Five Foundational Women in the Qur’an: Reading Their Stories from a Shia Female Perspective

Jul 3, 2026

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An exegetical, hermeneutical study examines five foundational women in the Qur’an—Eve, Hagar, Eucabid, Asiya, and Moses’s sister—through a Shia female perspective. The work retells key narratives (including Adam, Abraham, and Moses) by foregrounding women’s foundational roles in monotheistic doctrine and practice. Building on Third World feminist approaches, it argues that modern Muslim women find agency in the continuity of tradition by invoking contemporary Qur’anic interpretation to support empowerment and rights.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages25

Reading Time1 h 3 min

Abstract

Methodology

Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology Volume 5, Issue 2 ISSN 2380-7458 Five Foundational Women in the Qur’an: Reading their Stories from a Shia Female Perspective Author(s): Mahjabeen Dhala Source: Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology 5, no. 2 (2019): 3-26 Published by: Graduate Theological Union © 2019 Online article published on: January 25, 2020 Copyright Notice: This file and its contents are copyright of the Graduate Theological Union © 2019. All rights reserved. Your use of the Archives of the Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology (BJRT) indicates your acceptance of the BJRT’s policy regarding the use of its resources, as discussed below: Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited with the following exceptions: Ø You may download and print to a local hard disk this entire article for your personal and noncommercial use only. Ø You may quote short sections of this article in other publications with the proper citations and attributions. Ø Permission has been obtained from the Journal’s management for exceptions to redistribution or reproduction. A written and signed letter from the Journal must be secured expressing this permission. To obtain permissions for exceptions, or to contact the Journal regarding any questions regarding any further use of this article, please e-mail the managing editor at [bjrt@ses.gtu.edu](bjrt@ses.gtu.edu) The Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology aims to offer its scholarly contributions free to the community in furtherance of the Graduate Theological Union’s mission. Five Foundational Women in the Qur’an: Rereading their Stories from a Shia Female Perspective Mahjabeen Dhala Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, California, U.S.A. ABSTRACT: Pious women’s engagement with feminism has popularly included the reclaiming of female voices from scripture to iterate their involvement and subscription to religious thought. This paper presents the narratives of five women from the Qur’an highlighting their pioneering and significant contributions to Islamic doctrine and praxis. Modern Muslim women continue to draw inspiration from their stories to argue for their rights from within their tradition. Published in: Berkeley Journal of Religion and Theology, Vol. 5, no. 2 (2019) © 2019 by the Graduate Theological Union In the spirit of enlightened liberty, and while their sisters advocate fleeing from organized religion, Muslim women are choosing to argue their rights from the Qur’an. Deploying an exegetical hermeneutical approach to the less referenced Shia narrative of Eve, Hagar, Eucabid, Asiya, and Moses’s sister, this paper first retells the stories of Adam, Abraham, and Moses on the authority of the women in those stories by replacing their peripheral representation with their foundational role in the establishment of monotheistic doctrine and practices. Then, while presenting two Qur’anic examples that demonstrate how the women of the seventh-century Arabian society were inspired by these stories to exert their concerns, this paper builds on the Third World feminist approach to argue that Muslim women find agency in the continuity of tradition rather than breaking from it, and continue to invoke contemporary revision of Qur’anic interpretation as a reference for their empowerment. Methodology Changing times necessitate appraisal of former norms and make it essential to re-evaluate many vital questions. The God-conscious conduct of Muslim women, despite the growing fear of Islam and hostility towards Muslims, isone such question. In the face of Western assumptions that deem Islam as being oppressive towards women, Muslim women are reclaiming their voice by practicing piety as an educated choice thus provoking public anxiety and challenging the common paradoxical construct of modernity and religion. Instead of abating their stamina to maintain their visible piety, the stigmatization

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What feminist framework does the paper apply to its argument?

The analysis deploys Third World feminism, treating it as a critique of Western feminism’s insufficient engagement with the concerns of subaltern or marginalized women, and using this lens to argue for empowerment through tradition rather than rupture.

Jul 3, 2026

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