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Chapter 22 - An Online Fatwā from the Dār al-Iftāʾ al-Miṣriyya on Women’s Leadership

from Part III - Legal Opinions (Fatwās)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Mahmoud Afifi
Edited by
Omar Anchassi  and
Robert Gleave
Omar Anchassi
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Robert Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

This chapter explores the 2012 legal opinion (fatwā) issued by the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ—the body officially tasked with providing Islamic legal advice by the Egyptian state—on women’s capacity to serve as heads of state. In the course of discussing the issue, the authors apologetically asserts that there is not and has never been a ‘woman question’ in Islam, i.e. that there has never been any restriction on women’s agency ‘in Islam’ per se and that women are not in the least bit excluded from acting in the public sphere. The authors present examples of Muslim women serving as heads of state, judges and in other executive and public order roles, as well as minority legal opinions, in order to demonstrate their contention.

Keywords

Legal opinion (fatwā)Dār al-IftāʾWomen’Woman’s Question,’ Women’s capacityJudge (qāḍī)Market inspector (muḥtasib)SultanExecutive authority.
Type
Chapter
Information
Islamic Law in Context
A Primary Source Reader
 , pp. 234 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Primary Sources

Abū Shuqqa, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Muḥammad. Taḥrīr al-Marʾa fī ʿAṣr al-Risāla: Dirāsa ʿan al-Marʾa Jāmiʿa li-Nuṣūṣ al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Ṣaḥīḥay al-Bukhārī wa-Muslim (Cairo: Dār al-Qalam, 2002).Google Scholar
Anonymous. ‘Islam and the Woman Question’, available at www.facebook.com/EgyptDarAlIfta/posts/538114389551681.Google Scholar
al-Ghazālī, Muḥammad. al-Marʾa bayn al-Taqālīd al-Rākida wa-l-Wāfida (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2008).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

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