concept.' Last year, I participated in collating the views of Muslim scholars and activists in a Focus Group Discussion FGD here in Nigeria and most of them said equity and justice are the concepts women need to use as an entry point for accessing their God given rights. They insisted that the concept of equality raises a lot of problems. They cited one example: if the Quran enjoins men to provide for the family and women are demanding equality. Does it mean that they take over providing for the family? There is an urgent need to unpack the concept of equality so that we can all arrive at a common understanding of where we are going. Unfortunately none of the conference sessions was devoted to engaging with terminologies and defining the concepts that were freely used through out the global meeting that Musawah has come to symbolise.