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Mother’s Tales, God’s Stories
Reading women’s stories in search of a feminist Qur’anic narrator.
By Zahra Moballegh
I was born during a war between our country and our neighbor, a conflict that persisted for six years thereafter. It was termed a holy war, a conflict waged in the name of God, where the fallen were believed to ascend to God’s heaven, and those who fought the enemy were promised divine rewards. The war fluctuated between intense battles and temporary lulls. Radios, with their waves often disrupted, were incessantly on in every household, the scratchy sounds filling the air. Even as we slept, the radio remained on. Sometimes, a red alert was announced, the loud danger alarm was broadcast, and the announcer declared that we had to leave our workplace and go to the shelter. Holding my newborn sister, Narguess, in her arms, my mother would grasp my hand, and together we sought safety in the basement.
The basement, vast and dimly lit, became our sanctuary. In the darkness, my mother would regale us with stories. Her stories typically revolved around young children capable of effecting change in their situation or behavior. However, she also shared with us a mythical Persian tale of the Seemurgh.1 In this story, all the birds of the world gather to determine who is worthy to be their leader. The hoopoe suggests that they seek out the Seemurgh, who resides far away, beyond the furthest mountain peak, Qaaf. Thus begins a long and arduous journey for the birds, fraught with challenges that test their resolve and resilience. Along the way, many birds succumb to the difficulties or abandon the path. Eventually, only 30 birds reach the summit of the mountain, where they encounter a lake. Upon gazing into the clear water, they see their own reflections intertwined. Suddenly, they realize that the Seemurgh they sought, and who purified their souls through compassion and perseverance, is none other than their own, unified group.
Mother would also play with me, nurse my sister, and pray to and converse with God. My sister was only a few months old, I was three years old, and God—I don’t know. But God was also listening to mother’s words. God was with us in the basement; when we were afraid, waiting for death, was God, too? In those days, God manifested in two distinct forms: either she was the recipient of my mother’s words, or he was the sovereign ruler who beckoned the fallen to war, promising them paradise upon death. That God, omnipotent and distant, was in a paradise not easily accessible. Some men from the neighborhood, and my adolescent uncles, had the opportunity to lose their lives in the war and meet God! The God portrayed through radio and television urged us to endure the hardships of war and shortages in anticipation of eternal rewards in heaven.
Occasionally, I would venture to the local mosque, where the imam, seated high on the pulpit, would impart sermons about enduring hardships for the sake of God’s promised comforts. As women, we were segregated behind a curtain, our view obstructed, but I would sometimes peek through, curious to glimpse the face of the preacher who spoke on behalf of God. The God depicted in the mosque, lofty and authoritative, dictated the laws for human happiness, with religious scholars serving as his earthly representatives. However, the other God, in the basement, sat beside me and Narguess, listening to Mom’s stories. When I played with ants in the backyard, Mother would say, “Be careful not to harm the ants. They would feel pain, and God would grieve.” This God suffered with us in the basement and grieved with the ants in the backyard.
One day, when I was five, a radio broadcast compelled us to flee the city. We sought refuge in a village near Isfahan. Upon our return, we were greeted by shattered windows and scattered glass strewn across the courtyard. With a hand broom, my mother meticulously swept up the fragments, all the while singing lullabies to Narguess and maintaining her conversations with God. Even when she cut her finger on a sharp shard, she invoked God’s name and persisted with her task, undeterred. Peering through the broken window frame, I watched as Narguess drifted off to sleep, while my mother’s lullabies echoed amid the shattered glass. It was during that bombardment that I learned of the tragic fate of my friend’s mother, who perished under the rubble. My friend was told that her mother had ascended to the heavens to be with God.
As I grew older, the dual deity of my childhood became more diverse. The God who once commanded slaughter during the war between neighboring countries gradually receded from the forefront of the television and radio. In the postwar era, in official discourses, God evolved into a ruler satisfied with development and construction. Clerics and philosophers expounded on how Islam espoused progress, technology, and prosperity, drawing examples from the Qur’an, Hadiths, and the lives of the Prophet and imams to illustrate their call for advancement and comfort. School textbooks emphasized God’s role as the creator of the universe and its wonders, teaching us simplified versions of the design and teleological arguments for God’s existence, implicitly suggesting the beauty and goodness of life in this world. The school textbooks included chapters on Sharia rules, detailing ablution, prayer, and fasting and delineating between the permissible and the forbidden.
