The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought.

• Author: Ernst, Carl W.

As the title suggests, this volume undertakes to look at certain fundamental aspects of the Islamic tradition from the perspective of Far Eastern symbolism, an Orientalism, as it were, that does not proceed from a European basis. The author, an Islamicist of Japanese origin, brings to the subject of gender in Islam a remarkable sensitivity. Uncomfortable with the automatic Western criticism of the role of women in Islam, Murata has brought to bear an expertise in Islamic thought honed by years of study in Iran and teaching in America she was the first non-muslim and the first woman admitted to the program in Muslim jurisprudence at the University of Tehran, where she also took a doctorate in Persian literature). This book is an anthology rather than a study, and it addresses gender on every level from the loftiest metaphysics to psychology, from the point of view primarily of Islamic philosophy and Sufism. In the process she has provided new translations of Arabic and Persian texts by important figures of Islamic thought such as Baba Afdal Kashani, Suhrawardi al-Maqtul, Mulla Sadra, the Ikhwan al-Safa, and members of the school of Ibn Arabi. The sheer number and length of the translations of materials, previously inaccessible in European languages, makes this an extraordinarily rich collection. The author announces that her subject is gender in traditional Islam, which is to be distinguished from gender relationships or the role of women in any particular Islamic society. The notion of "tradition" invoked here is not explored in detail, but is similar to that espoused by William Chittick in his Faith and Practice in Islam: Three Thirteenth-Century Sufi Texts (SUNY Press,1992)

A purely legal approach to gender in Islam is, in the author's view, insufficient, because its scope would be limited to the legal content of the shari a and does not address the nature of reality. It is for this reason that Sufis and philosophers are the major sources for the anthology. The primary questions addressed concern the relation between male and female in nature and in theology, gender as applied to God, the ontological nature of gender, and the social implications of these metaphysical considerations. It should be clear that this collection is not another feminist study of the role of women in Islam; indeed, the author regards such endeavors as just another instance of imperialistic Western Orientalism. She is particularly critical of recent works of this...