I'm intrigued by the extrapolation we arrived at near the end of last class, about the implications of Thanawi's ideal view of what should happen if women behave as he prescribes, and if that in turn leads to his vision of an ideal Islamic society. Such a society would be fundamentally opposed to all other religious traditions but willing to tolerate their existence, as Thanawi nowhere advocates violence-- his telling quotation about the Prophet, as well as the introductory comments indicating that the perfect Muslim woman he describes is essentially not different from the perfect Muslim man, are demonstrations of this. Ultimately then, Islam would function as a sort of secret sub-society within the state, maybe within all states, wherein feminine energy is directed in the orderly running of the home and masculine energy largely devoted to dealings with the outside world inasmuch as would be necessary to keep the batteries charged, so to speak.
What I wonder is whether contemporary Islamic reform trends tend more towards Thanawi's view, or more in the direction of breaking with traditional women's roles altogether and making it acceptable for women to take on traditionally "masculine" roles and lifestyles.
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The important thing to remember in this context is where Thanawi begins: Muslims have lost state power; they don't have the ability to challenge the British Raj politically or militarily; and they have to figure out how to live in a world which is now being run by people with agendas that are putatively antithetical to Islam. It's in that context that the home (rather than public or social understandings of Islam) become important.
ReplyDeleteThe second thing to remember is that Thanawi's explanation for why the British are able to defeat the Muslims (and you have to have an explanation of this if you believe that Allah is on the side of Muslims in South Asia) is because deviant and idolatrous practices have crept into the religion (primarily at the point of education and the domestic space). So to "recharge" Islam, we have to get rid of the impurities in the religious practices (which means reviving a forgotten Shari'a) and be able to identify the places where those deviant practices manifest. In Thanawi's mind those manifestations were (more or less) connected to women.
Thanawi, though, believes that women are capable of being different, better. And that's the point of the book: reviving a tradition within Islam which takes the empowerment of women (even on a limited basis) seriously.