Later, when a visionary philosopher was elected president, the God of freedom and justice emerged. Quickly, freedom assumed a profound significance in Iran’s political and theological discourse. An Islamic theology of freedom and liberty was formulated, depicting God as the creator whose greatest gift to his creatures was freedom. The prevalent interpretation of the creation story emphasized free will, portraying Satan’s refusal to prostrate to Adam, Adam and Eve’s choice to touch the forbidden tree, and the notion that even God could not compel action. Adam’s descendants, possessing free will, were thus able to choose between happiness and misery. Consequently, it was argued that no suprahuman authority should dictate decisions for the people. While ongoing debate persisted between the theology of liberation and traditional theology in official circles, the path toward a liberating theology had been initiated.
Gradually, God began to favor women as well, though justice still lay a considerable distance away from us. Women found more opportunities for mobility, higher education, and leadership at higher levels. However, orthodox theology remained predominantly masculine; God continued to be viewed as a supreme father and creator, relegating women to secondary status, obliged to heed the words of masculine Sharia rulers from behind curtains.
Despite the resounding voice of official theology, alternative images of the divine and humanity circulated among the populace. Women congregated in small and large religious gatherings, reciting the Qur’an, praying, and participating in healing rituals and herbal remedies based on the idea of a connection between human spirits and nature. Through cooking and handicrafts, they nurtured a form of domestic theology and religious rituals yet to be fully explored. Crying and shedding tears, a tradition in Shia Islam, served as a means of purifying the heart, and within their hidden female theology, women developed their unique approach to this tradition of mourning. Notably, following one of the most significant tragedies in Islamic history, the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his family in Karbala in 680 CE (AH 61), Hussein’s sister, Zeynab, played a pivotal role in preserving his message. Zeynab symbolized both patience and resistance, championing mourning and advocating for the oppressed, and this crucial image of Zeynab contributed to the recognition, albeit unconsciously, of women’s religious identity in Iran.
Behind the veil, women developed within their feminine circles their own perceptions of a deity who often participated in rituals and listened to women’s voices. It’s worth noting that these underground theological beliefs were not uniform. There existed various circles, ranging from entirely traditional religious congregations that echoed the same official patriarchal theology to protest congregations that portrayed theology as a main culprit in women’s subjugation. There were also moderate circles that reexamined the official theology and formulated diverse forms of feminine theology. One prominent figure in this regard was Monir Gorji, the sole woman to have participated in the Assembly of Experts on the Constitution of Iran following the 1957 revolution, though she withdrew from politics shortly thereafter.
Years later, during my interview with her at her home on behalf of Zanan-e Emruz (Women of Today) magazine, it became evident how her profoundly progressive feminist theology had been marginalized within the official and public discourse of Iranian religious culture. Conversing with Gorji, I encountered an elderly woman whose knowledge and interpretation of the Qur’an surpassed that of many renowned religious leaders. She espoused advanced feminist perspectives, approaching the Qur’an and God from a distinctively feminine standpoint. Her views were even more radical than many Western Muslim feminists. Gorji’s theology, rooted in service to humanity and the enhancement of human understanding, was truly inspiring. My hours-long interview with her proved more enlightening than reading numerous volumes of significant texts on Islamic feminism.
Gorji had retreated from politics because of patriarchal pressures, redirecting her efforts toward religious education, community empowerment, and the promotion of health care and literacy in underserved areas. She firmly asserted to me that she felt closer to God in the desolate lands where the voices of the marginalized were heard than in the realm of politics. Gorji’s theology was deeply grounded in earthly concerns, prioritizing service to people and the enhancement of human knowledge and insight. Although her theology had been marginalized within formal education and legal discourse, it thrived behind the curtains of official arenas, embodying a practical and inclusive approach to spirituality.
This concept of seeking spirituality and constructing new meanings of our humanity through acts of care and education has struck a chord with many women in Iran.
This concept of seeking spirituality and constructing new meanings of our humanity through acts of care and education has struck a chord with many women in Iran. During the past two decades, numerous women activists, whether working independently or within NGOs, have passionately dedicated themselves to charitable initiatives and advocacy. These endeavors are geared toward providing essential health services, knowledge, sustenance, and resources to women living in difficult situations. The sense of agency and subjectivity experienced in these activities stands in stark contrast to the dynamics of political control. By leveraging wealth and economic resources to nurture compassion and empathy, these women endeavor to empower others as though they are our own children, parents, and siblings, and as though they represent another part of our unique spirit. This approach can be viewed as a practical, peaceful form of resistance against the government’s oppressive manipulation of the economy.
