ABSTRACT
In the modern period — particularly during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — some significant developments have occurred in the interpretation of a range of Qur'anic texts related to women. A key realisation in this regard is that when the Qur'an (and by extension Sunna) were interpreted throughout the course of Islamic history some violence was done to the original message of the text as understood by the first recipients. Moreover, despite the Qur'an's polysemy as recognised in classical scholarship, the majority ofits interpreters were men who lived in patriarchal societies, and who therefore held specific views concerning the nature, norms, and roles of gender in society, and interpreted the relevant Qur'anic texts without necessarily paying attention to the rich possibilities of meaning in those texts.
