ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the importance of the interpretative and hermeneutical methodologies of approaching the Qur’an and Sunna in the process of constructing gender norms and rules in Islam. It includes a short history of the Qur’anic exegesis that will illustrate the evolution of the various exegetical tendencies in Islamic thought. The chapter presents the interpretative methods applied to the Qur’an in classical Islam that facilitated the construction of a hierarchical gender relation. It details the contemporary alternative hermeneutical strategies, used for the purposes of arguing in favour of Qur’anic based gender egalitarianism. In the wake of colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a more rational and scientific oriented type of exegesis was emphasised. Textualism or literalism as used in this book refers to the strong tendency present in the exegetical tradition of classical Islam that views the Qur’an to have largely self-evident, stable and fixed meanings that reside “in totality in the mind of its Originator”.
