Zahra Ayubi, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (New Texts Out Now)

Zahra Ayubi, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (New Texts Out Now)

Zahra Ayubi, Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (New Texts Out Now)

By : Zahra Ayubi

Zahra AyubiGendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Zahra Ayubi (ZA): Often when Muslims take a gender biased position or engage in sexist practices, they do not do so by first checking with the Islamic scriptural or intellectual traditions. Yet many Muslims justify patriarchal beliefs and practices using those traditions on a post hoc basis. To me this disconnect demonstrates that the understanding of Islam as patriarchal is the result of deeply held philosophical beliefs that play out in everyday ethics, as much as it might be a result of religious interpretations. When I read the philosophical ethics treatises that I focus on in my book for the first time, my two interests within the study of Islam—gender and ethics—came organically together and I just had to write about them.

I argue that the ethicists did not believe in ontological equality of all human beings in the first place ...

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

ZA: I analyze constructions of masculinity, femininity, and gender relations in widely influential classical works of Islamic philosophical ethics. A question that Gendered Morality begins with is why medieval Islamic ethicists created hierarchical, male centered virtue ethics despite being presented with potentially radical notions of equality in early Islamic sources. I argue that the ethicists did not believe in ontological equality of all human beings in the first place, as evidenced by their male normative metaphysics and virtue ethics of inequality. I base my discussions about gender in three Islamic philosophical ethics (or akhlaq) texts, Kimiya-i Sa`adat or The Alchemy of Happiness by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111); Akhlaq-i Nasiri or The Nasirean Ethics by Nasir-ad Din Tusi (d. 1274); and Akhlaq-i Jalali or The Jalalean Ethics by Jalal ad-Din Davani (d. 1502). The goal of these texts is to provide ethical guidelines for men to achieve sa`adah (eudaimonia or ultimate happiness) and khilafah (vicegerency of God).

Gendered Morality is about analyzing ideal Muslim masculinity, even more than about women or ideal femininity, because the path of ethical refinement is by and for men, and about how men should cultivate ethical selves and relationships with female kin and other men. I examine how Ghazali, Tusi, and Davani conceive of the primary ethical human being as an elite male, within a hierarchical cosmology of male intelligence that requires a man to discipline himself, the members of his household, and his community according to the science of ethics while ruling over women and non-elite men. The ethicists assume that all women are intellectually deficient and do not have the same capacity for ethical discipline as elite men. They make similar assumptions about flaws in enslaved and other non-elite men, but attribute their reduced ethical potential to their lesser social classes. Just as the ethics of marriage tell us about hierarchical gender relations, so too the ethics of friendship, work, and court life tell us about hierarchies in the dynamics of homosocial male relations and what ultimate masculinity entails.

In order to achieve sa`adah and become a khalifa, the elite man is meant to instrumentalize his wife and children for his own ethical and spiritual refinement, and also utilize male underlings such as enslaved men, servants, and disciples in his paternalistic performance of justice. For the ethicists, justice is the top-down creation of social circumstances in which every individual plays a role according to their social class and aptitude to serve the elites who, in turn, are meant to discipline society to reflect Divine purpose--just as the ethicists believe God intended. In this way, although the ethics texts are about individual refinement, they require exploitative utilization of everyone who is not an elite male.

Yet, I argue that in the course of prescribing ethical behavior to men as a response to the real or imagined ethical evils posed by women and men of lower ethical capacity who must be disciplined, the ethicists speak of complex gendered and human relations that at times contradict their hierarchical cosmology. The akhlaq genre remains compelling because it is practical, it is about how an individual can be a force of justice, and it is rooted in appealing classical epistemologies of Islamic thought.

The question of what can or should be retained from classical ethics texts requires careful philosophical consideration. And so, by disrupting the normative male study of Islamic ethics by examining the gendered nature of metaphysics and virtue ethics, I call for a philosophical turn in the study of gender in Islam. Because of their male-centric notions of ethics—and their implicit and sometimes explicit misogyny—these classical Muslim ethics texts shed light on important philosophical problems of our day, especially how we ought to think of human refinement and ethical human relations outside of a system that necessitates exploitative hierarchy.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

ZA: This book examines the philosophical underpinnings of the gender paradigms in Islamic thought that I have been studying for years. Islamic ethics is an academic construct centered on the moral ethos found in Islamic sources including Qur’an, Hadith, akhlaq, jurisprudence, sufism, as well as the practices of Muslims. My work is about gender in Islamic ethics broadly and premodern and contemporary philosophical ethics, specifically. While I am personally committed to the study of gender through Islamic ethics, most scholars focus on other genres, especially Qur’an and jurisprudence when studying gender in Islam, whether or not they employ ethics as a construct. In calling for a philosophical turn, I mean to champion philosophical approaches to work in concert with other methods, especially ethnography, in order to account for gender in Muslim life and belief.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

ZA: Like all first academic books published by university presses, the primary audience is academic, but I have written it so that the book can be accessible to all lay intellectuals interested in gender, Islam, Islamic philosophy, and so on. I have also developed a reading and teaching guide for lay readers because I know that the topic of gender roles in the Islamic intellectual tradition, especially Islamic ethics, is deeply personal for many people. I hope that readers will think seriously about the merits of philosophical approaches to big questions we all, not just Muslims, confront today.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

ZA: I am continuing work on gender in Islamic ethics. I am writing a Greenwall Foundation supported book on Muslim women’s experiences in medical ethics decision making. Islamic medical ethics is a jurisprudence or fiqh-dominated area that very much needs some philosophical treatment in order to think through ideas of the self, the body, autonomy, and religious authority beyond what fiqh-based approaches accommodate. I am also working on a series of articles looking at gender in various topics of Islamic philosophy. 

