What would it mean to reorient the study of Islam around a conceptualization of the womb as microcosm? In contemporary Muslim theology, women’s growing prominence as religious leaders appears to be related to an increased conceptual awareness around rahma (divine mercy), rahim (the womb), and al-Rahman (the God of Mercy). To explore this development, I discuss how the womb functioned as a cosmological site in traditional Sufi discourse and then trace this connection in the thought of contemporary Muslim theologians and activists. Throughout, I ask how and when this reorientation is leveraged to support feminist modes of religious epistemology and praxis and how it shapes bodies and their ways of inhabiting spaces.
I argue that, within the Islamic tradition, seemingly contradictory conceptualizations of the womb work together rather than in opposition—a paradox that holds the potential of disrupting colonial and patriarchal assumptions about Islam.[1]To substantiate this argument, I ground my analysis in Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology and her poignant question: “What does it mean to be orientated?” In seeking answers, Ahmed centered her approach on redirecting one’s attention towards “less proximate” objects, examining how space is inhabited in the process, and considering how this reorientation shapes the constitution of bodies.[2]
In Islamic studies, phenomenological approaches like Ahmed’s have not only highlighted methodological concerns within the field regarding the privileging of certain narratives over others but have also drawn attention to the orientation of the field itself. As Kecia Ali argued in a recent work on this topic, the focus on orientations reflects tensions within Islamic studies and American academia at large. However, the question of “reorienting” what has been previously “Orientalized” is far from simple, particularly because women’s bodies remain a discursive battleground, caught between competing claims of cultural authenticity and civilizational progress.[3]
In this context, what does it mean to conceptualize of the womb as microcosm? What advantages or risks might such a project entail? For example, Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi (d. 1274) identified rahma (divine mercy) with wujud (existence)suggesting that the All-Merciful God, al-Rahman, “bestows existence upon the entities [of creation] bringing them out from the level of nonmanifestation to manifestation.”[4] While the creative process unfolds in the cosmos through God’s mercy, Qunawi also described the womb as a “branch” of God. In this sense, creation in the cosmos is analogous to the development of an embryo into a human within the womb—both of which can be understood as “hidden treasures” motivated by a love to be known.[5]
In premodern and modern contexts, some thinkers have mobilized this kind of argument to demonstrate the “balanced” treatment of the masculine and the feminine in Islam, an approach that often relies on essentialized conceptualizations of gender and women’s biological functions.[6] Others have noted that the womb both encompasses and transcends biology. On one hand, it affirms the power of female biological experiences and highlights women’s connection to source through their creative power. On the other, it symbolizes the source of all life and represents an imagined, intellectual, and spiritual space that connects all humans, beyond the duality of male and female, to the divine essence of creation.[7]
Commenting on this point, Shaykha Oumou Malik Gueye highlighted the womb’s semantic link to al-Rahman, noting that God’s essence is rahma (mercy), a word derived from the Arabic root R-H-M, which also forms the root of the word rahim (womb). Calling for a “return” to a non-hierarchical and gender-free unity of being, Shaykha Oumou Malik explained, “Divine Mercy as the basis of all being is . . . reflected in the depths of a woman as the receiver of Mercy, carrier of Mercy, [and] giver of Mercy.”[8]
In the Islamic tradition, seemingly polarized interpretations of the womb (as a biological organ, on one hand, and as a fundamental connection to a gender-free God, on the other) work together rather than in opposition. When we allow these ambiguities to co-exist, reorienting our attention towards a conceptualization of the womb as a microcosm entails a liberatory potential. It enables scholars and activists to reclaim what colonial history has rendered ghostly, resist Islamophobia, and challenge the perpetuation of patriarchal practices.[9] Most importantly, this phenomenological process is facilitating the establishment of women-only, women-led, and queer-inclusive mosques. And it is in these spaces that notions of religious epistemology and praxis are expanded, allowing women-identifying as well as queer and gender nonconforming individuals to participate in and lead prayer.[10]
[1] Relatedly, on the rise of the “divine feminine,” see amina wadud, “amina’s Journey to the Minbar: ‘Raised with the God of Love’,” in The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World, eds. Sa’diyya Shaikh and Fatima Seedat (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022), 24-28.
[2] Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 1-3.
[3] Kecia Ali, The Woman Question in Islamic Studies (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2024), 6-9.
Also in: Shafieka Moos and Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Maternal Identity and Muslim Ethics: South Africa Women’s Experiences,” religions 15, no. 927 (2024): 1-15.
[4] Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 206-207.
[5] Ibid., 216-17, 220.
[6] Ali, The Woman Question, 1.
[7] Dilek Güldütuna, Betrachtungen der Weiblichen im Sufismus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Ken`ân Rifāî und das Weibliche als Spiegel der göttlichen Wirklichkeit (München: Edition Avicenna, 2021).
[8] Shaykha Oumou Malik Gueye, “An-Nur (Divine Light)” in The Women’s Khutbah Book., 31-36.
[9] On this point, see Jill Jarvis, Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and the Politics of Testimony (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 2.
[10] Sherin Khankan, “Rethinking Shari’ah—A Guidance and a Mercy,” in The Women’s Khutbah Book, 122; amina wadud, “amina’s Journey to the Minbar: ‘Raised with the God of Love’”, in The Women’s Khutbah Book, 18; “Sherin Khankan, Scandinavia’s first female imam (Documentary with English subtitles). Accessed online on 10/15/2024 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKx6mgOVXjs.
What would it mean to reorient the study of Islam around a conceptualization of the womb as microcosm? In contemporary Muslim theology, women’s growing prominence as religious leaders appears to be related to an increased conceptual awareness around rahma (divine mercy), rahim (the womb), and al-Rahman (the God of Mercy). To explore this development, I discuss how the womb functioned as a cosmological site in traditional Sufi discourse and then trace this connection in the thought of contemporary Muslim theologians and activists. Throughout, I ask how and when this reorientation is leveraged to support feminist modes of religious epistemology and praxis and how it shapes bodies and their ways of inhabiting spaces. I argue that, within the Islamic tradition, seemingly contradictory conceptualizations of the womb work together rather than in opposition—a paradox that holds the potential of disrupting colonial and patriarchal assumptions about Islam.