Viewed through the lens of orthodox patriarchal theology, the situation of Iranian women during this era could be likened to Hannah Arendt’s concepts of Verlassenheit (abandonment/loneliness) or Entweltlichung (worldlessness), referring to those whose existence is unseen. Despite this, from an internal, feminine viewpoint, women had their own vibrant lives and their vital theology and ontology. They constructed an alternative world that lacked formal representation but had a significant impact. The liberatory movement that engulfed the streets and official spaces two years ago did not arise suddenly. The Iranian women’s movement for freedom and life stood as a magnificent representation of the world they had been constructing for years, a realm through which they resisted oppressive politics and official political theology without resorting to violence.
From my subjective standpoint, I can say that the theology of Iranian women, and more broadly, the theology of Muslim women, is an inclusive theology. The image of God in this theology is more akin to a refuge than the God of politics and jurisprudence. This is a deity who has fears as humans do, worries about them, and suffers alongside them. Yet, simultaneously, this divinity possesses a kind of energy and power for change. The content of my mother’s stories and the hope she embodied in her speech and behavior in the basement served as motivation for striving to survive, and hopefully to thrive.
The content of women’s prayers and supplications in religious gatherings, the act of prayer itself, and the fervent heartfelt desires acted as a powerful force, propelling women toward their goals. The hidden feminine theology presupposes a divinity that is very similar to these women themselves. Despite all fears and obstacles, based on their hopes and desires, it alters reality. This refuge God is created through collective desires, such as prayer ceremonies or group protests in the streets, collective civil resistance, creation of resistance artworks, local and domestic arts, shedding tears, compassion for others, advocating steadfastly for change, and instilling hope.
During the women’s movement, it was common to witness schoolgirls, even in primary schools, joining together to chant about Iran, sisterhood, and freedom with remarkable harmony, without any prior rehearsal. Throughout schools, the streets, metros, and universities, you could hear these young women performing chants of liberation:
I sprout
On the wound on my body
Only because I am
that I am a woman, a woman I am
When we sing along together
and walk side by side
and hold each other’s hands
we will get rid of oppression
we can build another world,
a world of equality,
through empathy and sisterhood . . .
Additionally, many women took up activities such as weaving fabric for clothes or crafting accessories adorned with symbols representing the concept of zan, zendegi, azadi (woman, life, freedom), or similar ideals. Baloochi women’s needlework, traditionally regarded as a feminine art symbolizing patience, harmony, and spiritual creativity, gained more popularity. Even women in prison engaged in producing handicrafts to demonstrate their desire to give birth to beauty and humanity despite their circumstances. Women’s activities and movements assume there is the support of an immanent, concrete divinity. The implicit theology constructed through these activities is a reflection of the shared characteristics of the citizens of this spiritual world.
God, to me, remains the same silent and compassionate listener who sat beside me and my newborn sister in the dark basement of our old house during the bombings, listening to our mother’s stories. But can such images and the presuppositions of the foregoing feminine theologies be considered a serious theological approach? Official theologies, which form the basis of political systems and legal frameworks, often rely on interpretations of sacred texts. Political theologies in the Islamic tradition have always been grounded in the Qur’an, and the exegetical tradition has largely supported them. However, alongside the canonical Qur’anic exegesis tradition, there have always been alternative, dissenting, and rebellious interpretations of the Qur’an. In addition to these written traditions, aesthetic worlds and artistic works inspired by or directly based on sacred texts have all contained different interpretations of the sacred text.
Maryam and Isa. Undated manuscript, Public Domain
These interpretations inherently carry different presuppositions and theological perspectives, and they have served as a form of critique of dominant political theologies. Persian miniatures, for instance, offer a profound understanding of Qur’anic verses by portraying the emotions, feelings, and unspoken aspects of the sacred narratives. They go beyond the literal words to depict the essence of the stories. Take, for example, a miniature depicting the story of Mary being instructed by God to shake a palm tree for dates when she feels the pain of childbirth (Qur’an, 19: 23–25). In this miniature, Mary is depicted as a young mother, alone and hopeful, yet filled with despair, her eyes reflecting her inner turmoil. These embodied elements of the story are often overlooked in written interpretations.
