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This bold and original study centres of the female voice of Aisha in the very heart of Islamic sacred texts; the Prophetic tradition, seeking to wrest Islam from patriarchal orthodoxy and reclaim its egalitarian impulse. Aisha's example legitimises Muslim women's agency and right to question male authority to reach their full self-actualisation.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: The Woman, The Man, The Text
- 2: The Classical Hadith Tradition and Its Canonisation
- 3: Thinking Translation
- 4: Aisha the Jurist
- 5: Aisha the Hadith Master
- 6: Aisha the Compassionate
- 7: Aisha and the Hadith Tradition: An Emergent Methodology
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Selected Translation of al-Ijaba li-Iradi ma Istadrakathu Aisha 'ala al Sahaba
About the author
Sofia Rehman is an independent scholar of Islam, trained both traditionally in Syria and Turkey, and in Western academia, receiving her PhD from the University of Leeds. She advocates bridging the gap between scholarship on Islam and the Muslim community, setting up critical reading groups with global reach to facilitate learning and empowerment. She is a contributor to Mapping Faith: Theologies of Migration, edited by Lia Shimada, Cut from the Same Cloth?, edited by Sabeena Akhtar and Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, edited by Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang. She is author of A Treasury of Aisha Bint Abu Bakr.
Summary
This bold and original study centres of the female voice of Aisha in the very heart of Islamic sacred texts; the Prophetic tradition, seeking to wrest Islam from patriarchal orthodoxy and reclaim its egalitarian impulse. Aisha's example legitimises Muslim women's agency and right to question male authority to reach their full self-actualisation.
Additional text
Rehman is not advocating for a rejection of Islamic tradition as received today, but reviving a much needed corrective to it; in medieval times, there was a very robust and rich tradition by Islamic scholars of hadiths, jurisprudence and philosophical criticism and critical inquiry.
