Gender in the Middle East

The study of Islamic law has always possessed a revered status in the Middle East. The law retained an exclusively masculine mystique because its educational and juristic institutions traditionally denied women access. Male legal interpretations of gender difference confined women to separate spheres because they were defined as intellectually deficient and dangerous to all men. Studies of gender as a factor in actual courtroom cases refuted the notion of female passivity when faced with male lawyers and judges. Judith Tucker's investigation of the preserved transcripts of women plaintiffs contradicted the assumption of a complete absence of female agency. She established the complicated relationship between gender and Islamic law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. Women advanced their interests through their knowledge about the differences between Sunni law schools in family and inheritance law.

Women remain the objects of Islamic male legal decisions, which no longer offer recourse for question or dissent in much of the Middle East. Khaled Abou El Fadl documented the emergence of authoritarian control over women in this area. He asserted that those men who claim to speak for God in their decrees abuse the moral and religious bases of Islamic law. His book, Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority, and Women (2001), focused, in part, on the example of the Saudi Arabian–based institute for legal opinions. These rulings continue to be spread not just in the Middle East, but worldwide through well-funded publications and Web sites. The highest level of Shii clerics in Iran also staunchly defend their singular capacity to interpret Islamic law for all adherents of the faith. They consistently embrace the ideal of a gender hierarchy in which women remain eternally subordinate. Gender differences based on male superiority are also articulated as divinely inspired.