Similarly, in the tradition of reciting the Qur’an, reciters use musical intonation and vocal expression to convey the emotions embedded in the text. For instance, there is a passage in the Qur’an where the Narrator God expresses sorrow and regret for being unable to rescue Mary from a difficult situation (Qur’an 3:44). The Egyptian reciter, Mahmood Ramadan, may choose a sorrowful melody, revealing a God who weeps for her inability to aid her protagonist. Listening to such recitations evokes a profound emotional response, as the audience empathizes with the narrator’s pain through the reciter’s mournful rendition. In these artistic interpretations of scripture, three subjects become one: the narrator of the scripture, the audience, and the artist.
In my work, I endeavor to point out one of the so far mostly ignored possibilities in the Qur’anic text. These untapped possibilities are linked to inclusive feminine theologies, on the one hand, and can be categorized among aesthetic and literary approaches to the sacred text, on the other. The sparks of these ideas were ignited during my research on the entry “Women in the Qur’an” for the Dāneshnāmeh-e Jahān-e Eslām (Encyclopedia of the World of Islam).2 As I repeatedly read and reread the Qur’an while writing the entry on women and female elements in the Qur’an, I made a commitment to myself to try to confront the text without historical presuppositions and mental biases. Also, in order not to repeat similar entries in other encyclopedias, I had to extensively study Qur’anic exegesis and lexicographical sources. During this long journey, which lasted more than a year, two important points caught my attention.
The first was about the Qur’an: regarding gender policies and facing women, the Qur’anic text is not consistent. Some parts of the text clearly ignore women or favor men, while other aspects of the text indicate a kind of linguistic gender balance, and in some layers of the text, we encounter special support for women. This diversity in the text regarding women as an audience and subject matter is also seen in the exegetical tradition. In fact, the second point that struck me is the diversity of perspectives in the exegetical and lexicography sources. There, alongside anti-women or patriarchal approaches, we also see—albeit much less frequently and in a more scattered way—balanced or even pro-woman approaches. When considering these scattered interpretations, we realize that the text has always had the potential to provide a liberating reading for women. I included important examples of these readings in writing that entry.3 On the first point, namely, the inconsistency of the Qur’anic text, if we look at these oscillations and inconsistencies through the lens of linguistic studies, we can venture an explanation.
The Qur’an, like every literary text, contains different layers of meaning: 1) a layer where the text explicitly explains something, such as stating a command or reporting an event; 2) a layer that indicates the historical and cultural backgrounds of the text; and 3) the layer of grammar and syntax of the text, which should be examined for both grammatical nuances and gender balance in Arabic. Additionally, there are hidden layers among the words, some of which can be categorized as pre-texts. Qur’anic interpreters and scholars have often overlooked this last layer. In feminist reformist or revisionary approaches to the Qur’an, only a few and nonsystematic references to this layer can be seen. No one has dealt with this aspect of the text in a coherent, methodological manner. I briefly allocated the final section of my entry to these examples and simply introduced this possibility. However, thanks to the research opportunity I’ve had with the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS, I have been able to study and reflect more on this part of the text.
What caught my attention was the presence of heroines and female characters in Qur’anic stories. In almost 26 Qur’anic passages, a woman appears as a main, secondary, or extra character.
This hidden layer is mostly contained in those parts of the Qur’an known as Qur’anic stories. Although the Qur’an is a narrative text in its entirety, certain parts of the text have a clear narrative structure. These parts often narrate stories related to the past, expressing the life stories (external or internal) of heroes, often famous prophets. Most of the heroes of Qur’anic stories are biblical heroes. However, Qur’anic narratives often have significant differences from the stories in the Bible. Moreover, even within the Qur’an, there are sometimes different narratives of the same hero and event—which is itself a very interesting subject to explore. But what caught my attention was the presence of heroines and female characters in Qur’anic stories. In almost 26 Qur’anic passages, a woman appears as a main, secondary, or extra character. For example, Mary emerges as the protagonist in two extensive narratives, standing as the sole woman whose name is explicitly mentioned throughout the entire text. In a curious twist, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, assumes the role of the primary character in a narrative that seems to be centered on Abraham. Similarly, after her introduction, the Queen of Sheba takes center stage in a significant portion of Solomon’s extensive narrative.
Supporting characters such as Mary’s mother, Moses’s mother, sister, and his wife (initially depicted as a young modest woman), along with Pharaoh’s wife, play pivotal roles with a notable degree of activity. They feature prominently in the stories of Moses in the Qur’an, particularly in their efforts to safeguard Moses’s life.
