Woman in the Struggle Between Tradition and Modernity: Investigating the Social Status of Muslim Woman in Contemporary Islamic Societies Based on the Opinions of Sayyid Quṭb and Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd

Responding to the challenges and changes in the modern world, Muslim scholars have considered the social status of women in Islam through various approaches. They have published some works regarding the crisis deriving from the modernity-tradition struggle and conflict. This survey is done through an analytic-descriptive and documentary approach. In this article, the woman status in society is investigated through two perspectives, namely the perspective of Sayyid Quṭb based on the traditional “Amendatory Fundamentalism” approach and the perspective of Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd based on the modernized “Amendatory Neo-Separatism (neo-Mu’tazila)” approach. The results show that while the amendatory fundamentalism scholars refer to tradition as well as Islamic meta-time and meta-place precepts as a solution for the problems of the Muslim women in contemporary societies – therefore, trying to conform modernism and tradition by focusing on Islam –Abū , the neo-separatism amendatory modernized scholars (based on the perspective of Abū Zayd) seek to reconstruct the tradition and conform Islamic precepts and modernity through considering a priority for the modernism and the “contextual” and “timely” Quranic precepts.

Keywords:

Islam , woman , social status , Sayyid Quṭb , Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd