ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on scriptural processes that lead to divine disclosure, how the text portrays its own genesis, and the role of gender and speaking in the processes that formed the text. The feminist hermeneutic in this reading of the Qur'an draws from the Qur'an's language of sign, similar to that of other feminist readings, in particular, Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas. The book attempts an exclusively Qur'anic reading by distinguishing between elements from the Qur'an, and extra-Qur'anic elements from the Hadith, but considers the Hadith as a narrative of prophet hood that provides the historical milieu to allusively described incidents in the Qur'an. Amina Wadud formulated egalitarianism as a hermeneutic lens for a feminist reading of the Qur'an, known as Wadudian hermeneutics'. Barlas demonstrates that oppressive readings are a product of existing religious and social structures that are often external to the Qur'an.
