Turning Towards the Womb as Microcosm— From Sufi Conceptualizations of the Rahim to Gender-Justice in Contemporary Islam

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.