Reading Side-by-Side: Women Centering Doubt in Muslim-Christian Scriptural Reading

Hidayatullah’s “The Qur’anic Rib-ectomy: Scripture Purity, Imperial Dangers, and Other Obstacles to interfaith Engagement of Feminist Qur’anic Interpretation” introduces a framework to articulate the “tokenizing and surface character of multi-faith feminist conversations” and the still-felt harms of colonialist feminism, problematizing the student-lead project of comparative scriptural study the class is about to begin. Her work outlines how, in the intra-religious effort to deconstruct patriarchal hierarchies of othering, feminist theologians may be unknowingly constructing new taxonomies that “other” those who could have been partners. This critical analysis of developments in the field lends caution to our class-wide effort–where we think we may be building connection, we may be doing harm. We must proceed with caution and care. Hidayatulah’s critical analysis of the work of constructive Muslim feminist theology, a form of scholarship she identifies herself within, becomes an invitation to center doubt as a part of our project’s practice of comparative scriptural study.