Feb 12, 2005
Saying no to the Qur'an.
Incredible article about Amina Wadud, written by Tarek Fatah, on the MuslimWakeUp! site.
"I am a nigger, and you will just have to put up with my blackness"
I met Amina Wadud two years ago and one thing she said, which will always stick with me, was, "Sometimes you read things" [in Islam] "and you say to yourself, this can't be right. And you have to go from there." This article talks about her disagreement with hudud punishments like the cutting of thieves' hands, or the permission to beat one's wife. Note that she's not saying that's not really what the Qur'an said, or "at the time the Qur'an was written this was appropriate but now we have to interpret things in light of modern circumstances," yadda yadda. She's saying yes, it's in there, and she finds it amoral anyway.
Breaking the ultimate taboo in the Muslim narrative, she stated that despite the fact the Qur'an explicitly asks for cutting off the hands of thieves, she did not agree with the Qur'an. She said she understood that this was a very difficult subject to talk about, but she would be dishonest to herself if she did not express her views.
She maintained that as a Muslim with Allah close to her heart, in all honesty she could not continue with the hypocrisy of lying about how she felt about some verses of the Qur'an.
The audience all but stoned her.
Her book, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, is also well worth reading.
