For more on this topic, see Gender and Islam

Introduction

Gender informs who we are as individuals, as collectives, and as creators of civilization because it is real. The modern era, however, has uprooted much of our understanding of this defining aspect of selfhood. The new gender theories, pioneered by public intellectuals like Professor Judith Butler, have not so much replaced traditional configurations as simply disregarded them. In order to gain influence, these theorists misrepresent the meaning and implications of biological sex, take a reductionist approach to gender, and fail to consider the wide domain that “traditional” thinking about gender covers. They vulgarize science and overlook philosophical approaches to gender. This paper will argue that traditional thinking on gender—specifically Muslim thought—expanded far beyond a discussion of the body and its function, roles, dress, and demeanor, to map meaning on to the entirety of the cosmos.
We use the word tradition here to refer to a body of ideas that has been cultivated over an extensive period of time and is oft referred back to for the wisdom it continues to bestow. Professor Sachiko Murata argues in her landmark work, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thoughtthat gender was a characteristic feature in Muslim cosmological and Sufi thinking.[1] Religious cosmology details a way of explaining the origins, history, and future of the world, principally on religious terms; and the Sufi tradition that Murata utilizes, refers to Muslim intellectuals whose work focused on the higher ideals and spiritual depths of Islam. Likewise, Professor Abdal Hakim Murad argues in his essay “Islam, Irigaray, and the Retrieval of Gender,” that Islam offers an affirming narrative regarding gender which includes it as constitutive of what makes a human being spiritually whole and vibrantly connected to the universe.[2] 
As much as Western culture debates gender and rights, it does not have a coherent message about gender. In fact, gender is one of the most fragmented concepts that we come across in current debates over ideas that shape our society. One of the reasons for this may be that many of those speaking about these issues are not speaking from a place of expertise. Biologists certainly have something to say about gender but they are limited to their area of expertise. Historians as well have much to offer us on gender but from within the confines of historical analysis. Likewise, philosophers, sociologists, religious scholars, and others have knowledge to contribute but it is from within their own disciplines that they can authoritatively speak. However, we observe that people find it profoundly difficult to stay within their knowledge base, and some go wildly outside of their expertise to make claims that support their analysis, instead of treading lightly into other arenas with intellectual humility, open to being informed by what exists out there.
The present paper, which puts forth an analysis of the role that the feminine and masculine play in Islamic metaphysics and cosmology, calls on the authority of the Muslim intellectual tradition to address the modern critique of gender. One of the modern critiques stresses the irrelevance of gender while itself being consumed by the concept, adamant about its own authority to restructure it, and wholly unconcerned with what is lost through this reimagination of gender. Judith Butler argues in “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” that gender is a social construct, falsely correlated with biological sex, perpetuated generationally through the adoption of certain manners of dress and effectuations, ultimately serving the patriarchal end of reproduction. She writes, “Gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”[3] In Butler’s view, gender has no reality, no quiddity, and biological sex is “distinct from the process by which the body comes to bear cultural meanings.” Biological sex is a matter of fact she does not dispute but she associates it with the anatomy of the conspicuous practically to the exclusion of the inscription of gender in the literal cells of our bodies. If Butler denied biological sex, her work would be dismissed as absurd. She affirms it just enough to be believed as credible but falls far short of affirming its full scientific weight so as not to reveal the contradictions in her thinking. She makes reductionist claims about biological sex in order to make her central argument that it should not have any implications for how individuals express themselves alone and in relationship to one another.

Framing gender

Finding purpose through stories

Conclusion

Notes