In the story of Joseph, Zulaykha can be seen as a secondary character next to Joseph, who serves as the main protagonist. However, her portrayal diverges from the typical archetype of virtuous women, breaking away from the “Mary Sue” trope. Meanwhile, the women of Egypt are categorized as extra characters within this same narrative. These female characters and their stories have been read and explained many times throughout the reception history of the Qur’an. However, there have been fewer systematic methodological studies about them as narrative texts.
Contemporary works in this field often focus on the positive representation of women in Qur’anic stories, often depicting favorable characterizations, and, overall, presenting a different image of women in the Islamic tradition. But that’s not the whole story. The stories actually create a different world that is very distinct from the rest of the text. I was fortunate to have as a resource my husband, Alireza Javanmard, a skilled writer with extensive knowledge in narrative analysis. With his help, we started analyzing the Qur’anic narratives of women.
The simplest narrative element in Qur’anic stories that can be analyzed is characterization. We saw that the portrayal of women in these stories is distinctly positive and different from the common representations of women in many dominant Islamic sources. Women in Qur’anic stories represent a kind of wisdom that can be called interactive/relational wisdom. Their set of moral virtues is very similar to contemporary feminist care ethics.
But the more important part of our analysis began when we endeavored to examine other narrative elements in Qur’anic stories of women, including the plot, atmosphere, and point of view in every single narrative. We found that the Qur’anic narratives of women reveal repetitive narrating strategies that appear to be deliberate. A narrator emerges who is crafting diverse story worlds through narrative acts and employing various narrative strategies with a distinct style. In many of the women’s stories, the Qur’anic Narrator seems engaged in an implicit struggle against the implicit patriarchal atmospheres depicted.
It’s crucial to recognize that Qur’anic stories are notably rich in silence and implicit contents. Many aspects of the stories remain unexpressed, concealed within the fabric of sentences, words, and even letters of the text. The Narrator withholds significant portions of the events and hides vital information, engaging in covert rather than overt storytelling. As a result, each story prompts numerous questions and ideas for the reader to pursue further. Rhetorical questions without clear answers abound; events and words retain ambiguity in their meaning and denotation; the rationale behind the presence and disappearance of characters remains obscure; and some characters are introduced enigmatically to the reader.
Perhaps the most enigmatic character in the Qur’anic narratives is the sage who embarks on a mysterious journey with Moses (Qur’an 18:65–82). Among the female characters, Sarah also holds an enigmatic representation in the Qur’anic version of Abraham and his strange guests’ story (Qur’an 15:51–60 and 51:24–32). The narrative unfolds with the arrival of guests at Abraham’s house. Abraham, together with an unseen companion, prepares food for the guests. However, when the guests refrain from eating, both Abraham and his companion behind the scenes become apprehensive. Subsequently, the guests deliver the news of the impending birth of a son. Sarah suddenly appears; as the text describes, she “came forward, moaning, and smote her face, and cried: ‘A barren old woman!’ ” Her presence in the narrative is brief yet impactful, leaving behind a multitude of unanswered questions. The story is rife with silent and implicit elements, presenting a vague character who operates largely behind the scenes and, when thrust into the forefront, behaves in a peculiar manner.
As we uncovered the silent and implicit aspects of women’s stories in the Qur’an, it became apparent that the narrative silence within the text can be interpreted as an invitation, prompting the reader to perceive and comprehend the story world from an alternative perspective. By withholding information, the Narrator creates space for the reader to observe the world through her own lens and fill in the gaps—the white spaces, if you will—with her imagination. In doing so, the Narrator bestows importance upon the audience, allowing us to feel respected and empowered as active participants who can co-create the text itself. The Narrator elevates the reader to the position of a co-author, capable of generating new meanings. The abundance of silent and implicit contents in Qur’anic stories strengthens the dialogical structure of the text, encouraging the reader to engage in collaborative storytelling.
