Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam by Amina Wadud Page A

philosophical ideas about human nature elemental to four major types of feminisms. From there I compared various ideas about the meaning of human nature in Islamic discourse, as described above, the term khalifah providing the irrefutable genesis to Muslim historical thought and practices – especially as eventually canonized in legal codes for over a thousand years. The idea of khalifah regarding gender issues was related to the formation of public policies. Islamic ideas of humanity are integrally connected to the mutuality of the Allah– khalifah relationship and are meant to determine people’s actions, public and private. Although we accept that Allah is the ultimate judge of human actions, because only Allah knows the full cosmic, existential, and practical implications of all our actions, our intentions must continuously correspond to the call of our din as active agents fulfilling those intentions. Every principle underlying the context of building a living community committed to certain actions is articulated fundamentally in the Qur’an. The Qur’anic articulations are often specific to the time and circumstances of its revelation. Particularities are even more evident in the sunnah of the Prophet. He was the exemplar par excellence under the specific circumstances of his community . The fundamental principles, however, must be continuously re-evaluated from the perspective of the time of their specific embodiment throughout the challenges, changes, and limitations of history. Understanding and implementing the fundamental values were fine-tuned relative to their coherence to the circumstances and
    actual dictates of human life. 54 One aspect of evaluating values and principles is based upon their purpose or intended results.
    Most importantly, justice is one value that is both universal in principle and relative to its manifestation in time and space. Drawing a coherent line between the universal and the relative is the place where living communities must be in continual dialogue. Legal codes are major considerations to human polity, governance, and social order. But no single set of legal codes could ever be expected to sustain or support the universal purpose of justice given the complex developments and constant change in human life. The past few centuries have stimulated human knowledge, with concern for both the inner human constitution and well-being and the many external

    What’s in a Name? 43

    areas of industry, technology, medicine, psychology, economics, militarism, biology, and globalism, which have developed at a mind-boggling and still increasing rate. For sustainable justice, these external areas of change require sincere and sensitive consideration of their moral impact on the totality of what it means to be human. Measuring current results by poverty and consumption alone indicates staggering disparities 55 that are actually within our global means to help eradicate. The problem seems to be the absence of the internal human will to introduce the means for eradicating these disparities. At one time it seemed we could simply refer to the world’s religious leadership for inspiration along these lines. But religion has largely become victim to mere formal dogmas and creeds with little continued
    connection to the grand human spirit beyond solely personal
    terms, as
    unintegrated and inactive in genuine terms of saving the whole of humanity and the whole human person as it is of saving itself. Simultaneously, organizations formed to articulate and activate these religions into playing a more ecumenical role in issues of poverty, disarmament, family, and global conflict are constrained by their determinations of what is necessary to respect the integrity of each particular religion’s dogmas and creeds, however diverse, while challenging issues of moral disintegration. Ecumen- ical discourse tends to accept the established status quo within the other traditions. In this way, it achieves the goal