Narrating gender justice: women, sharia, and the critique of patriarchal culture in contemporary arabic fiction

Abstract

Women's representation in modern and contemporary Arabic literature has changed dramatically, shifting from women created according to literary conventions formed primarily through domestic expectations and external social roles to representations of women who are increasingly capable of acting morally, intellectually, economically and narratively. This article will explore this evolution of representation through selected novels by Nawal El Saadawi, Hanan al-Shaykh, Sahar Khalifeh and Jokha Alharthi. These authors' work does not only expose patriarchal hegemony, but it also provides opportunities for reassessing the distinctions between religion, Islamic jurisprudence, custom, state power, class and patriarchal culture. This article, therefore, attempts to avoid an analytical approach that sees the Sharia as the same thing as the social subjugation of women. Rather, this paper seeks to open a dialogue between Arabic literary criticism and Quranic ethics, Prophetic traditions, select tenets of Islamic jurisprudence, and maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah. This paper specifically focuses on consent, inheritance, marital ethics, harm, economic personhood, education and the capacity of women for moral choice. Comparative analysis of Woman at Point Zero, Women of Sand and Myrrh, The Inheritance, and Celestial Bodies will demonstrate that there is no single form of agency in Arabic fiction, and it is not inherently tied to the rejection of religion, family, and tradition. Forms of agency include resistance, speech, education, economic self-possession, reinterpretation, negotiation, moral refusal, and reclaiming of one's religious and legal rights.