Related to this, the silent and implicit aspects of Qur’anic narratives elicit emotional responses from the reader that facilitate the reconstruction of the story world. Such a reconstruction requires emotional involvement with the discourse; it cannot be achieved through abstract contemplation alone. Emotions, human experiences, and life insights play a pivotal role. Only through empathetic reading can the reader untangle the knots of the narratives. The process of revealing meaning in these stories involves empathy, viewing the world from others’ perspectives, and drawing reasonable inferences from textual cues. There is no single correct interpretation for filling in the blank spaces; the reader is confronted with an ethical dilemma of how to perceive the world, whose viewpoint to adopt, and how to interpret and evaluate events. The more life experience a reader possesses, the more mature her choices and decisions are likely to be. She must decide how to engage with the world—whether from a loving and compassionate stance, or from a hostile, monopolizing, self-centered position.
In this sense, Qur’anic stories of women have a similar dialogical function to that of dramas. They are more like live performances that should be watched and heard. Reading the words is not enough. We have to follow the actions, trace the events, listen to what is said, and infer what is remaining unsaid or hidden. The stories evoke our imagination and spur us on to watch them reflexively, since they are our stories. By witnessing the lives of the “others” in the stories, we simultaneously become participants in the story world. We can recognize traces of the characters’ emotions and feelings in our bodies. We can feel the pain of Mary’s loneliness in our bodies. We can suffer when we read her inner feelings. Only through our passionate reading and reflexive imagination are we able to witness the beauty and moral aspects of these stories. Only by pausing, by listening to the voices that include many caesuras, can we possibly hear the whole music or catch the harmony formed by the words and pauses.
Another significant function of narrating with silence in the Qur’anic text was revealed when we asked the narratives some questions regarding gender. In all of the stories in which women are the main and secondary characters, there is something hidden or implicit about the politics of gender. It seems that the Qur’anic Narrator uses the act of narrating as a tool for expressing an objection to the structures of power that put women in an inferior position socially and religiously. Narrating a story is an act of revealing and concealing simultaneously. The Qur’anic narratives apply complicated strategies of concealing. In certain narratives, one can discover radical objections against some beliefs and views that were accepted at the time of the prophet Muhammad, or in the period of the text formation.
A concise narrative worth mentioning is the story of Mary’s mother at the beginning of Mary’s long narrative (Qur’an 3:35–37). The narrative depicts a pregnant mother conversing with God both before and after giving birth to her child. Initially appearing as a simple inauguration to Mary’s story, a closer examination reveals many nuanced elements within the narrative. To delve into the silent parts, we must pose narratological and discursive questions: Whose voice is heard, and whose is omitted? In whose interest is the story told? From whose perspective does the Narrator see the world? What information is revealed, and what is concealed? Why are certain events chosen for narration while others are omitted or implied? What logic governs the narrative’s silences? Is there a connection between the ability to speak and the silent parts?
Analyzing the fluctuating points of view of the Narrator, linguistic intricacies, and recurring motifs unveils a distinct plot and atmosphere: the narrative of a woman’s inner experiences, a pregnant mother who has fled her community. She resides in a patriarchal society, where a pregnant, possibly widowed woman is left alone and vulnerable. Anxiously, she implores her God for a son. However, the Narrator intervenes at the climax, declaring “Male does not match female.” This proclamation, suggesting the superiority of a female child (a general proposition), challenges the implicit patriarchal culture. Viewing this story through a narrative criticism lens reveals a struggle between a patriarchal society and a maternal perspective. Without delving into historical or social contexts, this self-sufficient narrative subtly portrays an androcentric society condemned through various narratological tools.
Of course, opposing the established beliefs in that time could be dangerous. For those audiences of the Qur’an, it was not tolerable to hear explicit objections against patriarchy and androcentrism. So, using strategies to imbue these stories with some hidden and silent layers of objection would have been a smart rhetorical choice for remonstrating against the established structures of power. Michal Dinkler says: “silence is not merely an alternative to failed speech. Silence itself can communicate powerfully—it can express shame or fear, admiration or domination. Silence can signify protective or oppressive censorship, but it can also indicate resistance, or generate anticipation.”4
With Dinkler’s rhetorical analysis as our guide, we recovered some meanings that might be communicated in the silent parts of the Qur’anic narratives, including denotations of fear, resistance, or opposition. A narratological encounter with the silences in the Qur’anic narratives can uncover a narrator who is in a covert struggle against male-centered structures of power. This narrator has chosen to appeal to narrating strategies that allow a deeper layer of meaning to be possible behind the superficial level. In this sense, the Narrator God is performing a moral activity in which the narrative is a battleground for an author/storyteller who wants to fight for women characters.
