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Qur’an, although other reasons for sticking closely to the method of female-inclusive interpretations, especially as they relate to public policy reforms, will be unveiled throughout this book. In chapter 6, “Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities,” I return directly to matters of text and female-inclusive interpretation, and tentatively respond to recent expressions of privileged male reformists still claiming authority in evaluating women’s inclusion and justifying the suffi- ciency or appropriateness in women’s role in justice reform.
    The Qur’an inspired my participation in what has been a continual

    Introduction 9

    process of makeover in the Islamic intellectual legacy. In particular, it was my main source of inspiration to transform historical practices of gender asymmetry. That inspiration confirmed the idea that gender justice is essential to the divine order of the universe. Since the end of colonialism, Muslims and non-Muslims, women and men have united their recognition of gender injustice with multiple efforts to improve the status of women. These efforts are part of what could be termed a “gender jihad .” 13 The pejorative meanings sometimes attached to the word jihad by both Muslim extremists and Western conservatives are intentionally overlooked here. Instead jihad refers to “effort” or “exertion” 14 and is translated here as “struggle.” The gender jihad is a struggle to establish gender justice in Muslim thought and praxis. At it simplest level, gender justice is gender mainstreaming – the inclusion of women in all aspects of Muslim practice, performance, policy construction, and in both political and religious leadership. Although this book will focus specifically on the struggle for gender justice, it simultaneously contributes to a corpus of literature aimed at eradicating all practices, public and private, of injustice to women’s full humanity in the name of Islam. Similar exclusionary and dehumanizing practices are directed toward non-Muslims and increasingly more toward non-heterosexual Muslims.
    As a Muslim woman living and working with other Muslim women worldwide, I have encountered enough to understand how many seek to find their identity and full voice through continued struggle in the gender jihad , whether consciously or coincidentally. This book, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, joins a concert of resounding voices creating and learning songs about what “Islam” means with full inclusion of real Muslim women. Hear our song, and when the words become familiar, sing along, for ours has too often been the silence that sustained and nurtured the background. Today we need to see how esthetic balance and harmony
    can only result from equal integration of that background
    with
    the
    foreground of local, national, international, and universal recognition.

    CHAPTER OUTLINES

    The Introduction, “Inside the Gender Jihad, Reform in Islam,” locates both my research and my personal identity within the larger framework of
    modern thought and practice for greater justice within an
    indigenous
    Islamic worldview. It is not a mere by-product
    of or
    reaction to
    Western and secular developments, practices, and experiences of justice

    10 inside the gender jihad

    since the Enlightenment, nor as a by-product reacting to Islamist discourse. It also briefly outlines the remaining chapters of the book.
    The first chapter, “What’s in a Name?,” identifies both the significance of definitions and the power dynamics, legitimacy, and authority accompa- nying those who define. The particular terms chosen here are crucial to gender inclusion of some overarching concepts. The first term discussed is “Islam,” pointing out its random but authoritative abuses. Other key concepts like tawhid , khilafah , and taqwa are combined with some consid- erations of justice, shari‘ah, and there is a short consideration of power as an ethical term used in distinct ways