Between Revelation and Autonomy: A Critical Examination of Muslim Feminist Hermeneutics

Abstract

This article offers a critical, normative examination of Muslim feminist hermeneutics by situating it within the broader tension between revelation-centered authority and autonomy-centered moral reasoning. Rather than approaching Muslim feminist interpretations as a sociopolitical controversy, the study frames them as an epistemic and hermeneutical project that raises fundamental questions about moral authority, normativity, and the sources of ethical judgment in Islam. Drawing on an internal Islamic methodological framework grounded in waḥy (revelation), disciplined reason (ʿaql), and the moral teleology of the Sharīʿah, the article analyzes how contemporary Muslim feminist readings frequently privilege liberal conceptions of autonomy, equality, and justice as pre-interpretive norms. Through a genealogical and conceptual analysis, the study demonstrates that while Muslim feminist hermeneutics presents itself as a reformist engagement with Islamic texts, it often operates within a moral horizon shaped by liberal feminist and critical-theoretical assumptions. This results in a hermeneutics of selective suspicion toward Islamic tradition and legal reasoning, accompanied by an uncritical adoption of modern moral categories. The article argues that this methodological asymmetry produces an epistemic displacement in which revelation is reconfigured as contingent, negotiable, or subordinate to external ethical commitments.

In response, the article advances the possibility of an Islamic hermeneutics of ethical reform that remains normatively anchored in revelation while retaining robust internal resources for moral critique, disagreement (ikhtilāf), and renewal. By distinguishing reform from epistemic rupture, the study contributes to contemporary debates on gender, authority, and interpretation in Islam, and offers a principled framework for engaging modern ethical concerns without eroding the moral coherence of the Islamic tradition.