Likewise, within the Qur’an, narrating women’s stories is also an apparatus for challenging the very way history tends to be told. Historical narratives that have been recorded and credited by the dominant groups usually eliminate ordinary or inferior people. The inner lives of the suppressed ones are not seen and cannot be heard, their points of view are neglected in the texts by the prevailing ones with the power and authority to write and to narrate. In contrast, the Qur’anic narratives mostly represent a world in which the main characters are those who have been on the margins of historical narratives. The Qur’anic Narrator tries to change the placement of “the mains” and “the margins.”
If you compare the grammar, content, and point of view in the historical reports to those of the Qur’anic narratives of women, you will see a significant difference in what they represent as reality and how they represent it. Historical reports usually have a confident tone and recount objectively from an external viewpoint. Qur’anic narratives of women, however, represent a fluid world of becoming. They replace certainty with the fragility of real life and the fluidity of emotions. They recount the inner feelings and thoughts of characters, as well. They show the hidden side of reality: a Mary, alone, who wishes to die; a Moses who felt afraid within himself; a pregnant mother who is surrounded with anxiety and fear.
The Qur’anic Narrator is engaged, then, in a moral process of resisting structures of power that have shaped our understanding of history and reality. By changing the political order, and through choosing specific narrating strategies, the Narrator God challenges the objectivity of historiography. This revolutionary moral-political struggle with the dominant authorities may be the most original, and at the same time the most silent and hidden ethical layer within the Qur’anic narrative theology.
These stories unveil a narrator who is in a process of becoming with her characters, delving into their lives, enduring their struggles, sharing their hopes, fighting for their liberation, and sometimes failing in her endeavors to aid her characters.
If we are to reconstruct a kind of theology according to the narratives of women in the Qur’an, it would inevitably be a process theology. These stories unveil a narrator who is in a process of becoming with her characters, delving into their lives, enduring their struggles, sharing their hopes, fighting for their liberation, and sometimes failing in her endeavors to aid her characters. This storyteller God reminds me of those times my family and I had to take shelter within the basement. It resonates both with the memory of my mother’s storytelling in the darkness of the basement and with the image of that silent God who was present there, suffering with us, listening to my mother’s stories.
Qur’anic stories make the sacred text participatory and act as a form of resistance against the emerging violence of language. Choosing silence is a tool to confront power structures that silence voices. More than a tool, silence can be seen as a character with a voice of its own. The storyteller God mirrors the women characters. This resemblance is not merely due to storytelling’s deep historical ties to motherhood or because Qur’anic stories articulate the inner struggles of women, which are less highlighted in historical accounts. Rather, the storyteller at times embodies a concerned mother caring for her heroines, a wise guardian silently observing her champions, or a passionate lover accepting the tragedy of her beloved without being able to intervene in the story world.
If we are to build a theology based on this act of storytelling, we must focus on the complexities of human emotions, on tragic human situations, and on the limitations of human existence. The grammar of this theology is never prescriptive or authoritative. Here, with introspection, empathy, seeing from and listening to the other’s perspective, our theological world is continually reconstructed.5
Notes:
- 1. The Seemurgh, the legendary divine bird in Persian culture, in its later linguistic form means “30 birds.”
- The Encyclopedia of the World of Islam, rch.ac.ir/ (in Arabic).
- To highlight one particular example, there is a notable exegetical consensus regarding the identification of the referent in Qur’an 43:18 as “young girls” (or women in general). This verse describes idols, each of whom is portrayed as “brought up among ornaments and when disputes arise is powerless.” Despite the entire syntax being in the masculine form, including pronouns, the verb, and adjectives, most interpreters have identified the being mentioned as “young girls.” Many male interpreters of the Qur’an consciously overlooked this grammatical discrepancy, attributing the description to girls because of the perceived characteristics, such as “short-sighted” and “weak in reasoning,” as being the essence of women. However, scholars like Meybodi (12th century) and Qurtubi (13th century) who, through their examination of the grammar and ignoring misogynistic cultural beliefs (at least in this case), asserted that the verse refers to idols.
- Michal Beth Dinkler, Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke (de Gruyter, 2013), 9.
- This essay is dedicted to Ann Braude and Catherine Brekus.
Zahra Moballegh is a visiting assistant professor of Women’s Studies and Islam and a 2023-24 research associate for the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. She is an assistant professor at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Iran. Her first book,Faith as Reason: An Epistemological Approach to Feminist Theology, was the first Persian book about feminist philosophy and theology.
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