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Article: Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- April 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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While Islam is frequently perceived as a patriarchal religious system in which women occupy a subservient or secondary role, it is nonetheless true that the basic textual resources, the Quran, Hadith, and, in this case, Quranic commentary (tafsir) and Tales of the Prophets (qisas al-anbiya) are populated with numerous women whose lives and stories are important to Muslims, in general, and Muslim women, in particular. Indeed, as Stowasser reminds us, one of these, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is so revered in the sources that discussions have taken place throughout the history of learned Islam as to whether she might not have been a prophet.
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