Studying Female Islamic Authority: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Modes of Certification

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on female Islamic authority in contemporary Asia. It provides an overview of the literature on religious authority in Islam and briefly lays out which modes of female religious authority have been more accepted than others in the schools of jurisprudence. Based on the articles included in this issue, the introduction makes two chief observations. First, in contrast to the overwhelming consensus among experts of Islamic law that women may serve as muftūn (plural of muftī), in most Muslim-majority societies today women are either seldom found in this role, or where there are muftīyāt (female muftūn), their role is confined to women’s issues. Second, while a growing body of academic studies has drawn attention to the recent phenomenon of state-instituted or -supported programs that train women in Islamic authority, little attention has been paid to the question of how communities react to such programs. The special issue is a call to study female religious authority from the bottom up, in order to better understand why believers, whether men or women, ascribe religious authority to women in some contexts and situations, but overwhelmingly still prefer male religious authority over female, despite the permissiveness for female juristic expertise in Islamic law.

Keywords:

• Islamic authority
• women’s religious authority
• fiqh
• Indonesia
• Tajikistan
• Singapore
• preachers
• muftis
• gender

Acknowledgments

This special issue is the result of a workshop titled “Female Islamic Authority in Comparative Perspective: Exemplars, Institutions, Practices”, which we convened at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden on 8–9 January 2015. We thank the following institutions for their financial and/or logistical support of the workshop: KITLV, the Asian Modernities and Traditions (AMT) Research Program, the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), and the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). We are also grateful to the following colleagues who acted as discussants during the workshop and/or commented on parts of the special issue separately: Martin van Bruinessen, Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, Mahmood Kooriadathodi, Bart Luttikhuis, Annemarie Samuels, Irene Schneider, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Fritz Schulze, Benjamin Soares and Devin Stewart. Finally, we thank the participants in two panels on female religious authority in modern Asia we convened at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Chicago, in March 2015, and the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies Conference in Vienna, in August 2015.

Notes

1. Charles Tilly (2005, p. 222) defines certification as the validation of actors, their performances and their claims by external authorities.