Gender and Reproduction in the Qur’an: Rereading Conceiving and Barren Bodies

This paper examines the Qur’an’s reproductive aesthetic, specifically the text’s treatment of “fertile” and “barren” women. At the center of my analysis are the Qur’an’s annunciation scenarios – the stories of the miraculous birth of a son to a mother imagined as “biologically” unable to conceive or bear children. Bringing the methods of Qur’anic studies into a critical conversation with gender and disability studies, I argue that the Qur’an conveys a complicated relationship with female bodies, which both affirms and unsettles binary–and even hegemonic–readings of gender and reproduction. Like the tropified disabled bodies in Western literature, described by disability theorists, David Mitchell and Susan Snyder, female (non)reproductive bodies in the Qur’an function as a “narrative prosthesis,” lending a tangible body to key theological arguments, such as God’s ability to create and to punish (Mitchell and Snyder 2001). And while a semantic analysis of what Judith Butler might refer to as the Qur’an’s female-based bodily citations suggests the marginalization of women imagined as reproductively “disabled,” a reading that takes seriously the Qur’an’s narrative elements–such as dialogue and characterization–disrupts this dichotomous view, which understands conceiving/barren women as definitively “good”/“bad” (Butler 1993). As emphasized by several scholars, the Qur’an’s maternal citations, “mother” (um) and “womb” (raḥm) are semantically linked to the theologically privileged concepts, “the mother of the book” (um al-kitāb) or the “correct” scripture and “God’s Mercy” (raḥm allāh), respectively (Abboud 2014; Neuwirth 2010, 499-532). Conversely, bodily citations of female infertility are linked to ideas about Divine Judgment, specifically Punishment. Qur’an 51 (Surat al-Dhāriyāt), for example, uses the term “barren” (ʿaqīm) to describe both Sarah’s “defective” body and the Divine Retribution claiming the non-believing community of ‘Ad, who are destroyed by “the barren wind” (al-rīḥ al-ʿaqīm) (Q 51:29 and 41). 

Yet, a reading that foregrounds Sarah’s performance of a body in transition from “barren” to “fertile"—or how she does her gender—complicates this classification, which elevates fertile wombs to a status that is near sacred (Butler 1988, 519-531). After hearing the news of her upcoming pregnancy, Sarah, we are told, suddenly “approached” (aqbalat) (Q 51:29). The term “to approach” (Q-B-L) is often used by the Qur’an to describe the reaction of characters who suddenly find themselves in unpleasant or life-threatening situations. This includes the brothers of Joseph who suddenly “approached” after they are accused of stealing from the Egyptian king (Q 12:71). The brothers react viscerally to the possibility of being put in jail, or worse yet, put to death. Similarly, Sarah is reacting to something that will be done onto her body, whereby she is the object of potential danger. Achieving a fertile “womb” (raḥm) is not necessarily good news to Sarah, as many scholars have suggested. In my reading, it is possible that Sarah preferred her identity as the “old” and “barren” woman and had no desire to “fix” this body, which many assume is reproductively “defective.” I suggest further that this sentiment by Sarah was not lost on the Qur’an’ original 7th century audience. The Qur’an recognizes pregnancy, childbearing, and even breastfeeding as burdensome experiences, not desired by all women or their families (Q 31:14; Q 46:15). Hence, while the Qur’an’s bodily citations privilege conceiving figures, its narration betrays the messiness and complicatedness of these actual lived experiences.  

My discussion is motivated by the desire to expand the scholarship on women and reproduction in the Qur’an, both in terms of the data on qur’anic women and the methods or theoretical frameworks used by gender-conscious scholars of the Qur’an. While there is an abundance of scholarship on the Qur’an’s positive treatment of conceiving bodies, especially the maternal imagery associated with Mary, there is hardly anything on the Qur’an’s textual representations of barrenness–even though it is just as prevalent and just as theologically meaningful. Muslim feminist scholars of the Qur’an, for example, such as amina wadud, have observed the Qur’an’s sympathetic treatment of Mary’s birthing experiences in Qur’an 19, citing it as evidence of a qur’anic position that is favorable toward women as a whole (wadud 1999, 40). Such imagery has also been emphasized by scholars not directly invested in questions of women in Muslim contexts, such as Angelika Neuwirth, who highlights the theological significance of the Qur’an’s maternal terms (Neuwirth 2010, 499-532). Kathryn Kueny’s scholarship considers both conceiving and barren bodies, highlighting the complexities of these embodied traits vis-a-vis the Qur’an’s theological discourses, yet such works seem to be the exception (Kueny 2012). There remains an asymmetrical representation of qur’anic women and reproduction in the academic literature. This is perhaps due to the Qur’an’s own discourse, which as indicated above, invites a reading that favors biological motherhood. From a disability studies lens, it is also due to our own assumptions about “whole” and “defective” female bodies. Accordingly, women in reproductive contexts seem to be defined based on physical ability, and barrenness–like disability in mainstream discourses–is hidden, erased from the academic landscape (Waldschmidt 2017, 19-27).

This work is also motivated by my interest in complicating mainstream Muslim (and non-Muslim) discourses on reproduction and maternity, specifically the mystique often attributed to (biological) motherhood. Readers of the Qur’an often emphasize the verses outlining what we imagine as fetal development in “the wombs” (al-arḥām) as evidence of an inherent Islamic reverence for the biological ability to both conceive and bear children (Ali 2019, 89-110). Such readings privilege female bodies that are considered reproductively “abled,” while marginalizing those that “deviate” from this conceiving ideal. It constructs biological motherhood as the ultimate female-based experience, rendering it a value that is not only social but also clearly qur’anic. This paper demonstrates that there is far more to the Qur’an and its representations of female embodiment than what is foregrounded by these natalist interpretations, which seem to classify women based on their assumed fertility. This includes the oft-cited verses illustrating reproduction in the womb, which indeed highlight conceiving anatomies, but that hint at the real bodily “deviances” from this reproductive ideal.