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Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
ratings:
Length:
55 minutes
Released:
Apr 29, 2014
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women’s leadership in the mosque or the politics of veiling. Sa’diyya Shaikh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, provides a unique approach to these discussions that puts feminist hermeneutics in dialogue with the thought of the prolific Muhyi al-Din ibn al-‘Arabi (1165-1240). In Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) she explores contestations over embodiment and gender, spirituality and leadership, sexuality and power in order to rethink patriarchal epistemologies in contemporary Muslim discourses. She argues that contesting positions on gender in these debates are underpinned by certain assumptions about human nature, its gendering, and existence. Shaikh outlines the social and ritual consequences of spiritual (in)equality and initiates reflections on Islamic notions of the central category “human being.” Shaikh leads us through Ibn ‘Arabi’s dynamic anthropology, ontology, and cosmology and links abstract philosophical concepts with concrete daily relationships between men and women. In our conversation we discussed Islamic feminism, apophatic unsayings and hermeneutic of subversions, Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpersonal relationships with women, parallels between the macrocosm and microcosm, Muslim exegesis, notions of creation, interpretations of Adam and Eve, Jesus’ birth from the Virgin Mary, and masculine and feminine in Islam.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Apr 29, 2014
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009): Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is enough. “The home team was beaten at the buzzer” is probably all you need to know. Sometimes, however, it’s not. The intermittent conflict between the Shias and... by New Books in Islamic Studies