From "Just Add Women and Stir" to Engaged Study of Gender: Teaching Zahra Ayubi’s “DeUniversalizing Male Normativity”

Ayubi, Zahra. “DeUniversalizing Male Normativity: Feminist Methodologies for Studying Masculinity in Premodern Texts.” Journal of Islamic Ethics 4 (2020) 66-97.

In this presentation, I share my use of Zahra Ayubi’s 2020 article “DeUniversalizing Male Normativity: Feminist Methodologies for Studying Masculinity in Premodern Texts” in Gender, Sexuality, and Islamic Mysticism. I added this reading to my syllabus after a frustrating experience of teaching a course in which I wanted students to gain a deeper understanding of gender and Islamic mysticism but discovered when reading their final exams that many students still equated “gender” with “women.” Adding Ayubi’s theoretical approach to understanding premodern masculinity has been particularly helpful for students to conceptualize gender as an analytic lens and to avoid imposing modern, American notions of gender on premodern Islamic texts. 

While I use the article in an upper-level course with a particular focus on Sufism and gender, this article is valuable to the study of Islam because Ayubi offers a methodology for studying masculinity that is applicable to any premodern text, which allows an instructor to use it in any course on premodern Islam (or other religions). Moreover, because Ayubi addresses both patriarchal interpretations by Muslim authors and “anti-Muslim stereotypes about women’s oppression in Islam…it shows a richer engagement with gender discourses than simplistic stereotypes about the tradition convey.” (72) Thus, her article helps students to resist a Western hegemonic vision of feminism when studying gender and Islam. If accepted to present, I will share my specific pedagogical experience teaching the article in a course with the focus on premodern Sufi texts outlined below and offer considerations for how Ayubi’s article could enhance other courses on Islam.

The article is introduced in a week where students are given three theoretical methods for studying gender in premodern texts: Ayubi on masculinity, Sa’diyya Shaikh on feminist study of women, and Ash Geissinger on applying queer and gender theory to premodern texts (Ayubi 2020; Shaikh 2012; Geissinger 2020). To help students understand and apply theory, I identify three key aspects of each piece: the “what” (what does the author want scholars to do with their work?), the “why” (why is such an intervention necessary?), and the “how” (how do we apply the insights to premodern texts?). This three-part framing helps students to break down complex ideas in Ayubi (and other theoretical material) to manageable insights that they can understand and apply. When teaching the class with Ayubi’s article, I notice an immediately stronger sophistication of student’s questions, analysis, and insights of masculinity and gender as an analytic category. For example, on the day I lectured on the article, a woman said the article helped her understand that male normativity does not position “men as ‘A’ and women as ‘B,’” but rather “men as ‘A’ and women as ‘not A.’” Building on this insight, I find that the “why” is particularly fruitful as it helps students move from thinking theory is dense and abstract to one that is vital and necessary. This is particularly true when reading Ayubi, who makes an argument that feminist-informed studies have the liberatory potential to lead to an Islamic ethics that are “ever inclusive and non-exploitative” (70).

Following the lecture, I assign Ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Sulamī’s manual on futuwwah (“young manliness”) and excerpts from Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s hagiography Memorial of God’s Friends (Pr. Tazkerat al-owilyā) and ask students to apply Ayubi’s categories in class discussions of excerpts to gain a more nuanced understanding of masculinity in pre-modern Sufi literature. Before applying the theory, students often question if Ayubi and other feminist scholars are reading “what they want” into a tradition that is inherently patriarchal. Analyzing premodern texts with her theory shows that understanding how patriarchal notions of masculinity were constructed in these texts allows for new interpretations and analysis that, while innovative, is not particularly heterodox or “far-fetched.” The following week focuses on Sufi women by analyzing ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Sulamī’s Early Sufi Women (Ar. Dhikr al-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt al-ṣuffiyāt), Brittany Landorf’s digital humanities project Mapping Female Sainthood and ʿAisha al-Baʾuniyya’s Sufi manual. In this week, Ayubi’s work allows us to analyze how being attentive to the issue of masculinity and male authorship can deepen our understanding of texts about premodern Sufi women. 

Following our discussions, students use Ayubi’s work in three major course assignments: a resource assignment (in which students create a creative resource for the general public), an in-class essay (in which I present students with a passage from Early Sufi Women and ask them to analyze it using a theoretical lens), and a hagiography/manual project in which I ask students to create a contemporary resource that gives a hagiography of contemporary “saints” or a manual for ideal masculinity. These assignments have shown that having a specific and clear theoretical resource on masculinity has not only greatly improved my students’ ability to analyze gender but to create their own materials informed by a deeper understanding of masculinity and its construction. If accepted to present, I will share a few examples of students’ work.

As mentioned above, while my course specifically focuses on gender and Sufism, I believe this article would be a welcome addition to any course on premodern Islam specifically because of Ayubi’s observation that male subjects are frequently taken to be universal or the “norm” without question. Therefore, one can use her article to problematize many normative Islamic texts that assume a male subject and help students to understand the way that the study of gender or using gender as a theoretical lens need not be relegated to special topics courses. Furthermore, de-centralizing masculinity and the male subject also helps students to understand how religious authority and interpretation can be challenged and reconsidered. And, finally, given the centrality of liberation and egalitarianism to the feminist project, any discussion of Islam benefits from problematizing male universality.