Feminist Scholar Explores Women’s Roles in Prophet Muhammad’s Life in New Book

The new essay by Asma Lamrabet, entitled "the prophet of Islam and the women in his life", invites to a straightforward reflection on the role of women in Islam. The author has focused on understanding the Prophet Muhammad, more specifically the emblematic female figures in his life.

Although many works have been published on the life of the Prophet and his entourage, the author explains in her introduction three reasons that led her to this choice. The first reason is that the tradition of the Prophet remains important in Islam and for the majority of Muslims. Thus, this tradition requires a perpetual re-reading and a constantly renewed contextualization. The second reason is to try to rectify, as well as to make the recurring neo-orientalist image of a misogynistic and warrior prophet, which remains to this day the main source of prejudice and growing hostility towards Islam, although this reason may be presumptuous according to the author.

As for the third reason, it is based on one of the most widely used theological sources to justify the state of devaluation, inferiority and quasi-consensual submission of women throughout the history of the Muslim world, which remains symbolized to this day by the traditional hadith narrative. However, the author states that this is not a matter of an apologetic and tedious narrative. Nor is it a matter of a destructive critical reading that imposes a "tabula rasa" of the prophetic tradition.

The Islamic religion would lose its soul without the contribution of this immense but inescapable normative source, given the importance of the prophetic tradition within Muslim societies, the author specifies. The essay then attempts to bring a new perspective on this prophetic tradition.