 

Excerpt from the book

From pages 241-244 of Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society by Zahra Ayubi Copyright (c) 2019 Columbia University Press.  Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. 

Findings of Feminist Reading of Akhlaq 

As my reading reveals, the texts frame the ethical man’s ultimate goals, and the means by which he is to achieve them, as requiring the subordination of people who are thought to be deficient in rationality: namely, women of all classes and men of lower social classes. According to these texts, the ultimate goals for the ethical man are twofold: happiness/flourishing (sa‘adat) and vicegerency (khilafah). The former is achieved by ordering one’s nafs using tahdhib-i akhlaq and becoming an ‘alam-i saghir (microcosm of the world) unto oneself. Then, the latter is achieved by becoming a source of happiness/flourishing (sa‘adat) or justice (‘adalat) for people in one’s household and city. The crux of the akhlaq texts is rationality, a faculty whose possession and use are explicitly associated with elite masculinity. In order for a man to reach either version (happiness/flourishing or justice) of the goal of akhlaq, he must subdue his irascible and concupiscent faculties to his rational faculty, promoting justice by placing things where they belong and ordering provisions for everyone around him according to their deserts. The ethical man practices moderation in all things, including eating, drinking, and relations with family, friends, and enemies. He works hard to train his nafs, learn his craft, and marry in such a way as to support God’s creation. He ensures that the nafses of his wife and children are disciplined, and he continuously respects his father while financially supporting his mother. He has the ability to live a streamlined life, pragmatic and utilitarian. Yet, according to the ethicists, all of these ethical behaviors are achieved for the benefit of people who are thought to be deficient in rationality— that is, women in general, and men of lower social classes. Elite men achieve rationality so they do not have to.

The ethicists do have their share of justifications, however unsatisfactory, for elevating elite men over all women and over men of lower classes. First, they appeal to natural law, authenticating their patriarchal visions of society by ascribing their conception of ideal manhood to natural laws of God’s creation and defining the metaphysics of the self using descriptions of human nature. Second, although the ethicists hail from differing sectarian perspectives and epistemologies, they refer to shared scriptural sources for support. Third and most significantly, the backbone of the akhlaq texts’ patriarchal ethics are the authors’ core assumptions about the nature of gender and intellectual hierarchies among people of differing classes. The gendered nature of their ethics supersedes any sectarian or epistemological allegiances they may have about the origin and authority of moral knowledge. In the akhlaq authors’ view, women’s nafses have intellectual defects, and they are thus limited to two roles. In their role as wives, women are charged with managing the home so that their husbands can occupy themselves with the lofty goals of transcendence and becoming microcosms of the world. In women’s role as mothers, they are biological vessels for carrying and nourishing children in their early years. Similarly, the ethicists’ view of men of lower social classes is that they are intellectually deficient, and therefore their role is likewise to provide ancillary support to men of higher social classes by fulfilling social and economic functions according to their skills. The ethicists’ assumptions about gender and hierarchy, largely submerged in prior readings of these texts, are revealed and explicated by my close readings of the akhlaq texts.

Yet, even though my gendered reading of the akhlaq texts reveals their troubling exclusion of women, lower-class men, and enslaved persons, the tradition still remains deeply important to Muslim thought both historically and epistemologically. Akhlaq texts take on universal questions and themes as they offer guidance on how to live as an individual, in a family, and in society. And it seems clear that, for all their gendered elitism, the texts in some sense succeed in providing readers with answers to perennial questions on how to live the good, moral life in service of God’s plan. Even as the akhlaq texts explicitly support elite male power, they simultaneously elevate a core constitution of humanity, the intellect, that may possibly be available to a much wider range of humanity. The value in these texts lies in the questions they ask about what makes us human and about the purpose of human life. Admittedly, the answers they develop to these questions entail an understanding of the self as male, the home as male- dominated, and society as a hierarchy headed by elite and natural male leadership. Still, it is possible for us to sort out how the views expressed in the texts are historically bound (concomitant to prevailing gender assumptions of the times), and how we might answer these same questions about the good life differently in the twenty-first century. At stake in engaging these texts is not just women’s access to philosophical- ethical- religious thought about how to live the good life, but also the substance of that thought itself: the very definition of what it means to be human, the possibilities for women and subjugated others to exist in metaphysical understandings of the world, and the opportunities for virtue ethics to accommodate women, as well as men.

If we cannot dismiss the importance of these texts, then we must develop a set of tools for engaging with them philosophically in light of their implicitly gendered and hierarchical assumptions. The question is, how can highly celebrated akhlaq texts, which are even reproduced in convenient Kindle editions for popular consumption worldwide, still hold ethical validity and be read widely despite their problematic status as male normative? Can ethics texts that marginalize women and have a narrow vision of masculinity be recovered? Can an entire ethical tradition meant for men be in some ways useful to women? Can there be a virtue ethics, or account of transcendence and khilafah, that does not in some way depend on the utilization or immanence of others? 

The problem runs deeper than the fact that the texts are rhetorically addressed only to men. Such a lexical issue could be solved with clever grammatical tricks and translation. The real problem is that the discipline of akhlaq itself— the path to happiness and fulfillment of God’s intent for humanity— is, at its core, designed only for elite men and is reliant on the subordination of all others. It is an ethics of exclusion. What is the meaning of ethical refinement or good society, if only some people get to experience these particular ends? The issues underlying these questions are profound, raising still more questions about what constitute knowledge, who has access to knowledge, and how we understand humanness. Considering such questions requires a philosophical framework, which as I show in the next sections, is the culmination of my argument.

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.