Literature on women in Islam frequently focuses only on the Sunni majority tradition. What about women in Shi'ism? Is literature on women in Islam equally applicable? Are women discussed in literature on Shi'ism in general? What sort of problems and assumptions can be derived from a discussion about literature on women in Shi'ism? This presentation surveys prominent books and articles on women in Islam, Shi'ism, and women in Shi'ism to explore these questions. (Note: For audio commentary - which would probably be extremely helpful - check in with www.islamic-college.ac.uk to find a video of the webinar that I used this presentation with.)

1. Women in Shiʿism
A Literature Review
Portrayals – Problems – Assumptions - Approaches
Amina Inloes
The Islamic College, London, UK
a.Inloes@Islamic-college.ac.uk

2. Women in Islam
Strengths
• Uncovering shared historical and cultural
dynamics of the classical Muslim world as
well as pre-Islamic influences
• Shared questions and cultural concerns
• Emphasis on the Qur’an and Prophetic
era
• Models new approaches
Weaknesses
• Engages with Sunni-specific hadith, law,
and exegesis
• Islamic feminist scholarship may use
approaches not relevant to Shi’i identity
or scripture
• Different social-political conditions of
early Shi’a due to being a minority

5. Books on Shiʿism

10. • Oftentimes a blurred line between ‘outsider’ and
‘insider’ studies
• Ideologies and agendas?
• What issues are identified as ‘women’s issues’ and
why?
• Whose voice is representative, and why?
Women in Shiʿism

16. Fatimah al-Zahra
• Focus on spirituality, meta-story and
portrayals
• Sometimes, a comparative perspective
• Relevant to Shi‘i women “in the real
world”?

22. Women in Shiʿism - Anthropological

23. Borrowing a perspective from Old Testament studies…
“[W]omen’s religious activities – and needs – tend to center in the domestic realm and relate to
women’s sexually determined work. As a consequence, those institutions and activities which
appear from public records or male perspective as central may be viewed quite differently by
women, who may see them as inaccessible, restricting, irrelevant, or censuring. Local shrines, saints
and spirits, home rituals in the company of other women (often with women ritual leaders), the
making and paying of vows (often by holding feasts), life-cycle rites, especially those related to birth
and death – these widely attested elements of women’s religious practice appear better suited to
women’s spiritual and emotional needs and the patters of their lives than the rituals of the central
sanctuary, the great pilgrimages and assemblies, and the liturgical calendar of the agricultural year.
But the public sphere with its male-oriented and male-controlled institutions dominates and
governs the domestic sphere, with the result that women’s activities and beliefs are often viewed by
‘official’ opinion as frivolous, superstitious, subversive, or foreign.”
Three determinants that have affected women’s devotional practice:
(1) Impurity associated with reproductive physiology;
(2) Male authority in the family and ‘in the public sphere in which the community is represented
by its male members’; and
(3) A view of woman’s ‘primary work and social duty as family-centred reproductive work in the
role of wife-mother’. She then concludes:
“The effect of each of these determinants is to restrict the sphere of women’s activities – spatially,
temporally, and functionally. Only roles that were compatible with women’s primary domestic-
reproductive role and could be exercised in periods or situations free from ritual taboo, or from the
requirement of ritual purity, were open to women.”
Phyllis Bird, ‘The Place of Women in the Israelite Cultus’, in Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, ed. Alice
Bach (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), p. 6.

24. Women in Shiʿism – “Anthro-theological”

25. Questions…
• How would you rate the topics, amount, and
variety of perspectives in the literature available on
women in Shi’ism?
• What assumptions about the nature of women in
Shi’ism are there?
• What questions are raised?
• What problems (if any) arise in the literature?
• What do you think is needed in the future? What
do you foresee in the future?
• Is there anything on the topic of women in Shi’ism
that this discussion inspired in you?
• Are you planning to read any of these
books/articles that you haven’t read before?