(DOWNLOAD) "Debates on Women's Status As Judges and Witnesses in Post-Formative Islamic Law." by The Journal of the American Oriental Society " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Debates on Women's Status As Judges and Witnesses in Post-Formative Islamic Law.
- Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 261 KB
Description
INTRODUCTION The question of whether any consistent logic guided doctrine on women as judges and witnesses in post-formative Islamic law has been particularly vexing for contemporary scholars. (1) Although women are disadvantaged in almost every aspect of rules on testimony and judging, their disadvantage is not consistent: two women do not always equal one man; in some cases they can testify without men; and some schools allow them to act as judges. These rules would seem to reflect the jurists' ideas of women's mental capacities. Mohammad Fadel has argued that jurists must have seen women's minds as equal to men's, for any claim that women were generally intellectually deficient would be inconsistent with the doctrine that permitted them, in certain intellectual arenas, to act equally to men. (2) Judith Tucker notes, however, that although some Hanafi jurists say that women are not deficient in rationality ('aql), they assert that they are unable to remember as well as men; she characterizes this as "a somewhat contradictory moment." (3) In this article, I contextualize the jurists' discourse on women as judges and witnesses by examining it diachronically, highlighting prominent arguments as they develop through time. (4) I suggest that rulings that enable women to act equally to men do not necessarily reflect the formative jurists' ideas of women's mental capacity, but often the only explanations for the rulings are given by post-formative jurists, which are neither uniform nor static.